Bank of England, in which he had obtained a post on his return, in 1803, from the West Indies, and in the enjoyment of which he remained till 1853, when he retired on a small pension.  His son had an independent income, but whether from a bequest, or in the form of an allowance from his then unmarried Uncle Reuben, is uncertain.  In the first year of his marriage Mr. Browning resided in an old house in Southampton Street, Peckham, and there the poet was born.  The house was long ago pulled down, and another built on its site.  Mr. Browning afterwards removed to another domicile in the same Peckham district.  Many years later, he and his family left Camberwell and resided at Hatcham, near New Cross, where his brothers and sisters (by his father’s second marriage) lived.  There was a stable attached to the Hatcham house, and in it Mr. Reuben Browning kept his horse, which he let his poet-nephew ride, while he himself was at his desk in Rothschild’s bank.  No doubt this horse was the ‘York’ alluded to by the poet in the letter quoted, as a footnote, at page 189 of this book.  Some years after his wife’s death, which occurred in 1849, Mr. Browning left Hatcham and came to Paddington, but finally went to reside in Paris, and lived there, in a small street off the Champs Elysees, till his death in 1866.  The Creole strain seems to have been distinctly noticeable in Mr. Browning, so much so that it is possible it had something to do with his unwillingness to remain at St. Kitts, where he was certainly on one occasion treated cavalierly enough.  The poet’s complexion in youth, light and ivory-toned as it was in later life, has been described as olive, and it is said that one of his nephews, who met him in Paris in his early manhood, took him for an Italian.  It has been affirmed that it was the emotional Creole strain in Browning which found expression in his passion for music.

[Footnote 3:  The three brothers were men of liberal education and literary tastes.  Mr. W.S.  Browning, who died in 1874, was an author of some repute.  His History of the Huguenots is a standard book on the subject.]

By old friends of the family I have been told that Mr. Browning had a strong liking for children, with whom his really remarkable faculty of impromptu fiction made him a particular favourite.  Sometimes he would supplement his tales by illustrations with pencil or brush.  Miss Alice Corkran has shown me an illustrated coloured map, depictive of the main incidents and scenery of the Pilgrim’s Progress, which he genially made for “the children."[4]

[Footnote 4:  Mrs. Fraser Corkran, who saw much of the poet’s father during his residence in Paris, has spoken to me of his extraordinary analytical faculty in the elucidation of complex criminal cases.  It was once said of him that his detective faculty amounted to genius.  This is a significant trait in the father of the author of “The Ring and the Book.”]