Part 1 (1/2)
Robert Browning
by Edward Dowden
Preface
An atte's life, including, as part of it, a notice of his books, which arded as the chief of ”his acts and all that he did” I have tried to keep 's rowth and developht to form itself before the close
The 's published writings, are not copious He destroyed many letters; many, no doubt, are in private hands For some parts of his life I have been able to add little to what Mrs Orr tells But since her biography of Browning was published a good deal of interesting matter has appeared The publication of ”The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning” has enabled me to construct a short, close-knit narrative of the incidents that led up to Browning'sher ”Letters,” edited by Mr Kenyon, has been my chief source My method has not been that of quotation, but the substance of many letters is fused, as far as was possible, into a brief, continuous story Two privately issued volu's letters, edited by Mr TJ Wise, and Mr Wise's ”Browning Bibliography”
have been of service to , Personalia,”
Mrs Ritchie's ”Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning,” the ”Life of Tennyson” by his son, Mr Henry James's volumes on WW Story, letters of Dante Rossetti, the diary of Mr WM Rossetti, with other writings of his, raphies of Lady Martin, FT Palgrave, Jowett, Sir Jaet, Gavan Duffy, Robert Buchanan, Rudolf Lehmann, WJ Stillman, TA Trollope, Miss FP Cobbe, Miss Sick, and others have been consulted And several interesting articles in periodicals, in particular Mrs Arthur Bronson's articles ”Browning in Venice” and ”Browning in Asolo,” have contributed to 's father and mother, and his connection with York Street Independent Chapel, I am indebted to Mr F Herbert Stead, Warden of ”The Robert Browning Settlement,” Walworth I thank Messrs S, for permission to ht letters I thank the general Editor of this series, the Rev
D Macfadyen, for kind and valuable suggestions
My study of Browning's poees of this es
Many years ago in ”Studies in Literature” I atteo as 1867, a careful study of _Sordello_ What I norite ain fros But to make them visible objects to me I have tried to put his poems outside myself, and approach them with a fresh mind Whether I have failed or partly succeeded I am unable to determine
The analysis of _La Saisiaz_ appeared--substantially--in the little Magazine of the Hoes are recovered from uncollected articles of e froazine_,such modifications as suited es which close this volue of so, and have several cordial letters of his addressed to ht to use
ED
Chapter I
Childhood and Youth
The ancestry of Robert Browning has been traced[1] to an earlier Robert who lived in the service of Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle, and died in 1746 His eldest son, Thoranted a lease for three lives of the little inn, in the little hae, nine miles south-west of Salisbury on the road to Exeter”
Robert, born in 1749, the son of this Thorandfather of the poet, becaland, and rose to be principal in the Bank Stock Office At the age of twenty-nine he aret tittle, a lady born in the West Indies and possessed of West Indian property He is described by Mrs Orr as an able, energetic, and worldly randson enty-one years old His first as the mother of another Robert, the poet's father, born in 1781
When the boy had reached the age of seven he lost his ain This younger Robert when a youth desired to becoed for a University education, and, through the influence of his stepthat he should oversee the West Indian estate There, as Browning on the authority of his mother told Miss Barrett, ”he conceived such a hatred to the slave-systemthat he relinquished every prospect, supported himself while there in some other capacity, and came back, while yet a boy, to his father's profound astonishe of twenty-two he obtained a clerkshi+p in the Bank of England, an eht years later he hter of William Wiedemann, a Dundee shi+powner, as the son of a Ger that his son was a suitor to Miss Wiedemann, had waited benevolently on her uncle ”to assure him that his niece would be throay on a ed”[3]
In 1811 the new-married pair settled in Camberwell, and there in a house in Southa--an only son--was born on May 7, 1812 Two years later (Jan 7, 1814) his sister, Sarah Anna--an only daughter--known in later years as Sarianna, a form adopted by her father, was born She survived her brother, dying in Venice on the 's father and mother were persons who for their own sakes deserve to be remembered His father, while efficient in his work in the Bank, was a wide and exact reader of literature, classical as well ashis little boy to sleep ”by hu to him an ode of Anacreon,” and by Dr Moncure Conway that he was versed in end, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Tales with an intimate fahteenth century ether fantastic rhy his boy in tasks which tried the htsman, and of his amateur handiwork in portraiture and caricature--sometimes produced, as it were, instinctively, with a result that was unforeseen--much remains to prove his keen eye and his skill with the pencil Besides the curious books which he eagerly collected, he also gathered together arth especially, and in early states He had a singular interest, such asand the Book_, in investigating and elucidating complex criminal cases[5] He was a lover of athletic sports and never knew ill-health For the accumulation of riches he had no talent and no desire, but he had a sienerously on his children and his friends ”My father,” wrote Browning, ”is tender-hearted to a fault To all women and children he is chivalrous” ”He had,” writes Mr WJ Still's father in Paris in his elder years, ”the perpetual juvenility of a blessed child If to live in the world as if not of it indicates a saintly nature, then Robert Browning the elder was a saint; a serene, untroubled soul, conscious of no entle as a gentle woman; a man in whom, it seemed to me, no moral conflict could ever have arisen to cloud his frank acceptance of life, as he found it come to him His unworldliness had not a flaw”[6] To Dante Rossetti he appeared, as an old man, ”lovable beyond description,” with that ”subhly cheerful simplicity of character which oftenappears in the fareat man, who uses at last what the others have kept for him” He is, Rossetti continues, ”a co for nothing in the least except Dutch boors,--fancy, the father of Browning!--and as innocent as a child” Browning himself declared that he had not one artistic taste in cooes 'souls away' to Brauwer, Ostade, Teniershe would turn from the Sistine Altar-piece to these--in music he desiderates a tune 'that has a story connected with it'” Yet Browning inherited ains
In _Development_, one of the poems of his last volu him at five years old, with the aid of piled-up chairs and tables--the cat for Helen, and Towzer and Tray as the Atreidai,--the story of the siege of Troy, and, later, his urging the boy to read the tale ”properly told” in the translation of Homer by his favourite poet, Pope He lived alhty-fifth year, and if he was at times bewildered by his son's poetry, he carew older, and he had for long the satisfaction of enjoying his son's fa to his entlewoman,” said Carlyle--was deep and intimate For him she was, in his own phrase, ”a divine wo blow She was of a nature finely and delicately strung Her nervous temperament seems to have been transmitted--robust as he was in many ways--to her son The love of h degree, leaping over a generation, reappeared in Robert Browning His capacity for intimate friendshi+ps with animals--spider and toad and lizard--was surely an inheritance fro's sister an account of her mother's unusual power over both wild creatures and household pets ”She could lure the butterflies in the garden to her,” which re for lizards at Asolo A fierce bull-dog intractable to all others, to her was docile and obedient In her doetic Her piety was deep and pure Her husband had been in his earlier years a ht up in the Scottish kirk Before her ation,for worshi+p at York Street, Lock's Fields, Walworth, where now stands the Robert Browning Hall Her husband attached hiation; both were teachers in the Sunday School Mrs Browning kept, until within a few years of her death, a missionary box for contributions to the London Missionary Society
The conditions of membershi+p implied the acceptance of ”those views of doctrinal truth which for the sake of distinction are called Calvinistic” Thus over the poet's childhood and youth a religious influence presided; it was not sacerdotal, nor was it ascetic; the boy was in those early days, as he hiious” Their excellent pastor was an entirely ”uniian era,” who held fast by the approved 's indifference to the ministrations of Mr Clayton was not concealed, and on one occasion he received a rebuke in the presence of the congregation Yet the spirit of religion which surrounded and penetrated him was to remain with him, under all its modifications, to the end ”His face,” wrote the Rev
Edward White, ”is vividly present to h the sixty years that have intervened It was the ation--pale, so hair, but a face whose expression you reh a life-time
Scarcely less memorable were the countenances of his father, , writes Mrs Orr, ”was a handso activity and a fiery tey of mind made hi had been achieved, he was prepared for the neighbouring school of the Rev Tho entered this school as a day-boarder, he remained under Mr Ready's care until the year 1826 To facile co was not prone, but he found ah he was no winner of school prizes, he seems to have acquired a certain intellectual mastery over his comrades; some of them were formed into a dramatic _troupe_ for the performance of his boyish plays Perhaps the better part of his education was that of his hours at home He read widely in his father's excellent library The favourite books of his earliest years, Croxall's _Fables_ and Quarles's _Emblems_, were succeeded by others which iven by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's _Letters_, Junius, Voltaire, and Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_ The first book he ever bought with his own money was Macpherson's _Ossian_, and the first composition he committed to paper, written years before his purchase of the volu, ”I had not read, but conceived, through two or three scraps in other books”
His early feeling for art was nourished by visits to the Dulwich Gallery, to which he obtained an entrance when far under the age permitted by the rules; there he would sit for an hour before some chosen picture, and in later years he could recall the ”wonderful Reione music-lesson, the ”triumphant Murillo pictures,” ”such a Watteau,” and ”all the Poussins”[8]
A modern poets Byron at first with him held the chief place Boyish verses, written under the Byronic influence, were gathered into a group when the writer was but twelve years old; a title--_Incondita_--was found, and Browning's parents had serious intentions of publishi+ng the manuscript Happily the manuscript, declined by publishers, was in the end destroyed, and editors have been saved fro these crudities of a great poet's childhood