WAS HE A JEW OR A NEGRO ?

Dunstan Times, Issue 2479, 3 May 1909, Page 3

WAS HE A JEW OR A NEGRO ?

Mk. Furnivall has been investigating i he vexed question asto Browning’s ancestry. Mr. Furnivall has directed hisinquirie. especially to the point whether the poet was, is had been claimed, of Jewish descent, and he decides this point in the negative. But ne believes that there was a strain of negro blood in his veins. Robert Browning, his grandfather, married a creole of the West Indies, in whom. Mr. Furnivall’s researches would seem to shew, there was an element of negro descent. In support of this viejv, Mr. Furnivall refers to the complexion of the poet's father, who " was so dark that when, as a youth, he went out to his creole mother's sugar plantation in St. Kit’s, the beadle of the church ordered him to come away from the white folk among whom he was sitting, and take his place among the coloured people,” The poet’s own complexion in earlier life has been described as " olive” ; in after life he became much lighter. Mr. Furnivall in concluding bis monograph says: "As a radical and democrat, I, of course, rejoice that the descendant of a Dorsetshire footman has been buried with solemn pomp in Westminster Abbey.”