Life and Letters of Robert Browning | Page 5

holds collateral possibilities concerning it.
His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely
contracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in
Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico; and, by a
strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace now
owned by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico. The
present Contessa Widman has lately restored her own palace, which
was falling into ruin.
That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage
to her husband's second wife, has hung for many years in her
grandson's dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It
represents a stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the
face or hair betrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is
imperceptible to the general observer, and must be of too slight and
fugitive a nature to enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one
shoulder. One hand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which
was held to be the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in
those days. The picture was painted by Wright of Derby.
A brother of this lady was an adventurous traveller, and was said to
have penetrated farther into the interior of Africa than any other
European of his time. His violent death will be found recorded in a
singular experience of the poet's middle life.

Chapter 2
Robert Browning's Father--His Position in Life--Comparison between
him and his Son--Tenderness towards his Son--Outline of his Habits
and Character--His Death--Significant Newspaper Paragraph--Letter of
Mr. Locker-Lampson--Robert Browning's Mother--Her Character and
Antecedents--Their Influence upon her Son--Nervous Delicacy
imparted to both her Children--Its special Evidences in her Son.

It was almost a matter of course that Robert Browning's father should
be disinclined for bank work. We are told, and can easily imagine, that
he was not so good an official as the grandfather; we know that he did
not rise so high, nor draw so large a salary. But he made the best of his
position for his family's sake, and it was at that time both more
important and more lucrative than such appointments have since
become. Its emoluments could be increased by many honourable means
not covered by the regular salary. The working-day was short, and
every additional hour's service well paid. To be enrolled on the
night-watch was also very remunerative; there were enormous
perquisites in pens, paper, and sealing-wax.* Mr. Browning availed
himself of these opportunities of adding to his income, and was thus
enabled, with the help of his private means, to gratify his scholarly and
artistic tastes, and give his children the benefit of a very liberal
education--the one distinct ideal of success in life which such a nature
as his could form. Constituted as he was, he probably suffered very
little through the paternal unkindness which had forced him into an
uncongenial career. Its only palpable result was to make him a more
anxiously indulgent parent when his own time came.
* I have been told that, far from becoming careless in the use of these
things from his practically unbounded command of them, he developed
for them an almost superstitious reverence. He could never endure to
see a scrap of writing- paper wasted.
Many circumstances conspired to secure to the coming poet a happier
childhood and youth than his father had had. His path was to be

smoothed not only by natural affection and conscientious care, but by
literary and artistic sympathy. The second Mr. Browning differed, in
certain respects, as much from the third as from the first. There were,
nevertheless, strong points in which, if he did not resemble, he at least
distinctly foreshadowed him; and the genius of the one would lack
some possible explanation if we did not recognize in great measure its
organized material in the other. Much, indeed, that was genius in the
son existed as talent in the father. The moral nature of the younger man
diverged from that of the older, though retaining strong points of
similarity; but the mental equipments of the two differed far less in
themselves than in the different uses to which temperament and
circumstances trained them.
The most salient intellectual characteristic of Mr. Browning senior was
his passion for reading. In his daughter's words, 'he read in season, and
out of season;' and he not only read, but remembered. As a schoolboy,
he knew by heart the first book of the 'Iliad', and all the odes of Horace;
and it shows how deeply the classical part of his training must have
entered into him, that he was wont, in later life, to soothe his little boy
to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. It was one of his
amusements at school to organize