RELATIONSHIP WITH
ROBERT BROWNING
At the age of 38 she started a 
correspondence with the six year younger
poet Robert Browning, who knew well her work. "I love your verses with all
my heart, dear Miss Barrett," he said, and continued, "I do, as I say,
love these Books with all my heart – and I love you too." Elizabeth had
already expressed her admiration for Browning's Bells and Pomegranates
(1841-46); at that time many critics considered his verse too obscure and
difficult. Confined by ill health to her bedroom, she did not expect to have a
lover. After several hundred letters, she finally agreed to meet him in May
1845. "There is nothing to see in me, – nothing to hear in me," she
said, "the rest of me is nothing but a root, fit for the ground & the
dark." After their first meeting, Robert Browning proposed marriage.
The
courtship was kept a close secret from her father, who had forbidden all 12 of
his sons and daughters to marry. Next year she ran away from her home. In
September 1846 she married Robert Browning in a church near Wimpole Street.
Since then they hardly ever spent a night apart. The couple settled a week
later in Florence. Casa Guide became the base of their life, although the
Brownings also visited Rome, Siena, Bagni di Lucca, Paris, and London. Their
only child, Robert Wiedemann (known as Penini), was born in 1849.