1812-1826
Birth of Robert Browning --His Childhood and Schooldays --Restless Temperament --Brilliant Mental Endowments --Incidental Peculiarities --Strong Religious Feeling --Passionate Attachment to his Mother;Grief at first Separation --Fondness for Animals --Experiences of School Life --Extensive Reading --Early Attempts in Verse --Letter from his Father concerning them --Spurious Poems in Circulation --'Incondita'--Mr.Fox --Miss Flower.
Robert Browning was born,as has been often repeated,at Camberwell,on May 7,1812,soon after a great comet had disappeared from the sky.
He was a handsome,vigorous,fearless child,and soon developed an unresting activity and a fiery temper.He clamoured for occupation from the moment he could speak.His mother could only keep him quiet when once he had emerged from infancy by telling him stories --doubtless Bible stories --while holding him on her knee.
His energies were of course destructive till they had found their proper outlet;but we do not hear of his ever having destroyed anything for the mere sake of doing so.His first recorded piece of mischief was putting a handsome Brussels lace veil of his mother's into the fire;but the motive,which he was just old enough to lisp out,was also his excuse:
'A pitty baze [pretty blaze],mamma.'Imagination soon came to his rescue.
It has often been told how he extemporized verse aloud while walking round and round the dining-room table supporting himself by his hands,when he was still so small that his head was scarcely above it.
He remembered having entertained his mother in the very first walk he was considered old enough to take with her,by a fantastic account of his possessions in houses,&c.,of which the topographical details elicited from her the remark,'Why,sir,you are quite a geographer.'
And though this kind of romancing is common enough among intelligent children,it distinguishes itself in this case by the strong impression which the incident had left on his own mind.It seems to have been a first real flight of dramatic fancy,confusing his identity for the time being.
The power of inventing did not,however,interfere with his readiness to learn,and the facility with which he acquired whatever knowledge came in his way had,on one occasion,inconvenient results.
A lady of reduced fortunes kept a small elementary school for boys,a stone's-throw from his home;and he was sent to it as a day boarder at so tender an age that his parents,it is supposed,had no object in view but to get rid of his turbulent activity for an hour or two every morning and afternoon.Nevertheless,his proficiency in reading and spelling was soon so much ahead of that of the biggest boy,that complaints broke out among the mammas,who were sure there was not fair play.Mrs.----was neglecting her other pupils for the sake of 'bringing on Master Browning;'and the poor lady found it necessary to discourage Master Browning's attendance lest she should lose the remainder of her flock.This,at least,was the story as he himself remembered it.According to Miss Browning his instructress did not yield without a parting shot.She retorted on the discontented parents that,if she could give their children 'Master Browning's intellect',she would have no difficulty in satisfying them.After this came the interlude of home-teaching,in which all his elementary knowledge must have been gained.
As an older child he was placed with two Misses Ready,who prepared boys for entering their brother's (the Rev.Thomas Ready's)school;and in due time he passed into the latter,where he remained up to the age of fourteen.
He seems in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his sister,two years younger than himself,and whom his irrepressible spirit must sometimes have frightened or repelled.Nor do we hear anything of childish loves;and though an entry appeared in his diary one Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age,'married two wives this morning,'it only referred to a vague imaginary appropriation of two girls whom he had just seen in church,and whose charm probably lay in their being much bigger than he.
He was,however,capable of a self-conscious shyness in the presence of even a little girl;and his sense of certain proprieties was extraordinarily keen.He told a friend that on one occasion,when the merest child,he had edged his way by the wall from one point of his bedroom to another,because he was not fully clothed,and his reflection in the glass could otherwise have been seen through the partly open door.
His imaginative emotions were largely absorbed by religion.
The early Biblical training had had its effect,and he was,to use his own words,'passionately religious'in those nursery years;but during them and many succeeding ones,his mother filled his heart.
He loved her so much,he has been heard to say,that even as a grown man he could not sit by her otherwise than with an arm round her waist.
It is difficult to measure the influence which this feeling may have exercised on his later life;it led,even now,to a strange and touching little incident which had in it the incipient poet no less than the loving child.
His attendance at Miss Ready's school only kept him from home from Monday till Saturday of every week;but when called upon to confront his first five days of banishment he felt sure that he would not survive them.
A leaden cistern belonging to the school had in,or outside it,the raised image of a face.He chose the cistern for his place of burial,and converted the face into his epitaph by passing his hand over and over it to a continuous chant of:'In memory of unhappy Browning'--the ceremony being renewed in his spare moments,till the acute stage of the feeling had passed away.
The fondness for animals for which through life he was noted,was conspicuous in his very earliest days.His urgent demand for 'something to do' would constantly include 'something to be caught'for him:'they were to catch him an eft;''they were to catch him a frog.'
