Life and Letters of Robert Browning | Page 4

afford to send their other sons to college. An earlier ambition
of his had been to become an artist; but when he showed his first
completed picture to his father, the latter turned away and refused to
look at it. He gave himself the finishing stroke in the parental eyes, by
throwing up a lucrative employment which he had held for a short time
on his mother's West Indian property, in disgust at the system of slave
labour which was still in force there; and he paid for this unpractical
conduct as soon as he was of age, by the compulsory reimbursement of
all the expenses which his father, up to that date, had incurred for him;
and by the loss of his mother's fortune, which, at the time of her
marriage, had not been settled upon her. It was probably in despair of
doing anything better, that, soon after this, in his twenty-second year,
he also became a clerk in the Bank of England. He married and settled
in Camberwell, in 1811; his son and daughter were born, respectively,
in 1812 and 1814. He became a widower in 1849; and when, four years
later, he had completed his term of service at the Bank, he went with
his daughter to Paris, where they resided until his death in 1866.

Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a conviction,
that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a Creole in the strict
sense of the term, that of a person born of white parents in the West
Indies, and that an unmistakable dash of dark blood passed from her to
her son and grandson. Such an occurrence was, on the face of it, not
impossible, and would be absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I
think I may add, to that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and
his father were what we know them, and if negro blood had any part in
their composition, it was no worse for them, and so much the better for
the negro. But many persons among us are very averse to the idea of
such a cross; I believe its assertion, in the present case, to be entirely
mistaken; I prefer, therefore, touching on the facts alleged in favour of
it, to passing them over in a silence which might be taken to mean
indifference, but might also be interpreted into assent.
We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life, that a nephew
who saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian. He neither
had nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England at the
time specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior was residing
on his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, his appearance was held to
justify his being placed in church among the coloured members of the
congregation. We are assured in the strongest terms that the story has
no foundation, and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters
concerning the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted
as conclusive. If the anecdote were true it would be a singular
circumstance that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing
negro heads, and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association
with them.
I do not know the exact physical indications by which a dark strain is
perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes, hair,
and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons who
in the present case are supposed to have borne them. The poet's father
had light blue eyes and, I am assured by those who knew him best, a
clear, ruddy complexion. His appearance induced strangers passing him
in the Paris streets to remark, 'C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness
of Miss Browning's skin was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge

sufficiently explained by frequent disturbance of the liver; but it never
affected the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair, which
grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black, is
spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, as
golden. It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early friend
Mr. Fox, who grew up in the little social circle to which he belonged,
never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him; and a lady who
made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year, wrote a sonnet
upon him, beginning with these words:
Thy brow is calm, young Poet--pale and clear As a moonlighted statue.
The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve,
however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the
main lines of his descent, but