Robert Browning | Page 2

of what some particular allusion in Sordello
means has gone on so far, and may go on still, but it has it in its nature
to end. The life of Robert Browning, who combines the greatest brain
with the most simple temperament known in our annals, would go on
for ever if we did not decide to summarise it in a very brief and simple
narrative.
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell on May 7th 1812. His father
and grandfather had been clerks in the Bank of England, and his whole
family would appear to have belonged to the solid and educated middle
class--the class which is interested in letters, but not ambitious in them,
the class to which poetry is a luxury, but not a necessity.
This actual quality and character of the Browning family shows some
tendency to be obscured by matters more remote. It is the custom of all
biographers to seek for the earliest traces of a family in distant ages and
even in distant lands; and Browning, as it happens, has given them
opportunities which tend to lead away the mind from the main matter in
hand. There is a tradition, for example, that men of his name were
prominent in the feudal ages; it is based upon little beyond a
coincidence of surnames and the fact that Browning used a seal with a
coat-of-arms. Thousands of middle-class men use such a seal, merely
because it is a curiosity or a legacy, without knowing or caring
anything about the condition of their ancestors in the Middle Ages.

Then, again, there is a theory that he was of Jewish blood; a view
which is perfectly conceivable, and which Browning would have been
the last to have thought derogatory, but for which, as a matter of fact,
there is exceedingly little evidence. The chief reason assigned by his
contemporaries for the belief was the fact that he was, without doubt,
specially and profoundly interested in Jewish matters. This suggestion,
worthless in any case, would, if anything, tell the other way. For while
an Englishman may be enthusiastic about England, or indignant against
England, it never occurred to any living Englishman to be interested in
England. Browning was, like every other intelligent Aryan, interested
in the Jews; but if he was related to every people in which he was
interested, he must have been of extraordinarily mixed extraction.
Thirdly, there is the yet more sensational theory that there was in
Robert Browning a strain of the negro. The supporters of this
hypothesis seem to have little in reality to say, except that Browning's
grandmother was certainly a Creole. It is said in support of the view
that Browning was singularly dark in early life, and was often mistaken
for an Italian. There does not, however, seem to be anything particular
to be deduced from this, except that if he looked like an Italian, he must
have looked exceedingly unlike a negro.
There is nothing valid against any of these three theories, just as there
is nothing valid in their favour; they may, any or all of them, be true,
but they are still irrelevant. They are something that is in history or
biography a great deal worse than being false--they are misleading. We
do not want to know about a man like Browning, whether he had a
right to a shield used in the Wars of the Roses, or whether the tenth
grandfather of his Creole grandmother had been white or black: we
want to know something about his family, which is quite a different
thing. We wish to have about Browning not so much the kind of
information which would satisfy Clarencieux King-at-Arms, but the
sort of information which would satisfy us, if we were advertising for a
very confidential secretary, or a very private tutor. We should not be
concerned as to whether the tutor were descended from an Irish king,
but we should still be really concerned about his extraction, about what
manner of people his had been for the last two or three generations.
This is the most practical duty of biography, and this is also the most

difficult. It is a great deal easier to hunt a family from tombstone to
tombstone back to the time of Henry II. than to catch and realise and
put upon paper that most nameless and elusive of all things--social
tone.
It will be said immediately, and must as promptly be admitted, that we
could find a biographical significance in any of these theories if we
looked for it. But it is, indeed, the sin and snare of biographers that they
tend to see significance in everything; characteristic carelessness if
their hero drops his pipe, and characteristic carefulness if he picks it up
again. It is true, assuredly, that