A MODERN ANDROMEDA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20426, 30 November 1929, Page 8 (Supplement)

A MODERN ANDROMEDA.

THE BROWNING ROMANCE.

Chained to her sofa as securely as .Andromeda. of old to her rock, Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett—whom tho world knows bettor as Elizabeth Barrett Browning—was quito unresentful of tho tyranny that doomed her to a lingering death. Edward Barrett, slave-owner and belonging to a lino of slave-owners, hardly seemed to realise that his own children had more rights than the negroes that worked in his plantations. " Tyranny ? Perhaps,"- says Elizabeth, in ono of her letters. " Yet in that strange stern nature there is a capacity to love —and I lovo him." There speaks tho truo Victorian filial spirit. So, when his gifted daughter, whose poetic talent was already gaining recognition, showed signs of lung trouble, Edward Barrett dealt firmly with tho case. Tie removed his wholo family to London and in a gloomy house in Wimpolo Street, Elizabeth, as youth passed and middle ago came within hailing distance, spent her days in that dark sittingroom upon tho second floor which Miss Dormer Creston so vividly describes in " Andromeda in Wimpole Street." No nonsense about the benefits of fresh air or exercise. A short carriage excursion was an adventure, a walk an impossibility. So her cough grew worse and her weakness increased until she was thirty-nine and to all appearance a confirmed invalid for life—and that life a short one.

The Coming of Perseus. And then, one day, early in January, 1<?45, she received a letter from Robert Browning, that charming letter beginning " I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett," which was to open the famous correspondence, long since published for ail the world to read in it the flowering and fruitage of as delicate a romance of true love as the world of reality or of fiction has afforded.

Between the active energetic young man of 33, adored and mdulgod only son, and the maiden lady of 39, chained to her couch by her dragon of a father, there was an affinity of mind and heart which overleapt all disparity of ago and circumstance. It was the end of May before Browning was actually admitted to a sight of his divinity and then with the utmost secrecy, but after that weekly visits were arranged though they had little effect upon tho volume of the correspondence that flowed between t lie two. But Perseus was resolved to carry off his Andromeda, not merely to lighten her captivity by pleasant dalliance. It was clear to him that despite her delicacy there was no insuperable obstacle to their marriage—none, that is, except that presented by Elizabeth's unquestioning acquiescence in her father's tyranny. True love, however, levels all barriers, and beneath the deceptive crust of Victorian mpekness were banked tho fires of tho equally amazing Victorian courage. Browning was all for action. lie felt as he expressed it in his punning fashion that " there was a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the E.B.H. lod on to tho fortune of R. 8.," and Elizabeth, having given her heart into his keeping He It valiant enough to defy the dragon. Escape—and After.

" None are so bold as the timid when they are fairly roused." Thus wrote Elizabeth to Browning on the evo of her marriage-day, and in* her very last letter to him, for henceforth in all the years that perfect union was to last (lie two were never separated. The words were written of her faithful maid, Wilson, who was to accompany tho pair to Italy, but they might woll have been applied to Elizabeth herself. When one considers tho physical exertions which the enterprise entailed and the turmoil of emotions,' poignant joy and poignant sadness, with which siio stole from her father's house to pass into her husband's worshipping care, the achievement is a. testimony to tho strength beneath the apparent frailty. Hie marriage, blessed in the following year by tho birth of a lusty boy. lasted for fifteen years. When Elizabeth died, "smilingly, happily and with a face like a girl's," something died 100 in her husband. " Later ho was to become, outwardly, another Browning—Browning tho celebrity, the coveted dinner-guest, the poet whose body was ultimately to lie in Westminster Abbey, and who*was to take his place in the eyes of future generations as one of the "leviathans of tho Victorian era. . . But all the time there dwelt within him the earlier Browning, with memories in his mind from which the world was excluded." " Andromeda in Wimpolo Street," by Dormer Creston. (Thornton BuUerworth).