Life of Robert Browning | Page 9

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
Elysees, 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.**
-- * 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. **
Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her "Life and Letters of Robert Browning"
(1891), (now available online) refutes these statements. -- A. L., 1996.
--
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".*
-- * 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."*
-- * `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,