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Life and Letters of Robert Browning-Part2_Mrs.Sutherland Orr(1828-1903)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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are very averse to the idea of such a cross; I believe its assertion,

in the present case, to be entirely mistaken; I prefer, therefore,



touching on the facts alleged in favour of it, to passing them over

in a silence which might be taken to mean indifference,



but might also be interpreted into assent.

We are told that Mr. Browning was so dark in early life,



that a nephew who saw him in Paris, in 1837, mistook him for an Italian.

He neither had nor could have had a nephew; and he was not out of England



at the time specified. It is said that when Mr. Browning senior

was residing on his mother's sugar plantation at St. Kitt's,



his appearance was held to justify his being placed in church

among the coloured members of the congregation. We are assured



in the strongest terms that the story has no foundation,

and this by a gentleman whose authority in all matters concerning



the Browning family Dr. Furnivall has otherwise accepted as conclusive.

If the anecdote were true it would be a singular circumstance



that Mr. Browning senior was always fond of drawing negro heads,

and thus obviously disclaimed any unpleasant association with them.



I do not know the exact physicalindications by which a dark strain

is perceived; but if they are to be sought in the colouring of eyes,



hair, and skin, they have been conspicuously absent in the two persons

who in the present case are supposed to have borne them.



The poet's father had light blue eyes and, I am assured by those

who knew him best, a clear, ruddy complexion. His appearance



induced strangers passing him in the Paris streets to remark,

`C'est un Anglais!' The absolute whiteness of Miss Browning's skin



was modified in her brother by a sallow tinge sufficiently explained

by frequentdisturbance of the liver; but it never affected



the clearness of his large blue-grey eyes; and his hair,

which grew dark as he approached manhood, though it never became black,



is spoken of, by everyone who remembers him in childhood and youth, as golden.

It is no less worthy of note that the daughter of his early friend Mr. Fox,



who grew up in the little social circle to which he belonged,

never even heard of the dark cross now imputed to him;



and a lady who made his acquaintance during his twenty-fourth year,

wrote a sonnet upon him, beginning with these words:



Thy brow is calm, young Poet -- pale and clear

As a moonlighted statue.



The suggestion of Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve,

however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing



on the main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities

concerning it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman



appears in a merely contracted form as that of one of the oldest families

naturalized in Venice. It became united by marriage with the Rezzonico;



and, by a strange coincidence, the last of these who occupied the palace

now owned by Mr. Barrett Browning was a Widman-Rezzonico.



The present Contessa Widman has lately restored her own palace,

which was falling into ruin.



That portrait of the first Mrs. Browning, which gave so much umbrage

to her husband's second wife, has hung for many years



in her grandson's dining-room, and is well known to all his friends.

It represents a stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin;



and if the face or hair betrays any indication of possible dark blood,

it is imperceptible to the general observer, and must be



of too slight and fugitive a nature to enter into the discussion.

A long curl touches one shoulder. One hand rests upon



a copy of Thomson's `Seasons', which was held to be

the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those days.



The picture was painted by Wright of Derby.




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