Welcome to this, the centennial year of the New York Browning Society! To the best of our knowledge, we are the second oldest literary society in the United States – the oldest being the Boston Browning Society, founded in 1885. The continuance of our societies is mute tribute to the power of the Brownings’ message.

Julia Pauline Leavens founded our group in 1907, stating that its purpose was “to study the works of Robert Browning and other poets and writers; to cultivate, promote, foster, and develop among its members and others an interest in the highest forms of Literature, Music, and Art; to arrange literary programs; and to work for the intellectual development of its members and others.” We still strive for these things, and although it may sometimes seem a losing battle in these times of American Idol and “reality” TV programming, it is an all-the-more-worthy challenge because of them.

In 1912, Ms. Leavens wrote “A genuine love of the best in letters must be the result if we study in spirit the words of Robert Browning.” On that occasion, Mr. C.T. Winchester perceptively remarked “The main purpose of poetry in [Browning’s] thought was not to soothe, but to arouse; not to minister to our delight, but to enlarge and intensify our life.” Amen to both statements!

There will be many challenges in our second century; we trust that our victory over them shall be the legacy for those who follow us. May you all, in Robert’s words in his “Epilogue” from Asolando, be

One who never turned his 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…..

Degrees of Separation

To know the Brownings is to know just about everyone in Victorian arts and letters. The friends and acquaintances are many, and the once-or-twice-removed associations perhaps even more fascinating. For example …

Poet Emma Lazarus, author of The New Colossus (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”) traveled to Europe in the 1880’s, where she met Robert Browning in London. Lazarus also was a friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, Rose Lathrop. Hawthorne and his wife visited the Brownings during the latter’s 1856 visit to London (when Hawthorne was American consul at Liverpool; the Hawthornes also called on the poets in Florence, where they lived from 1846 until Elizabeth’s death in 1861). While in London, Lazarus visited Henry James, who not only knew and admired Browning, but who also became his neighbor when RB moved in across the street from him in 1887.

How about Emily Dickinson? Lazarus knew Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the New England abolitionist minister, author, and literary critic who mentored Dickinson by mail, and, after her death, co-published her poems. Higginson also wrote a biography of Margaret Fuller, the journalist, critic, and women’s rights activist, who died in a shipwreck off Fire Island while returning to America in 1850 – after calling on the Brownings in Florence, where Elizabeth had a premonition of her death. While in Europe, Fuller had interviewed George Sand (whom Elizabeth admired, and who twice received the Brownings in Paris), and Thomas Carlyle, a long-standing friend of our poets.

Then there’s Fanny Kemble (1809-93), remembered today as a famous actress, but who was far more. A pioneering feminist, she spent her life breaking the rules of her time. She was a world traveler (Henry James wrote “in two hemispheres, she had seen everyone, had known everyone”); an actress who married a man who virtually indentured her and destroyed her career – until she divorced him (a major scandal) and reignited it; an abolitionist; a woman who climbed the Alps every summer; a poet and playwright; a memoirist whose extensive journals offer insights into the Victorian age; and who otherwise was headline fodder for the newspapers and journals of her day. She knew many in the Browning circle, including Tennyson (whom she called “Alfred”), William Makepeace Thackery, novelist Harriet Martineau, Henry James, and William MacReady, the actor/producer who encouraged Browning to write plays for him (and who reviewed one of Kemble’s plays).

During the Brownings’ 1851 visit to London, Fanny called on them and gave them tickets to one of her Shakespeare readings. Then, while the Brownings were wintering in Rome in 1853, Kemble called again. She soon became a close friend to Elizabeth, who remarked “such eyes, such a voice! – she has enchanted me.” Although Robert huffed that her manner was too theatrical (was it because Kemble knew nothing of his poetry?), the actress became a weekly visitor.


Words for the New Year
My business is not to remake myself,
But to make the absolute best of what God made.
Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram’s Apology