t 'Christopher
North.']

At the end of March 1850, the long-deferred marriage of Mrs.
Browning's sister, Henrietta, to Captain Surtees Cook took place. It
is of interest here mainly as illustrating Mr. Barrett's behaviour
to his daughters. An application for his consent only elicited the
pronouncement, 'If Henrietta marries you, she turns her back on this
house for ever,' and a letter to Henrietta herself reproaching her
with the 'insult' she had offered him in asking his consent when she
had evidently made up her mind to the conclusion, and declaring
that, if she married, her name should never again be mentioned in his
presence. The marriage having thereupon taken place, his decision was
forthwith put into practice, and a second child was thenceforward an
exile from her father's house.

_To Miss Mitford_
Florence: [end of] April 1850.

You will have seen in the papers, dearest friend, the marriage of my
sister Henrietta, and will have understood why I was longer silent
than usual. Indeed, the event has much moved me, and so much of the
emotion was painful--painfulness being inseparable from events of the
sort in our family--that I had to make an effort to realise to myself
the reasonable degree of gladness and satisfaction in her release from
a long, anxious, transitional state, and her prospect of happiness
with a man who has loved her constantly and who is of an upright,
honest, reliable, and religious mind. Our father's objections were to
his Tractarian opinions and insufficient income. I have no sympathy
myself with Tractarian opinions, but I cannot under the circumstances
think an objection of the kind tenable by a third person, and in truth
we all know that if it had not been this objection, it would have been
another--there was no escape any way. An engagement of five years
and an attachment still longer were to have some results; and I can't
regret, or indeed do otherwise than approve from my heart, what she
has done from hers. Most of her friends and relatives have considered
that there was no choice, and that her step is abundantly justified.
At the same time, I thank God that a letter sent to me to ask my
advice never reached me (the _second_ letter of my sisters' lost,
since I left them), because no advice _ought_ to be given on any
subject of the kind, and because I, especially, should have shrunk
from accepting such a responsibility. So I only heard of the marriage
three days before it took place