It was a more unexpected and consequently an even more bitter blow to find that her brothers at first disapproved of her action; the more so, since they had sympathised with her in the struggle of the previous autumn.  This disapprobation was, however, less deep-seated, resting partly upon doubts as to the practical prudence of the match, partly, no doubt, upon a natural annoyance at having been kept in the dark.  Such an estrangement could only be temporary, and as time went on was replaced by a full renewal of the old affection towards herself and a friendly acceptance of her husband.  With her sisters, on the other hand, there was never a shadow of difference or estrangement.  That love remained unaffected; and almost the only circumstance that caused Mrs. Browning to regret her enforced absence from England was the separation which it entailed from her two sisters.

In Paris the fugitives found a friend who proved a friend indeed.  A few weeks earlier Mrs. Jameson, knowing of the needs of Miss Barrett’s health, had offered to take her to Italy; but her offer had been refused.  Her astonishment may be imagined when, after this short interval of time, she found her invalid friend in Paris as the wife of Robert Browning.  The prospect filled her with almost as much dismay as pleasure.  ‘I have here,’ she wrote to a friend from Paris, ’a poet and a poetess—­two celebrities who have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as to render imprudence the height of prudence.  Both excellent; but God help them! for I know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world.’[144] Mrs. Jameson, who was travelling with her young niece, Miss Geraldine Bate,[145] lent her aid to smooth the path of her poet friends, and it was in her company that, after a week’s rest in Paris, the Brownings proceeded on their journey to Italy.  It is easy to imagine what a comfort her presence must have been to the invalid wife and her naturally anxious husband; and this journey sealed a friendship of no ordinary depth and warmth.  Mrs. Browning bore the journey wonderfully, though suffering much from fatigue.  During a rest of two days at Avignon, a pilgrimage was made to Vaucluse, in honour of Petrarch and his Laura; and there, as Mrs. Macpherson has recorded in an often quoted passage of her biography of her aunt, ’there, at the very source of the “chiare, fresche e dolci acque,” Mr. Browning took his wife up in his arms, and carrying her across the shallow, curling water, seated her on a rock that rose throne-like in the middle of the stream.  Thus love and poetry took a new possession of the spot immortalised by Petrarch’s loving fancy.’[146]

[Footnote 144:  Memoirs of Anna Jameson, by G. Macpherson, p. 218.]

[Footnote 145:  Afterwards Mrs. Macpherson, and Mrs. Jameson’s biographer.]

[Footnote 146:  Memoirs, p. 231.]