Robert Browning’s Homesickness
Robert Browning's "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" is conventionally known as one of the most patriotic poems in the English language. Although the poem in its original print context is the first of three dramatic monologues, it is invariably seen in popular British culture, as well as in the history of its print circulation in the nineteenth century, as a stand-alone lyric poem celebrating the best of English nationhood. The poem has attracted surprisingly little attention from critics, perhaps because of difficulty with placing its apparent expression of English nationalism within the context of Browning's more uneasy investigations of the construction of nationhood and of cosmopolitanism. This essay argues that "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" is a deceptively simple poem that in fact interrogates the very patriotism it has been taken to celebrate. Furthermore, the poem is an important part of Browning's experimentation with the dramatic lyric form, and particularly the concept of voice in relation to proximity and distance. "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" reveals the importance of reading Browning's poems as expressive and interrogative at the very same time. In addition, the complex hybrid genre adopted in the poem participates in nineteenth-century discussions about the relation between England and Europe, in a way that recalls Mary Louise Pratt's concept of "contact zones," over-determined social spaces where cultures encounter one another, and jostle for position, often within asymmetrical and complex power structures. The poem's fundamental dynamic between home and the foreign suggests the importance of border crossing, a movement within and between contact zones, across frontiers and boundaries that are geographical, cultural, political and textual: a movement that, I argue, structures the very concept of the lyric poet itself, always a vital concern for Browning. In a recent and hugely popular endeavor by the British Broadcasting Corporation to record major poems by famous actors, the actor Geoffrey Palmer reads "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" with music playing softly in the background. (1) The choice of the Largo section (second movement) of Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony is important, especially to British ears, because it cites a previous and famous use of this section as the soundtrack (arranged for brass band) to a series of well-known television advertisements for Hovis bread, directed by Ridley Scott, and much replayed. The Hovis advertisement was voted in 2006 the most-loved advertisement in Britain, for the nostalgic portrayal of a northern town with a small boy pushing a bike up cobbled streets and carrying loaves of Hovis, associating the packaged bread with what is quintessentially English. (2) In fact, the popular commercial Classic FM station in Britain reported that it was inundated with requests for the "Hovis music," originally composed to commemorate the discovery of the Americas (see Byrne). It might seem peculiar to associate Robert Browning with a loaf of brown bread. But the BBC recitation of "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" chose a canny patriotic soundtrack. Subtitled "The greatest poems, the finest voices, glorious music," the "Words for You" series of recited poems can be purchased as a CD and seen on YouTube (where it has its own TV channel)) Palmer is perhaps at first glance an unlikely choice, known for his deadpan humor and stuffy, middle-class buffoonery, as his Wikipedia entry puts it, in portrayals of such popular British sit-com characters as Reggie Perrin's brother-in-law in The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin and the phlegmatic husband in Butterflies. (4) But Browning's poem suits such an actor perfectly, for like all Browning's dramatic lyrics, "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad" is in fact supremely ironic. In the nineteenth century, the poem was seen as a quintessential expression of English patriotism. It was reprinted, for example, in Mary Isabella Lovejoy's Poetry of the Seasons anthology of 1898 as exemplary of spring. …
Stranded at the Border: Browning, France, and the Challenge of Cosmopolitanism in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country
Robert Browning's periods of residence and travel on the Continent coincided with some of the great political upheavals of the time, but the closest the poet may have ever come to being in any personal danger due to such unrest was in the late summer of 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. At the time, Browning and his sister Sarianna were enjoying a seaside holiday at St. Aubin-sur-Mer on the Normandy coast. His good friend Joseph Milsand lived in a cottage only "two steps off," Browning wrote to Isa Blagden, while they stayed in "another of the most primitive kind on the sea-shore--which shore is a good sandy stretch for miles and miles on either side." (1) During previous summers in Brittany, Browning had developed an enthusiasm for swimming which he now indulged almost daily, although he confessed that the "sadness of the war & its consequences go far to paralyse all our pleasure" (p. 342). If convinced that France was being justly punished for its misplaced faith in Napoleon III, Browning still felt a vague attachment to the struggling nation that compelled him to remain on the scene: "I am glad to be in France rather than elsewhere just now" (p. 344). His sympathy was also quickened, no doubt, by witnessing Milsand's difficult efforts to secure his home and belongings in Paris. But even as German armies began a steady advance toward the capital after capturing the emperor himself, Browning remained confident that they could make it back to the safety of England without difficulty: "We can reach Havre from Caen in a few hours--& thence get to Southampton when we please," he wrote to Blagden in mid September, "so I think we have decided to remain till the end of the month" (p. 345). Within a week of penning these reassuring words, however, Browning began a frantic departure from France. Milsand was concerned that the poet might have already been mistaken for a German spy by restless villagers. State authorities were also on the lookout for French nationals trying to leave the country, which had been forbidden by government order. As a result, the boat to Le Havre, along with most trains and coaches, was no longer in service. Only through Milsand's last-minute efforts were the Brownings able to secure passage out of the country, at midnight, on a cattle boat bound for Southampton. (2) How near Browning truly came to being detained or arrested is not entirely clear, but, at the very least, the shock to the psyche of this suddenly accidental tourist must have been profound. The incident is telling in other ways as well, and reveals something of what inspired Red Cotton Night-Cap Country (1873), perhaps Browning's most ambitious attempt to inscribe contemporary French culture and his own presence within it. Recounting a more placid vacation two summers later in St. Aubin, the poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue spoken by Browning to a fellow traveler, Anne Thackeray, in which he rhapsodizes over the peacefulness of the landscape before introducing a darker, hidden truth. Not far from where they were staying, Antoine Mellerio (1827-1870), the wealthy son of a Parisian jeweler, had committed suicide by leaping from a tower on his estate. As the poem explains, Mellerio seems to have been motivated by a desperate religious faith that compounded his guilt over an extra-marital affair (in an earlier effort to atone for his sins, Mellerio had destroyed his love letters--and his hands--by holding them over a fire). With the help of Milsand, who had first told Browning of the incident, the poet examined press reports and court records associated with the case, and eventually decided that he had hit upon "a capital brand-new subject" (p. 385) for a poem, one that would untangle Mellerio's complex web of personal and spiritual obsessions. With names and places changed to prevent the possibility of libel suits (Mellerio, for example, became Leonce Miranda, and St. Aubin became St. Rambert), Browning's poem hit the press less than a year after Mellerio's contested estate had been settled by the court at Caen. …
Cosmopolitan geographies : new locations in literature and culture
This book highlights the best new interdisciplinary research on the theory and practice of cosmopolitanism, with a special focus on the cosmopolitan literatures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, from medieval times to the present.