Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet wrote to her brother prior to secretly marrying Robert Browning, begging for understanding and asking her brother to explain to their father her love for the man she was about to marry.*
"...Mr. Browning has been attached to me for nearly two years ~ at first and for long I could not believe that he (who is what you know a little) could care for such as I, except in an illusion and a dream...With a protest, he submitted, and months passed on so. Still he came continually & wrote & made me feel with every breath I drew in his presence, that he loved me with no ordinary affection...
"I never believed that a man whom I could love (I hated having a need to look up high in order to love)...could be satisfied with loving me. And yet he did~does. Then we have one mind on all subjects~ & the solemner they are, the nearer we seem to approach. If poets, we are together, still more we are Christians. For these nearly two years we have known each other's opinions & thoughts & feelings, weakness & strength, as few persons in the position have had equal opportunities of doing."
*Elizabeth's father never spoke to her again.
