by Melinda Creech

Viewers were upset and angered when Matthew Crawley died at the end of the season just after holding his new-born son in his arms. Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, explained his decision in an interview with the New York Times blog. Dan Stevens, the actor playing Matthew Crawley, decided to leave the show and having him die in a tragic accident seemed the best way to remove a major character from the story line.

Although the father and son story in Downton Abbey had a sad ending, the real story of fathers and children at Highclere Castle is a little more heartening. Robert Browning and Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, seemed to have a mutual admiration for each other. Many of the letters from Lord Carnarvon to Robert Browning in the Armstrong Browning Library collection are simply personal invitations for Browning to come to Highclere. Robert Browning’s sister, Sarianna, confided in a letter to Joseph Milsand, November 1869, that “Robert writes me he feels tired of the life he is leading—and has declined another invitation somewhere. Still, he has accepted Ld Carnarvon’s for the beginning of Decr.” In another letter to Sarianna on November 20, 1873, Browning says “Ld. Carnarvon was so exceedingly warm in his manner last evening,–kind he can’t help being.” So what connected Lord Carnarvon and Robert Browning?

Although they died within a few months of each other, Robert Browning was born nineteen years before Lord Carnarvon. They both married for the first time in their thirties and lost their wives after fourteen or fifteen years of marriage. Lord Carnarvon married again, and his second wife outlived him by forty years. Browning never remarried, but outlived his wife by almost thirty years.

Browning’s correspondence with the Carnarvons began in 1868 and continued until at least 1885. When this acquaintance began Lord Carnarvon was thirty-seven and had a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Robert Browning was fifty-six and had a nineteen-year-old son.

Near the end of their acquaintance in 1885, Robert Browning was seventy-three and Pen was thirty-six. Lord Carnarvon was fifty-four and had five children: Winifred, (21), George (19), Margaret (15), Victoria (11), and Aubrey (5).

These two photographs present visual bookends for the beginning and the end of the relationship between Robert Browning and The Fourth Earl of Carnarvon. Both men faced death with a similar peaceful composure. According to The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857-1890, edited by Peter Gordon, Lord Carnarvon’s last words were “I am so happy.” A Browning Chronology by Martin Garrett reports that Robert Browning’s last words were “my son, my dear son.”

Resources are available for searching through the Browning correspondence online or through catalogues and documents in person here at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity can discover how the relationship between Robert Browning and Lord Carnarvon included shooting parties, trout-fishing excursions, late night literary discussions, comparisons of Greek translations, walks in the park, personal and political favors, delightful lunches, and extravagant dinners. Doubtless, some of the conversations at Highclere focused on the disappointments and joys of fathers and children.

by Melinda Creech

Most of the season three finale did not occur at Downton Abbey at all. The Crawley family traveled to the Scottish estate of Duneagle, belonging to their cousin “Shrimpie,” to enjoy stalking hinds, fishing, and dancing the Highland reel, and, of course, the season ended with a tragic accident.

The castle in the movie was actually Inveraray, the residence of the Duke of Argyll, in Browning’s day. Although I could not establish that Browning, who actually came from Scottish stock, visited Inveraray, he did visit all around the area. The Brownings travelled to St. Andrews (September 1868), Lock Luichart (August 1869), Loch Tummell (August-October 1872), Brahan Castle (October 1872), and Lamlesh (August 1876) all within 100 miles of the Inverary Castle that was featured in the season three finale.

In the letters here at the Armstrong Browning Library, I was surprised to find a very unusual coincidence, and a much happier ending. Robert Browning and his son, Robert Barrett Browning, affectionately known as “Pen,” went to Scotland on hunts and reading-parties several times. Pen’s Aunt Sarianna, Robert Browning’s sister, lamented the fact that “it is strange how little parents can prevent youths from following the current of his age. Here, in England, the tide set in for athletics—for rowing, shooting, and such like rubbish—in one sense, though useful in another” [Sarianna Browning to Joseph Milsand, November, 1869]. Three years later Robert Browning wrote to Isa Blagden that “Pen has been quite well and enjoying himself in Scotland: shooting, riding, & dancing the Highland Reel. He had a miraculous escape about a fortnight ago: driving a friend in a pony-chaise drawn by a big horse—he came to grief—by no sort of fault of his own—to grief in a place I know exactly, at the foot of a bridge over a ravine close by my last years abode: the carriage came to pieces, the horse rushed at the bridge, with the wreck on his heels, guiding him was out of the question, and Pen was sent flying over the bridge through a tree which broke the fall,–his companion, a man, going along with the cushions &c, over Pen’s head at the same time, with no hurt to either but a few bruises and general stiffness” [Robert Browning to Isa Blagden, October 3, 1872]. Have the writers at Downton Abbey been reading Robert Browning’s mail? Truth, it seems, is stranger than fiction.

by Melinda Creech

The conversations at Downton Abbey propel the plot and leave us curious to know how the relationships will unravel or be knit together. Of course, many of the most interesting conversations occur in the hallways and behind doors in the servants’ quarters. However, some take place when the men gather by themselves after the meal in the smoking room. Others unfold as the visitors and residents stroll across the lovely grounds of Highclere Castle.

Robert Browning found himself engaged in these conversations. The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, edited by Peter Gordon (2009), contends that “Carnarvon’s greatest pleasure . . . was discussing literary matters with distinguished authors.” The conversations in the smoking room, according to Thomas Hay Sweet Escott in Anthony Trollope: His Public Services, Private Friends, and Literary Originals (1967) sometimes involved Browning and often focused on the literature of the Classics. The smoking room clientele included Lord Carnarvon, Browning, Anthony Trollope, J. R. Green, J. R. Seeley, Charles Kingsley, and H. P. Liddon and resembled “Cicero’s country-house parties at his Tusculum.”

Browning, however, also enjoyed those strolling conversations on the grounds. Lady Knightley in The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, edited by Julia Mary Cartwright (1915), has this recollection of a conversation with Browning at Highclere.

Talking to remarkable people is certainly very hard work! Here I have been divided between Count Beust and Mr. Browning nearly all day. The occupation, amusement, or whatever you like to call it, has been a walk and luncheon at a little house by a lovely lake. Mr. Browning is as different from his poems as anything one can imagine — a loud-voiced, sturdy little man, who says nothing in the least obscure or difficult to understand!

Perhaps it was just such conversations that caused Robert’s weariness as described by his sister, Sarianna Browning, in a letter dated December 1, 1869, to her dear friend in Paris, Joseph Milsand. She says: “Robert is with the earl of Carnarvon at Highclere castle since Saty [Saturday]. He will stay a few days longer but soon gets wearied.”

How delightful to imagine Robert Browning sitting in the smoking room at Highclere discussing Homer, strolling the grounds unveiling his poetry to Lady Knightley, or participating in a shooting party.

Be sure to check back later this week for the next installment in the Browning at Downton Abbey series!

by Melinda Creech

The season two finale for Downton Abbey, entitled “Christmas, 1919,” showcased a shooting party at Downton Abbey. As Alastair Bruce, historical advisor for Masterpiece, explains in a supplemental video, the shooting party had several purposes. Of utmost interest to the participants was the social import of the event. It was an opportunity to see and be seen by the elite of the society, and often required the tailoring of a new wardrobe. The harvesting of game during the shoot supported the community’s needs, providing Christmas gifts of food for the participants, residents of Highclere, and the staff. The shoot also contributed to the ecological balance of the one thousand acre estate.

Browning’s involvement in the shooting party is a little unclear. The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857-1890, Colonial Secretary and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, edited by Peter Gordon (2009), indicates: “as a member of a shooting party there in 1873 Browning was able to claim in a single day 218 pheasants, 40 hares, 20 rabbits, and 1 partridge.” Gordon obtained this information from a letter from Robert Browning to Sarianna Browning, dated November 20, 1873. However, Browning writes to his sister, Sarianna, that “the main party of men are gone out to shoot” while he has “been walking in the park and after luncheon, shall begin again.” As almost a postscript in the last line of the letter he adds: “5 o’clock/ Day’s sport, (5 guns)—218 pheasants, 40 hares, 20 rabbits, 1 partridge.”

Whether as an attendee or a participant, Browning, no doubt, enjoyed the shooting party at Highclere, November 15-22,1873.