"Great Writers."
EDITED BY
ERIC ROBERTSON AND FRANK T. MARZIALS.
LIFE OF BROWNING.
FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK
LIFE
OF
ROBERT BROWNING
BY
WILLIAM SHARP.
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1897
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
London, Robert Browning's birthplace; his immediate predecessors and
contemporaries in literature, art, and music; born May 7th, 1812; origin
of the Browning family; assertions as to its Semitic connection
apparently groundless; the poet a putative descendant of the Captain
Micaiah Browning mentioned by Macaulay; Robert Browning's mother of
Scottish and German origin; his father a man of exceptional powers,
artist, poet, critic, student; Mr. Browning's opinion of his son's
writings; the home in Camberwell; Robert Browning's childhood;
concerning his optimism; his fondness for Carravaggio's "Andromeda and
Perseus"; his poetic precocity; origin of "The Flight of the Duchess";
writes Byronic verse; is sent to school at Peckham; his holiday
afternoons; sees London by night, from Herne Hill; the significance of
the spectacle to him. Page 11.
CHAPTER II.
He wishes to be a poet; writes in the style of Byron and Pope; the
"Death of Harold"; his poems, written when twelve years old, shown to
Miss Flower; the Rev. W.J. Fox's criticisms on them; he comes across
Shelley's "Dæmon of the World"; Mrs. Browning procures Shelley's poems,
also those of Keats, for her son; the perusal of these volumes proves
an important event in his poetic development; he leaves school when
fourteen years old, and studies at home under a tutor; attends a few
lectures at University College, 1829-30; chooses his career, at the age
of twenty; earliest record of his utterances concerning his youthful
life printed in _Century Magazine_, 1881; he plans a series of
monodramatic epics; Browning's life-work, collectively one monodramatic
"epic"; Shakspere's and Browning's methods compared; Browning writes
"Pauline" in 1832; his own criticism on it; his parents' opinions; his
aunt's generous gift; the poem published in January 1833; description of
the poem; written under the inspiring stimulus of Shelley; its
autopsychical significance; its importance to the student of the poet's
works; quotations from "Pauline". Page 29.
CHAPTER III.
The public reception of "Pauline"; criticisms thereupon; Mr. Fox's
notice in the _Monthly Repository_, and its results; Dante Gabriel
Rossetti reads "Pauline" and writes to the author; Browning's reference
to Tennyson's reading of "Maud" in 1855; Browning frequents literary
society; reads at the British Museum; makes the acquaintance of Charles
Dickens and "Ion" Talfourd; a volume of poems by Tennyson published
simultaneously with "Pauline"; in 1833 he commences his travels; goes to
Russia; the sole record of his experiences there to be found in the poem
"Ivàn Ivànovitch," published in _Dramatic Idyls_, 1879; his acquaintance
with Mazzini; Browning goes to Italy; visits Asolo, whence he drew hints
for "Sordello" and "Pippa Passes"; in 1834 he returns to Camberwell; in
autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835 commences "Sordello," writes
"Paracelsus," and one or two short poems; his love for Venice; a new
voice audible in "Johannes Agricola" and "Porphyria"; "Paracelsus,"
published in 1835; his own explanation of it; his love of walking in the
dark; some of "Paracelsus" and of "Strafford" composed in a wood near
Dulwich; concerning "Paracelsus" and Browning's sympathy with the
scientific spirit; description and scope of the poem; quotations
therefrom; estimate of the work, and its four lyrics. Page 49.
CHAPTER IV.
Criticisms upon "Paracelsus," important one written by John Forster;
Browning meets Macready at the house of Mr. Fox; personal description of
the poet; Macready's opinion of the poem; Browning spends New Year's
Day, 1836, at the house of the tragedian and meets John Forster;
Macready urges him to write a play; his subsequent interview with the
tragedian; he plans a drama to be entitled "Narses"; meets Wordsworth
and Walter Savage Landor at a supper party, when the young poet is
toasted, and Macready again proposes that Browning should write a play,
from which arose the idea of "Strafford"; his acquaintance with
Wordsworth and Landor; MS. of "Strafford" accepted; its performance at
Covent Garden Theatre on the 26th May 1837; runs for five nights; the
author's comments; the drama issued by Messrs. Longman & Co.; the
performance in 1886; estimate of "Strafford"; Browning's dramas;
comparison between the Elizabethan and Victorian dramatic eras;
Browning's soul-depictive faculty; his dramatic method; estimate of his
dramas; Landor's acknowledgment of the dedication to him of "Luria".
Page 73.
CHAPTER V.
"Profundity" and "Simplicity"; the faculty of wonder; Browning's first
conception of "Pippa Passes"; his residence in London; his country
walks; his ways and habits, and his heart-episodes; debates whether to
become a clergyman; is "Pippa Passes" a drama? estimate of the poem;
Browning's rambles on Wimbledon Common and in Dulwich Wood, where he
composed his lines upon Shelley; asserts there is romance in Camberwell
as well as in Italy; "Sordello"; the charge of obscurity against
"Sordello"; the nature and intention of the poem; quotations therefrom;
anecdote about Douglas Jerrold; Tennyson's, Carlyle's, and M. Odysse
Barot's opinions on "Sordello"; "enigmatic" poetry; in 1863 Browning
contemplated the re-writing of "Sordello"; dedication to the French
critic, Milsand. Page 93.
CHAPTER VI.
Browning's three great dramatic poems; "The Ring and the Book" his
finest work; its uniqueness; Carlyle's criticism of it; Poetry _versus_
Tour-de-Force; "The Ring and the Book" begun in 1866; analysis of the
poem; kinship of "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh"; explanation
of title; the idea taken from a parchment volume Browning picked up in
Florence; the poem planned at Casa Guidi; "O Lyric Love," etc.;
description and analysis of "The Ring and the Book," with quotations;
compared as a poem with "The Inn Album," "Pauline," "Asolando," "Men and
Women," etc.; imaginary volumes, to be entitled "Transcripts from Life"
and "Flowers o' the Vine"; Browning's greatest period; Browning's
primary importance. Page 113.
CHAPTER VII.
Early life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; born in 1820; the chief sorrow
of her life; the Barrett family settle in London; "The Cry of the
Children" and its origin; Miss Barrett's friends; effect on her of
Browning's poetry; she makes Browning's acquaintance in 1846; her early
belief in him as a poet; her physical delicacy and her sensitiveness of
feeling; personal appearance of Robert Browning; his "electric" hand;
Elizabeth Barrett discerns his personal worth, and is susceptible to the
strong humanity of Browning's song; Mr. Barrett's jealousy; their
engagement; Miss Barrett's acquaintance with Mrs. Jameson; quiet
marriage in 1846; Mr. Barrett's resentment; the Brownings go to Paris;
thence to Italy with Mrs. Jameson; Wordsworth's comments; residence in
Pisa; "Sonnets from the Portuguese"; in the spring they go to Florence,
thence to Ancona, where "The Guardian Angel" was written; Casa Guidi;
W.W. Story's account of the rooms at Casa Guidi; perfect union. Page 135.
CHAPTER VIII.
March 1849, birth of Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning; Browning writes
his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day"; "Casa Guidi Windows" commenced;
1850, they go to Rome; "Two in the Campagna"; proposal to confer
poet-laureateship on Mrs. Browning; return to London; winter in Paris;
summer in London; Kenyon's friendship; return in autumn to Casa Guidi;
Browning's Essay on Shelley for the twenty-five spurious Shelley
letters; midsummer at Baths of Lucca, where "In a Balcony" was in part
written; winter of 1853-4 in Rome; record of work; "Pen's" illness; "Ben
Karshook's Wisdom"; return to Florence; (1856) "Men and Women"
published; the Brownings go to London; in summer "Aurora Leigh" issued;
1858, Mrs. Browning's waning health; 1855-64 comparatively, unproductive
period with R. Browning; record of work; July 1855, they travel to
Normandy; "Legend of Pornic"; Mrs. Browning's ardent interest in the
Italian struggle of 1859; winter in Rome; "Poems before Congress"; her
last poem, "North and South"; death of Mrs. Browning at Casa Guidi, 28th
June 1861. Page 157.
CHAPTER IX.
Browning's allusions to death of his wife; Miss Browning resides with
her brother from 1866; 1868, collected works published; first part of
"The Ring and the Book" published in November 1866; "Hervé Riel"
written; Browning's growing popularity; Tauchnitz editions of his poems
in 1872; also first book of selections; dedication to Lord Tennyson;
1877, he goes to La Saisiaz, near Geneva; "La Saisiaz" and "The Two
Poets of Croisic" published 1878; Browning's later poems; Browning
Society established 1881; Browning's letter thereupon to Mr. Yates;
trips abroad; his London residences; his last letter to Tennyson;
revisits Asolo; Palazzo Rezzonico; his belief in immortality; his death,
Thursday, Dec. 12th, 1889; funeral in Westminster Abbey; Sonnet by
George Meredith; new star in Orion; R. Browning's place in literature;
Summary, etc. Page 176.
NOTE.
In all important respects I leave this volume to speak for itself. For
obvious reasons it does not pretend to be more than a _Mémoire pour
servir_: in the nature of things, the definitive biography cannot appear
for many years to come. None the less gratefully may I take the present
opportunity to express my indebtedness to Mr. R. Barrett Browning, and
to other relatives and intimate friends of Robert Browning, who have
given me serviceable information, and otherwise rendered kindly aid. For
some of the hitherto unpublished details my thanks are, in particular,
due to Mrs. Fraser Corkran and Miss Alice Corkran, and to other old
friends of the poet and his family, here, in Italy, and in America;
though in one or two instances, I may add, I had them from Robert
Browning himself. It is with pleasure that I further acknowledge my
indebtedness to Dr. Furnivall, for the loan of the advance-proofs of his
privately-printed pamphlet on "Browning's Ancestors"; and to the
Browning Society's Publications--particularly to Mrs. Sutherland Orr's
and Dr. Furnivall's biographical and bibliographical contributions
thereto; to Mr. Gosse's biographical article in the _Century Magazine_
for 1881; to Mr. Ingram's _Life of E.B. Browning_; and to the _Memoirs
of Anna Jameson_, the _Italian Note-Books_ of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr.
G.S. Hillard's _Six Months in Italy_ (1853), and the Lives and
Correspondence of Macready, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage
Landor. I regret that the imperative need of concision has prevented the
insertion of many of the letters, anecdotes, and reminiscences, so
generously placed at my disposal; but possibly I may have succeeded in
educing from them some essential part of that light which they
undoubtedly cast upon the personality and genius of the poet.
LIFE OF BROWNING.
CHAPTER I.
It must, to admirers of Browning's writings, appear singularly
appropriate that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would
seem as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly
petty to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger
ken, had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for
the poet whom a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in
Song," the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror of the age?
A man may be in all things a Londoner and yet be a provincial. The
accident of birthplace does not necessarily involve parochialism of the
soul. It is not the village which produces the Hampden, but the Hampden
who immortalises the village. It is a favourite jest of Rusticus that
his urban brother has the manner of Omniscience and the knowledge of a
parish beadle. Nevertheless, though the strongest blood insurgent in the
metropolitan heart is not that which is native to it, one might well be
proud to have had one's atom-pulse atune from the first with the large
rhythm of the national life at its turbulent, congested, but ever
ebullient centre. Certainly Browning was not the man to be ashamed of
his being a Londoner, much less to deny his natal place. He was proud of
it: through good sense, no doubt, but possibly also through some
instinctive apprehension of the fact that the great city was indeed the
fit mother of such a son. "Ashamed of having been born in the greatest
city of the world!" he exclaimed on one occasion; "what an extraordinary
thing to say! It suggests a wavelet in a muddy shallow grimily
contorting itself because it had its birth out in the great ocean."
On the day of the poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey, one of the most
eminent of his peers remarked to me that Browning came to us as one
coming into his own. This is profoundly true. There was in good sooth a
mansion prepared against his advent. Long ago, we should have
surrendered as to a conqueror: now, however, we know that princes of the
mind, though they must be valorous and potent as of yore, can enter upon
no heritance save that which naturally awaits them, and has been made
theirs by long and intricate processes.
The lustrum which saw the birth of Robert Browning, that is the third in
the nineteenth century, was a remarkable one indeed. Thackeray came into
the world some months earlier than the great poet, Charles Dickens
within the same twelvemonth, and Tennyson three years sooner, when also
Elizabeth Barrett was born, and the foremost naturalist of modern times
first saw the light. It is a matter of significance that the great wave
of scientific thought which ultimately bore forward on its crest so many
famous men, from Brewster and Faraday to Charles Darwin, had just begun
to rise with irresistible impulsion. Lepsius's birth was in 1813, and
that of the great Flemish novelist, Henri Conscience, in 1812: about the
same period were the births of Freiligrath, Gutzkow, and Auerbach,
respectively one of the most lyrical poets, the most potent dramatist,
the most charming romancer of Germany: and, also, in France, of
Théophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Among representatives of the
other arts--with two of which Browning must ever be closely
associated--Mendelssohn and Chopin were born in 1809, and Schumann,
Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years: within which space
also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. Other high names
there are upon the front of the century. Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John
Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way, to recognise the genius of
Browning), Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Ampère, Quinet,
Prosper Merimée, Sainte-Beuve, Strauss, Montalembert, are among the
laurel-bearers who came into existence betwixt 1800 and 1812.
When Robert Browning was born in London in 1812, Sheridan had still four
years to live; Jeremy Bentham was at the height of his contemporary
reputation, and Godwin was writing glibly of the virtues of humanity and
practising the opposite qualities, while Crabbe was looked upon as one
of the foremost of living poets. Wordsworth was then forty, Sir Walter
Scott forty-one, Coleridge forty-two, Walter Savage Landor and Charles
Lamb each in his forty-fifth year. Byron was four-and-twenty, Shelley
not yet quite of age, two radically different men, Keats and Carlyle,
both youths of seventeen. Abroad, Laplace was in his maturity, with
fifteen years more yet to live; Joubert with twelve; Goethe, with
twenty; Lamarck, the Schlegels, Cuvier, Chateaubriand, Hegel, Niebühr
(to specify some leading names only), had many years of work before
them. Schopenhauer was only four-and-twenty, while Béranger was
thirty-two. The Polish poet Mickiewicz was a boy of fourteen, and
Poushkin was but a twelvemonth older; Heine, a lad of twelve, was
already enamoured of the great Napoleonic legend. The foremost literary
critic of the century was running about the sands of Boulogne, or
perhaps wandering often along the ramparts of the old town,
introspective even then, with something of that rare and insatiable
curiosity which we all now recognise as so distinctive of Sainte-Beuve.
Again, the greatest creative literary artist of the century, in prose at
any rate, was leading an apparently somewhat indolent schoolboy life at
Tours, undreamful yet of enormous debts, colossal undertakings, gigantic
failures, and the _Comédie Humaine._ In art, Sir Henry Raeburn, William
Blake, Flaxman, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Crome, Sir Thomas Lawrence,
Constable, Sir David Wilkie, and Turner were in the exercise of their
happiest faculties: as were, in the usage of theirs, Beethoven, Weber,
Schubert, Spohr, Donizetti, and Bellini.
It is not inadvisedly that I make this specification of great names, of
men who were born coincidentally with, or were in the broader sense
contemporaries of Robert Browning. There is no such thing as a
fortuitous birth. Creation does not occur spontaneously, as in that
drawing of David Scott's where from the footprint of the Omnipotent
spring human spirits and fiery stars. Literally indeed, as a great
French writer has indicated, a man is the child of his time. It is a
matter often commented upon by students of literature, that great men do
not appear at the beginning, but rather at the acme of a period. They
are not the flying scud of the coming wave, but the gleaming crown of
that wave itself. The epoch expends itself in preparation for these
great ones.
If Nature's first law were not a law of excess, the economy of life
would have meagre results. I think it is Turgenïev who speaks somewhere
of her as a gigantic Titan, working in gloomy silence, with the same
savage intentness upon a subtler twist of a flea's joints as upon the
Destinies of Man.
If there be a more foolish cry than that poetry is on the wane, it is
that the great days had passed away even before Robert Browning and
Alfred Tennyson were born. The way was prepared for Browning, as it was
for Shakspere: as it is, beyond doubt, for the next high peer of these.
There were 'Roberts' among the sons of the Browning family for at least
four generations. It has been affirmed, on disputable authority, that
the surname is the English equivalent for Bruning, and that the family
is of Teutonic origin. Possibly: but this origin is too remote to be of
any practical concern. Browning himself, it may be added, told Mr.
Moncure Conway that the original name was De Bruni. It is not a matter
of much importance: the poet was, personally and to a great extent in
his genius, Anglo-Saxon. Though there are plausible grounds for the
assumption. I can find nothing to substantiate the common assertion
that, immediately, or remotely, his people were Jews.[1]
[Footnote 1: Fairly conclusive evidence to the contrary, on the paternal
side, is afforded in the fact that, in 1757, the poet's
great-grandfather gave one of his sons the baptismal name of Christian.
Dr. Furnivall's latest researches prove that there is absolutely "no
ground for supposing the presence of any Jewish blood in the poet's
veins."]
As to Browning's physiognomy and personal traits, this much may be
granted: if those who knew him were told he was a Jew they would not be
much surprised. In his exuberant vitality, in his sensuous love of music
and the other arts, in his combined imaginativeness and shrewdness of
common sense, in his superficial expansiveness and actual reticence, he
would have been typical enough of the potent and artistic race for whom
he has so often of late been claimed.
What, however, is most to the point is that neither to curious
acquaintances nor to intimate friends, neither to Jews nor Gentiles, did
he ever admit more than that he was a good Protestant, and sprung of a
Puritan stock. He was tolerant of all religious forms, but with a
natural bias towards Anglican Evangelicalism.
In appearance there was, perhaps, something of the Semite in Robert
Browning: yet this is observable but slightly in the portraits of him
during the last twenty years, and scarcely at all in those which
represent him as a young man. It is most marked in the drawing by Rudolf
Lehmann, representing Browning at the age of forty-seven, where he looks
out upon us with a physiognomy which is, at least, as much distinctively
Jewish as English. Possibly the large dark eyes (so unlike both in
colour and shape what they were in later life) and curved nose and full
lips, with the oval face, may have been, as it were, seen judaically by
the artist. These characteristics, again, are greatly modified in Mr.
Lehmann's subsequent portrait in oils.
The poet's paternal great-grandfather, who was owner of the Woodyates
Inn, in the parish of Pentridge, in Dorsetshire, claimed to come of good
west-country stock. Browning believed, but always conscientiously
maintained there was no proof in support of the assumption, that he was
a descendant of the Captain Micaiah Browning who, as Macaulay relates in
his _History of England_, raised the siege of Derry in 1689 by springing
the boom across Lough Foyle, and perished in the act. The same ancestral
line is said to comprise the Captain Browning who commanded the ship
_The Holy Ghost_, which conveyed Henry V. to France before he fought the
Battle of Agincourt, and in recognition of whose services two waves,
said to represent waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. It
is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, as has been
indicated, that these arms were displayed by the gallant Captain
Micaiah, and are borne by the present family. That the poet was a
pure-bred Englishman in the strictest sense, however, as has commonly
been asserted, is not the case. His mother was Scottish, through her
mother and by birth, but her father was the son of a German from
Hamburg, named Wiedemann, who, by the way, in connection with his
relationship as maternal grandfather to the poet, it is interesting to
note, was an accomplished draughtsman and musician.[2] Browning's
paternal grandmother, again, was a Creole. As Mrs. Orr remarks, this
pedigree throws a valuable light on the vigour and variety of the poet's
genius. Possibly the main current of his ancestry is as little strictly
English as German. A friend sends me the following paragraph from a
Scottish paper:--"What of the Scottish Brownings? I had it long ago from
one of the name that the Brownings came originally from Ayrshire, and
that several families of them emigrated to the North of Ireland during
the times of the Covenanters. There is, moreover, a small town or
village in the North of Ireland called Browningstown. Might not the poet
be related to these Scottish Brownings?"
[Footnote 2: It has frequently been stated that Browning's maternal
grandfather, Mr. Wiedemann, was a Jew. Mr. Wiedemann, the son of a
Hamburg merchant, was a small shipowner in Dundee. Had he, or his
father, been Semitic, he would not have baptised one of his daughters
'Christiana.']
Browning's great-grandfather, as indicated above, was a small proprietor
in Dorsetshire. His son, whether perforce or from choice, removed to
London when he was a youth, and speedily obtained a clerkship in the
Bank of England, where he remained for fifty years, till he was
pensioned off in 1821 with over £400 a year. He died in 1833. His wife,
to whom he was married in or about 1780, was one Margaret Morris Tittle,
a Creole, born in the West Indies. Her portrait, by Wright of Derby,
used to hang in the poet's dining-room. They resided, Mr. R. Barrett
Browning tells me, in Battersea, where his grandfather was their
first-born. The paternal grandfather of the poet decided that his three
sons, Robert, William Shergold, and Reuben, should go into business,
the two younger in London, the elder abroad. All three became efficient
financial clerks, and attained to good positions and fair means.[3] The
eldest, Robert, was a man of exceptional powers. He was a poet, both in
sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well as enjoyed, the
excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, in a reputable fashion: not
indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the high
opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers of antiquity, but
with a particular care himself for Horace and Anacreon. As his son once
told a friend. "The old gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary
and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in mediæval
legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic
personages, personally"--a significant detail, by the way. He was fond
of metrical composition, and his ease and grace in the use of the heroic
couplet were the admiration, not only of his intellectual associates,
but, in later days, of his son, who was wont to affirm, certainly in all
seriousness, that expressionally his father was a finer poetic artist
than himself. Some one has recorded of him that he was an authority on
the Letters of Junius: fortunately he had more tangible claims than this
to the esteem of his fellows. It was his boast that, notwithstanding the
exigencies of his vocation, he knew as much of the history of art as any
professional critic. His extreme modesty is deducible from this naïve
remark. He was an amateur artist, moreover, as well as poet, critic,
and student. I have seen several of his drawings which are
praise-worthy: his studies in portraiture, particularly, are ably
touched: and, as is well known, he had an active faculty of pictorial
caricature. In the intervals of leisure which beset the best regulated
clerk he was addicted to making drawings of the habitual visitors to the
Bank of England, in which he had obtained a post on his return, in 1803,
from the West Indies, and in the enjoyment of which he remained till
1853, when he retired on a small pension. His son had an independent
income, but whether from a bequest, or in the form of an allowance from
his then unmarried Uncle Reuben, is uncertain. In the first year of his
marriage Mr. Browning resided in an old house in Southampton Street,
Peckham, and there the poet was born. The house was long ago pulled
down, and another built on its site. Mr. Browning afterwards removed to
another domicile in the same Peckham district. Many years later, he and
his family left Camberwell and resided at Hatcham, near New Cross, where
his brothers and sisters (by his father's second marriage) lived. There
was a stable attached to the Hatcham house, and in it Mr. Reuben
Browning kept his horse, which he let his poet-nephew ride, while he
himself was at his desk in Rothschild's bank. No doubt this horse was
the 'York' alluded to by the poet in the letter quoted, as a footnote,
at page 189 of this book. Some years after his wife's death, which
occurred in 1849, Mr. Browning left Hatcham and came to Paddington, but
finally went to reside in Paris, and lived there, in a small street off
the Champs Élysées, till his death in 1866. The Creole strain seems to
have been distinctly noticeable in Mr. Browning, so much so that it is
possible it had something to do with his unwillingness to remain at St.
Kitts, where he was certainly on one occasion treated cavalierly enough.
The poet's complexion in youth, light and ivory-toned as it was in later
life, has been described as olive, and it is said that one of his
nephews, who met him in Paris in his early manhood, took him for an
Italian. It has been affirmed that it was the emotional Creole strain in
Browning which found expression in his passion for music.
[Footnote 3: The three brothers were men of liberal education and
literary tastes. Mr. W.S. Browning, who died in 1874, was an author of
some repute. His _History of the Huguenots_ is a standard book on
the subject.]
By old friends of the family I have been told that Mr. Browning had a
strong liking for children, with whom his really remarkable faculty of
impromptu fiction made him a particular favourite. Sometimes he would
supplement his tales by illustrations with pencil or brush. Miss Alice
Corkran has shown me an illustrated coloured map, depictive of the main
incidents and scenery of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, which he genially
made for "the children."[4]
[Footnote 4: Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who saw much of the poet's father
during his residence in Paris, has spoken to me of his extraordinary
analytical faculty in the elucidation of complex criminal cases. It was
once said of him that his detective faculty amounted to genius. This is
a significant trait in the father of the author of "The Ring and the
Book."]
He had three children himself--Robert, born May 7th, 1812, a daughter
named Sarianna, after her mother, and Clara. His wife was a woman of
singular beauty of nature, with a depth of religious feeling saved from
narrowness of scope only by a rare serenity and a fathomless charity.
Her son's loving admiration of her was almost a passion: even late in
life he rarely spoke of her without tears coming to his eyes. She was,
moreover, of an intellectual bent of mind, and with an artistic bias
having its readiest fulfilment in music, and, to some extent, in poetry.
In the latter she inclined to the Romanticists: her husband always
maintained the supremacy of Pope. He looked with much dubiety upon his
son's early writings, "Pauline" and "Paracelsus"; "Sordello," though he
found it beyond either his artistic or his mental apprehension, he
forgave, because it was written in rhymed couplets; the maturer works he
regarded with sympathy and pride, with a vague admiration which passed
into a clearer understanding only when his long life was drawing near
its close.
Of his children's company he never tired, even when they were scarce out
of babyhood. He was fond of taking the little Robert in his arms, and
walking to and fro with him in the dusk in "the library," soothing the
child to sleep by singing to him snatches of Anacreon in the original,
to a favourite old tune of his, "A Cottage in a Wood." Readers of
"Asolando" will remember the allusions in that volume to "my father who
was a scholar and knew Greek." A week or two before his death Browning
told an American friend, Mrs. Corson, in reply to a statement of hers
that no one could accuse him of letting his talents lie idle: "It would
have been quite unpardonable in my case not to have done my best. My
dear father put me in a condition most favourable for the best work I
was capable of. When I think of the many authors who have had to fight
their way through all sorts of difficulties, I have no reason to be
proud of my achievements. My good father sacrificed a fortune to his
convictions. He could not bear with slavery, and left India and
accepted a humble bank-office in London. He secured for me all the ease
and comfort that a literary man needs to do good work. It would have
been shameful if I had not done my best to realise his expectations of
me."[5]
[Footnote 5: 'India' is a slip on the part either of Browning or of Mrs.
Corson. The poet's father was never in India. He was quite a youth when
he went to his mother's sugar-plantation at St. Kitts, in the West
Indies.]
The home of Mr. Browning was, as already stated, in Camberwell, a suburb
then of less easy access than now, and where there were green trees, and
groves, and enticing rural perspectives into "real" country, yet withal
not without some suggestion of the metropolitan air.
"The old trees
Which grew by our youth's home--the waving mass
Of climbing plants, heavy with bloom and dew--
The morning swallows with their songs like words--
All these seem clear....
...most distinct amid
The fever and the stir of after years."
(_Pauline_.)
Another great writer of our time was born in the same parish: and those
who would know Herne Hill and the neighbourhood as it was in Browning's
youth will find an enthusiastic guide in the author of _Praeterita_.
Browning's childhood was a happy one. Indeed, if the poet had been able
to teach in song only what he had learnt in suffering, the larger part
of his verse would be singularly barren of interest. From first to last
everything went well with him, with the exception of a single profound
grief. This must be borne in mind by those who would estimate aright the
genius of Robert Browning. It would be affectation or folly to deny that
his splendid physique--a paternal inheritance, for his father died at
the age of eighty-four, without having ever endured a day's illness--and
the exceptionally fortunate circumstances which were his throughout
life, had something to do with that superb faith of his which finds
concentrated expression in the lines in Pippa's song--"God's in His
Heaven, All's right with the world!"
It is difficult for a happy man with an imperturbable digestion to be a
pessimist. He is always inclined to give Nature the benefit of the
doubt. His favourite term for this mental complaisance is "catholicity
of faith," or, it may be, "a divine hope." The less fortunate brethren
bewail the laws of Nature, and doubt a future readjustment, because of
stomachs chronically out of order. An eminent author with a weak
digestion wrote to me recently animadverting on what he calls Browning's
insanity of optimism: it required no personal acquaintanceship to
discern the dyspeptic well-spring of this utterance. All this may be
admitted lightly without carrying the physiological argument to
extremes. A man may have a liberal hope for himself and for humanity,
although his dinner be habitually a martyrdom. After all, we are only
dictated to by our bodies: we have not perforce to obey them. A bitter
wit once remarked that the soul, if it were ever discovered, would be
found embodied in the gastric juice. He was not altogether a fool, this
man who had learnt in suffering what he taught in epigram; yet was he
wide of the mark.
As a very young child Browning was keenly susceptible to music. One
afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself. She was
startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round, she beheld a little
white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just discern
two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment the
child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he knew not
what, but, as his paroxysm of emotion subsided, whispering over and
over, with shy urgency, "Play! play!"
It is strange that among all his father's collection of drawings and
engravings nothing had such fascination for him as an engraving of a
picture of Andromeda and Perseus by Caravaggio. The story of the
innocent victim and the divine deliverer was one of which in his boyhood
he never tired of hearing: and as he grew older the charm of its
pictorial presentment had for him a deeper and more complex
significance. We have it on the authority of a friend that Browning had
this engraving always before his eyes as he wrote his earlier poems. He
has given beautiful commemoration to his feeling for it in "Pauline":--
"Andromeda!
And she is with me--years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not--so beautiful
With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze;
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,
Resting upon her eyes and face and hair,
As she awaits the snake on the wet beach,
By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone,--a thing
You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God
Will come in thunder from the stars to save her."
One of his own early recollections was that of sitting on his father's
knees in the library, and listening with enthralled attention to the
Tale of Troy, with marvellous illustrations among the glowing coals in
the fireplace; with, below all, the vaguely heard accompaniment--from
the neighbouring room where Mrs. Browning sat "in her chief happiness,
her hour of darkness and solitude and music"--of a wild Gaelic lament,
with its insistent falling cadences. A story concerning his poetic
precocity has been circulated, but is not worth repeating. Most children
love jingling rhymes, and one need not be a born genius to improvise a
rhyming couplet on an occasion.
It is quite certain that in nothing in these early poemicules, in such
at least as have been preserved without the poet's knowledge and against
his will, is there anything of genuine promise. Hundreds of youngsters
have written as good, or better, Odes to the Moon, Stanzas on a
Favourite Canary, Lines on a Butterfly. What is much more to the point
is, that at the age of eight he was able not only to read, but to take
delight in Pope's translation of Homer. He used to go about declaiming
certain couplets with an air of intense earnestness highly diverting to
those who overheard him.
About this time also he began to translate the simpler odes of Horace.
One of these (viii. Bk. II.) long afterwards suggested to him the theme
of his "Instans Tyrannus." It has been put on record that his sister
remembers him, as a very little boy, walking round and round the
dining-room table, and spanning out the scansion of his verses with his
hand on the smooth mahogany. He was scarce more than a child when, one
Guy Fawkes' day, he heard a woman singing an unfamiliar song, whose
burden was, "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" This refrain
haunted him often in the after years. That beautiful fantastic romance,
"The Flight of the Duchess," was born out of an insistent memory of this
woman's snatch of song, heard in childhood. He was ten when, after
several _passions malheureuses_, this precocious Lothario plunged into a
love affair whose intensity was only equalled by its hopelessness. A
trifle of fifteen years' seniority and a husband complicated matters,
but it was not till after the reckless expenditure of a Horatian ode
upon an unclassical mistress that he gave up hope. The outcome of this
was what the elder Browning regarded as a startling effusion of much
Byronic verse. The young Robert yearned for wastes of ocean and
illimitable sands, for dark eyes and burning caresses, for despair that
nothing could quench but the silent grave, and, in particular, for
hollow mocking laughter. His father looked about for a suitable school,
and decided to entrust the boy's further education to Mr. Ready, of
Peckham.
Here he remained till he was fourteen. But already he knew the dominion
of dreams. His chief enjoyment, on holiday afternoons, was to gain an
unfrequented spot, where three huge elms re-echoed the tones of
incoherent human music borne thither-ward by the west winds across the
wastes of London. Here he loved to lie and dream. Alas, those elms, that
high remote coign, have long since passed to the "hidden way" whither
the snows of yester year have vanished. He would lie for hours looking
upon distant London--a golden city of the west literally enough,
oftentimes, when the sunlight came streaming in long shafts from behind
the towers of Westminster and flashed upon the gold cross of St. Paul's.
The coming and going of the cloud-shadows, the sweeping of sudden rains,
the dull silvern light emanating from the haze of mist shrouding the
vast city, with the added transitory gleam of troubled waters, the
drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils
constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn, as though some
sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among all the
dross and débris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own--all
this endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him an
extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood
was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit
because of the unfamiliar solitary dark, to his loved elms. There, for
the first time, he beheld London by night. It seemed to him then more
wonderful and appalling than all the host of stars. There was something
ominous in that heavy pulsating breath: visible, in a waning and waxing
of the tremulous, ruddy glow above the black enmassed leagues of
masonry; audible, in the low inarticulate moaning borne eastward across
the crests of Norwood. It was then and there that the tragic
significance of life first dimly awed and appealed to his questioning
spirit: that the rhythm of humanity first touched deeply in him a
corresponding chord.