So at the beginning of October the party reached Pisa; and there the newly wedded pair settled for the winter.  Here first since the departure from London was there leisure to renew the intercourse with friends at home, to answer congratulations and good wishes, to explain what might seem strange and unaccountable.  From this point Mrs. Browning’s correspondence contains nearly a full record of her life, and can be left to tell its own story in better language than the biographer’s.  The first letter to Mrs. Martin is an ’apologia pro connubio suo’ in fullest detail; the others carry on the story from the point at which that leaves it.

With regard to this first letter, full as it is of the most intimate personal and family revelations, it has seemed right to give it entire.  The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth Browning has passed into literary history, and it is only fair that it should be set, once for all, in its true light.  Those who might be pained by any expressions in it have passed away; and those in whose character and reputation the lovers of English literature are interested have nothing to fear from the fullest revelation.  If anything were kept back, false and injurious surmises might be formed; the truth leaves little room for controversy, and none for slander.

To Mrs. Martin Collegio Ferdinando, Pisa; October 20(?), 1846.[147]

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­Will you believe that I began a letter to you before I took this step, to give you the whole story of the impulses towards it, feeling strongly that I owed what I considered my justification to such dear friends as yourself and Mr. Martin, that you might not hastily conclude that you had thrown away upon one who was quite unworthy the regard of years?  I had begun such a letter—­when, by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans were all hurried forward—­changed—­driven prematurely into action, and the last hours of agitation and deep anguish—­for it was the deepest of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those whom I tenderly loved—­so would not admit of my writing or thinking:  only I was able to think that my beloved sisters would send you some account of me when I was gone.  And now I hear from them that your generosity has not waited for a letter from me to do its best for me, and that instead of being vexed, as you might well be, at my leaving England without a word sent to you, you have used kind offices in my behalf, you have been more than the generous and affectionate friend I always considered you.  So my first words must be that I am deeply grateful to you, my very dear friend, and that to the last moment of my life I shall remember the claim you have on my gratitude.  Generous people are inclined to acquit generously; but it has been very painful to me to observe that with all my mere friends I have found more sympathy and trust, than in those who are of my own household and who have been daily witnesses of my life.  I do not say this for papa,