Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning circa 1888
Born 7 May 1812
Camberwell, London
Died 12 December 1889 (aged 77)
Venice, Italy
Occupation Poet
Notable works Men and Women, The Ring and the Book, Dramatis Personae, Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, Asolando
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Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, and in particular the dramatic monologue, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humor, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax. The speakers in his poems are often musicians or painters whose work functions as a metaphor for poetry.

Browning's early career began promisingly, but was not a success. The long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by Wordsworth and Dickens, but in 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as wilfully obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period and developed a more personal style.

In 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett, who at the time was considerably better known than himself. So started one of history's most famous literary marriages. They went to live in Italy, a country he called 'my university,' and which features frequently in his work. By the time of her death in 1861, he had published the crucial collection Men and Women. The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed, and made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but today it is largely the poetry he had written in this middle period on which his reputation rests.

When Browning died in 1889, he was regarded as a sage and philosopher-poet who through his poetry had made contributions to Victorian social and political discourse – as in the poem Caliban upon Setebos, which some critics have seen as a comment on the recent theory of evolution. Unusually for a poet, societies for the study of his work were founded while he was still alive. Such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century.

Browning's admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly The Ring and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Among living writers, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and A.S. Byatt's Possession make direct reference to Browning's work.

Today Browning's most critically esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. His most popular poems include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, the diptych Meeting at Night, the patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad, and the children's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. His abortive recital of the latter work during a dinner-party was recorded on an Edison wax cylinder, and is believed to be the oldest surviving recording made in England of a notable person.

Biography

Early years

Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough of Southwark in south London. He was baptized on June 14, 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth,[1] the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning.[2][3] His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year.[4] Browning's paternal grandfather was a wealthy slave owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation, but, due to a slave's revolted there, had returned to England. Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee in Scotland, and his Scottish wife. Browning had one sister, Sarianna. Browning's paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, who had inherited a plantation in St Kitts, was rumored (within the family) to have a mixed race ancestry, including some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests St Kitts rather than Jamaican.[5][6] The evidence, however, is inconclusive either way.[7] Robert's father, a literary collector, amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them rare. As such, Robert was raised in a household of significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was very close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician.[2] His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after the death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts.[2]

By twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found. After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike of school life, he was educated at home by a tutor via the resources of his father's extensive library.[2] By the age of fourteen he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. He became a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley. Following the precedent of Shelley, Browning became an atheist and vegetarian, both of which he gave up later. At the age of sixteen, he studied Greek at University College London but left after his first year.[2] His parents' staunch evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England.[2] He had inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs. He refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations, dedicating himself to poetry. He stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.[2]

First published works

Waring (ll. 192–200)

Some one shall somehow run a muck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep: contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now:
Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children.

“
”
Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842)

In March 1833, "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession" was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of the author, Robert Browning, who received the money from his aunt, one Mrs Silverthorne.[8] It is a long poem composed in homage to Shelley and somewhat in his style. Originally Browning considered Pauline as the first of a series written by different aspects of himself, but he soon abandoned this idea. The press noticed the publication. W.J. Fox writing in the The Monthly Repository of April 1833 discerned merit in the work. Allan Cunningham praised it in the The Athenaeum. However, it sold no copies.[9] Some years later, probably in 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across it in the Reading Room of the British Museum and wrote to Browning, then in Florence to ask if he was the author.[10] John Stuart Mill, however, wrote that the author suffered from an "intense and morbid self-consciousness".[11] Later Browning was rather embarrassed by the work, and only included it in his collected poems of 1868 after making substantial changes and adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence for a boyish work.[10]

In 1834 he accompanied the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, on a brief visit to St Petersburg and began Paracelsus, which was published in 1835.[12] The subject of the 16th century savant and alchemist was probably suggested to him by the Comte Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated. The publication had some commercial and critical success, being noticed by Wordsworth, Dickens, Landor, J.S. Mill and the already famous Tennyson. It is a monodrama without action, dealing with the problems confronting an intellectual trying to find his role in society. It gained him access to the London literary world.

As a result of his new contacts he met Macready, who invited him to write a play.[12] Strafford was performed five times. Browning then wrote two other plays, one of which was not performed, while the other failed, Browning having fallen out with Macready.

In 1838 he visited Italy, looking for background for Sordello, a long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of by Dante in the Divine Comedy, canto 6 of Purgatory, set against a background of hate and conflict during the Guelph-Ghibelline wars. This was published in 1840 and met with widespread derision, gaining him the reputation of wanton carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson commented that he only understood the first and last lines and Carlyle claimed that his wife had read the poem through and could not tell whether Sordello was a man, a city or a book.[13]

Browning's reputation began to make a partial recovery with the publication, 1841–1846, of Bells and Pomegranates, a series of eight pamphlets, originally intended just to include his plays. Fortunately his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had already appeared in periodicals.[12]

Marriage

Portraits of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.

In 1845, Browning met the poet Elizabeth Barrett, six years his elder, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house in Wimpole Street, London. They began regularly corresponding and gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September 1846.[14][15] The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering father disapproved of marriage for any of his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did for each of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of popular imagination was a sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at the hands of a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good fortune to fall in love with a dashing and handsome poet named Robert Browning."[16] At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth’s Poems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity and high critical regard, cementing her position as an eminent Victorian poet. Upon William Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious contender to become Poet Laureate, the position eventually going to Tennyson.

From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's death, the Brownings lived in Italy, residing first in Pisa, and then, within a year, finding an apartment in Florence at Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory).[14] Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849.[14] In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned from, the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, describe Italy as his university. As Elizabeth had inherited money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was happy. However, the literary assault on Browning's work did not let up and he was critically dismissed further, by patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley, for the desertion of England for foreign lands.[14]

Spiritualism incident

Mr. Sludge, "The Medium" (opening lines)

Now, don’t, sir! Don’t expose me! Just this once!
This was the first and only time, I’ll swear,—
Look at me,—see, I kneel,—the only time,
I swear, I ever cheated,—yes, by the soul
Of Her who hears—(your sainted mother, sir!)
All, except this last accident, was truth—
This little kind of slip!—and even this,
It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne,
(I took it for Catawba—you’re so kind)
Which put the folly in my head!

“
”
Dramatis Personae (1864)

Browning believed spiritualism to be fraud, and proved one of Daniel Dunglas Home's most adamant critics. When Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended one of his séances on July 23, 1855,[17] a spirit face materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had died in infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be Home's bare foot. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy.[18]

After the séance, Browning wrote an angry letter to The Times, in which he said: "the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture."[19] In 1902 Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud."[20] Elizabeth, however, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her husband were a constant source of disagreement.[21]

Major works

He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,
The man who slices lemons into drink,
The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys
That volunteer to help him turn its winch.
He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
He took such cognizance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note;
Yet stared at nobody--you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you and expect as much.

“
”
Men and Women (1855)

In Florence, probably from early in 1853, Browning worked on the poems that eventually comprised his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is now well known,[14] although in 1855, when they were published, they made relatively little impact.

In 1861 Elizabeth died. The following year Browning returned to London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old. They made their home in 17 Warwick Crescent, Maida Vale. It was only when he became part of the London literary scene—albeit while paying frequent visits to Italy (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to take off.[14]

In 1868, after five years work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book. Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome, the poem is composed of twelve books: essentially ten lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in the story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project and is arguably his greatest work; it has been called a tour de force of dramatic poetry.[22] Published in four parts from November 1868 to February 1869, the poem was a success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought for nearly forty years.[22] The Robert Browning Society was formed in 1881 and his work was recognized as belonging within the British literary canon.[22]

Last years and death

1882 caricature from Punch Magazine reading: "The Ring and Bookmaker from Red Cotton Nightcap country"

In the remaining years of his life Browning travelled extensively. After a series of long poems published in the early 1870s, of which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received,[22] the volume Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especially Alfred Austin, who was later to become Poet Laureate. According to some reports Browning became romantically involved with Louisa, Lady Ashburton, but he refused her proposal of marriage, and did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy for the first time in the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several further occasions. In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando (1889), published on the day of his death.[22]

Browning after death.

Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889.[22] He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.[22]

During his life Browning was awarded many distinctions. He was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, a life Governor of London University, and had the offer of the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. But he turned down anything that involved public speaking.

History of sound recording

At a dinner party on 7 April 1889, at the home of Browning's friend the artist Rudolf Lehmann, an Edison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white wax cylinder by Edison's British representative, George Gouraud. In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part of How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (and can be heard apologising when he forgets the words).[23] When the recording was played in 1890 on the anniversary of his death, at a gathering of his admirers, it was said to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond the grave."[24][25]

Legacy

Browning is now popularly known for such poems as Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and also for certain famous lines: "Grow old along with me!" (Rabbi Ben Ezra), "A man's reach should exceed his grasp" (Andrea Del Sarto), and "God’s in His heaven—All’s right with the world!" (Pippa Passes).

His critical reputation rests mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words not only convey setting and action but reveal the speaker's character. In a Browning monologue, unlike a soliloquy, the meaning is not what the speaker voluntarily reveals but what he inadvertently gives away, usually while rationalising past actions or special pleading his case to a silent auditor. These monologues have been influential, and today the best of them are often treated by teachers and lecturers as paradigm cases of the monologue form. Ian Jack, in his introduction to the Oxford University Press edition of Browning's poems 1833–1864, comments that Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration of the possibilities of dramatic poetry and of colloquial idiom".[26]

His work has nevertheless had many detractors, and most of his voluminous output is not widely read. In a largely hostile essay Anthony Burgess wrote: "We all want to like Browning, but we find it very hard."[27] Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Santayana were also critical. The latter expressed his views in the essay "The Poetry of Barbarism," which attacks Browning and Walt Whitman for what he regarded as their embrace of irrationality.

Cultural references

A memorial plaque for a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, engraved with a quotation from the Epilogue to Browning's Asolando. The inscription reads: "In Loving Memory of Louisa A. M. McGrigor Commandant V.A.D. Cornwall 22. Who died on service, March 31, 1917. Erected by her fellow workers in the British Red Cross Society, Women Unionist Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Friends. One who never turned her back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."

In 1914 American modernist composer Charles Ives created the Robert Browning Overture, a dense and darkly dramatic piece with gloomy overtones reminiscent of the Second Viennese School.

In 1930 the story of Browning and his wife was made into the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier. It was a success and brought popular fame to the couple in the United States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role for the actress Katharine Cornell. It was twice adapted into film. It was also the basis of the stage musical Robert and Elizabeth, with music by Ron Grainer and book and lyrics by Ronald Millar.

In The Browning Version (Terence Rattigan's 1948 play or one of several film adaptations), a pupil makes a parting present to his teacher of an inscribed copy of Browning's translation of the Agamemnon.

Stephen King's The Dark Tower was chiefly inspired by Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, whose full text was included in the final volume's appendix.

Gabrielle Kimm's novel His Last Duchess is inspired by My Last Duchess.

A memorial plaque on the site of Browning's London home, Warwick Crescent, was unveiled on 11 December 1993.[28]

Browning Close in Royston, Hertfordshire, is named after Robert Browning.

Browning Street in Berkeley, California, is located in an area known as Poets' Corner and is also named after him.

Browning Street in Yokine, Western Australia, is named after him, in an area known as Poets' Corner.

Browning Street and Robert Browning School in Walworth, London, near to his birthplace in Camberwell, are named after him.

List of works

This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Browning published in his lifetime. Some individually notable poems are also listed, under the volumes in which they were published. (His only notable prose work, with the exception of his letters, is his Essay on Shelley.)

The Pied Piper leads the children out of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway to the Robert Browning version of the tale.

Notes

  1. ↑ Refer baptism here: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JW86-2ZV
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Browning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004) Selected Poems Penguin p9
  3. ↑ http://www.bookrags.com/biography/robert-browning-dlb2/
  4. ↑ John Maynard, Browning's Youth
  5. ↑ Ebony Magazine May 1995, p95 "Dared and Done"
  6. ↑ Dared and done: the marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Knopf, 1995, University of Michigan p112 ISBN 978-0-679-41602-9
  7. ↑ The dramatic imagination of Robert Browning: a literary life (2007) Richard S. Kennedy, Donald S. Hair, University of Missouri Press p7 ISBN 0-8262-1691-9
  8. ↑ Chesterton, G K (1903). Robert Browning (1951 edition). London: Macmillan Interactive Publishing. ISBN 978-0-333-02118-7.
  9. ↑ Browning, Robert (2009). Roberts, Adam; Karlin, Daniel, ed. The Major Works. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955469-0.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "III". The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 volumes (pub 1907-1921) XIII.
  11. ↑ Stevenson, Sarah. "Robert Browning". Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Ian Jack, ed. (1970). "Introduction and Chronology". Browning Poetical Works 1833–1864. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-254165-9. OCLC 108532.
  13. ↑ Browning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004) Selected Poems Penguin
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 Browning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004) Selected Poems Penguin p10
  15. ↑ Poets.org profile
  16. ↑ Peterson, William S. Sonnets From The Portuguese. Massachusetts: Barre Publishing, 1977.
  17. ↑ Donald Serrell Thomas. (1989). Robert Browning: A Life Within Life. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. pp. 157-158. ISBN 978-0-297-79639-8
  18. ↑ John Casey. (2009). After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Oxford. p. 373. ISBN 978-0-19-997503-7 "The poet attended one of Home's seances where a face was materialized, which, Home's spirit guide announced, was that of Browning's dead son Browning seized the supposed materialized head, and it turned out to be the bare foot of Home. The deception was not helped by the fact that Browning never had lost a son in infancy."
  19. ↑ Frank Podmore. (1911). The Newer Spiritualism. Henry Holt and Company. p. 45
  20. ↑ Harry Houdini. (2011 reprint edition). Originally published in 1924. A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-108-02748-9
  21. ↑ Peter Lamont. (2005). The First Psychic: The Extraordinary Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard. Little, Brown & Company. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-316-72834-8
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5 22.6 Browning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004) Selected Poems Penguin p11
  23. ↑ Poetry Archive, retrieved 2 May 2009
  24. ↑ Kreilkamp, Ivan, "Voice and the Victorian storyteller." Cambridge University Press, 2005, page 190. ISBN 0-521-85193-9, ISBN 978-0-521-85193-0. Retrieved 2 May 2009
  25. ↑ "The Author," Volume 3, January–December 1891. Boston: The Writer Publishing Company. "Personal gossip about the writers-Browning." Page 8. Retrieved 2 May 2009.
  26. ↑ Browning (1970). "Introduction". In Ian Jack. Browning Poetical Works 1833–1864. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-254165-9. OCLC 108532.
  27. ↑ Burgess, Anthony Sage and Mage of the Steam Age The Spectator, 14 April 1966, p.19. Accessed 19 October 2013
  28. ↑ City of Westminster green plaques http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/leisureandculture/greenplaques/

Further reading

External links

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