Life and Letters of Robert Browning [3]
from an obscure or,
as family tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock
settled, at an early period of our history, in the south,
and probably also south-west, of England. A line of Brownings
owned the manors of Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond,
in north-west Dorsetshire; their last representative disappeared --
or was believed to do so -- in the time of Henry VII.,
their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of Ilchester,
who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different parts
of the country: in two cases with the affix of `esquire', in two also,
though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge,
where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear.
Its cradle, as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge,
on the Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors,
of the third and fourth generations, held, as we understand,
a modest but independent social position.
--
* I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others
referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles,
to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall.
--
This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better
with our impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree
which more palpably connected him with the `knightly' and `squirely' families
whose name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life
to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that genius
and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense,
the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements
which entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural,
and inherited as well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong
natural or physical basis remains undisturbed.
Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the matter.
He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical past
which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of his family.
He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him
from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do so,
a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle,
in years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason
to think about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason
to care about them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case,
the most important fact in his family history.
Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi,
Suis le seigneur de Conti,
he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally
questioned him about it.
Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's grandfather,
also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord Shaftesbury's influence
a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered on it when barely twenty,
in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to the position of
Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important one,
and which brought him into contact with the leading financiers of the day.
He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery Company,
and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots of 1789.
He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman,
very much of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited
to the Bible and `Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read through
once a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably,
a vigorous constitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four,
though frequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help
to account for his not having seen much of his grandchildren,
the poet and his sister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded
the lively boy's vicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778,
Margaret, daughter of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour;
and who was born in the West Indies and had inherited property there.
They had three children: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter,
who lived an uneventful
as family tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock
settled, at an early period of our history, in the south,
and probably also south-west, of England. A line of Brownings
owned the manors of Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond,
in north-west Dorsetshire; their last representative disappeared --
or was believed to do so -- in the time of Henry VII.,
their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of Ilchester,
who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different parts
of the country: in two cases with the affix of `esquire', in two also,
though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge,
where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear.
Its cradle, as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge,
on the Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors,
of the third and fourth generations, held, as we understand,
a modest but independent social position.
--
* I am indebted for these facts, as well as for some others
referring to, or supplied by, Mr. Browning's uncles,
to some notes made for the Browning Society by Dr. Furnivall.
--
This fragment of history, if we may so call it, accords better
with our impression of Mr. Browning's genius than could any pedigree
which more palpably connected him with the `knightly' and `squirely' families
whose name he bore. It supplies the strong roots of English national life
to which we instinctively refer it. Both the vivid originality of that genius
and its healthy assimilative power stamp it as, in some sense,
the product of virgin soil; and although the varied elements
which entered into its growth were racial as well as cultural,
and inherited as well as absorbed, the evidence of its strong
natural or physical basis remains undisturbed.
Mr. Browning, for his own part, maintained a neutral attitude in the matter.
He neither claimed nor disclaimed the more remote genealogical past
which had presented itself as a certainty to some older members of his family.
He preserved the old framed coat-of-arms handed down to him
from his grandfather; and used, without misgiving as to his right to do so,
a signet-ring engraved from it, the gift of a favourite uncle,
in years gone by. But, so long as he was young, he had no reason
to think about his ancestors; and, when he was old, he had no reason
to care about them; he knew himself to be, in every possible case,
the most important fact in his family history.
Roi ne suis, ni Prince aussi,
Suis le seigneur de Conti,
he wrote, a few years back, to a friend who had incidentally
questioned him about it.
Our immediate knowledge of the family begins with Mr. Browning's grandfather,
also a Robert Browning, who obtained through Lord Shaftesbury's influence
a clerkship in the Bank of England, and entered on it when barely twenty,
in 1769. He served fifty years, and rose to the position of
Principal of the Bank Stock Office, then an important one,
and which brought him into contact with the leading financiers of the day.
He became also a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery Company,
and took part in the defence of the Bank in the Gordon Riots of 1789.
He was an able, energetic, and worldly man: an Englishman,
very much of the provincial type; his literary tastes being limited
to the Bible and `Tom Jones', both of which he is said to have read through
once a year. He possessed a handsome person and, probably,
a vigorous constitution, since he lived to the age of eighty-four,
though frequently tormented by gout; a circumstance which may help
to account for his not having seen much of his grandchildren,
the poet and his sister; we are indeed told that he particularly dreaded
the lively boy's vicinity to his afflicted foot. He married, in 1778,
Margaret, daughter of a Mr. Tittle by his marriage with Miss Seymour;
and who was born in the West Indies and had inherited property there.
They had three children: Robert, the poet's father; a daughter,
who lived an uneventful