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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
When, in an episode in the long courtship by mail between Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, Elizabeth “confessed” that she was to be numbered, in religion, among “those schismatiques of Amsterdam” Donne talks of, Browning, always the opportunist in the affair, fired back: “Can it be you, my own you past putting away, you are a schismatic and frequenter of Independent Dissenting Chapels? And you confess this to me—whose father and mother went this morning to the very Independent Chapel where they took me, all these years back, to be baptized—and where they heard, this morning, a sermon preached by the very minister who officiated on that other occasion!” The Independent Chapel in question was, of course, the Locks Fields Chapel, or, as it came to be called, the York Street Congregational Church, at Walworth, about a mile from the Brownings' Camberwell home, south of London; and the minister was a George Clayton. Browning's credentials as a schismatic were, however, less obvious than he implies. On his father's side Browning's people, in fact, were members of the Church of England (his grandmother was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman), and in the 1830's he and his sister also attended evening services at Camden Chapel, a separate offshoot from the parish church of St. Giles, in order to hear the more “eloquent and earnest” sermons of Henry Melvill, “Melvill of the Golden Mouth,” whose sermons were also highly approved by John Ruskin. If Clayton's Independent Chapel was nonetheless the family church, there can be no doubt that this was because of the influence of Browning's mother, already a member there before marriage. About 1820, her husband, raised in the Church of England, followed her and officially joined the York Street Congregation.
1. RB to EBB, [3 Aug. 1845]Google Scholar, in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845–1846, ed. Kintner, Elvan (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1969), I, 142.Google Scholar
2. Browning's mother appears as No. 78 in the first list of church members in 1806. Very possibly she had been a member before this. Browning's father was No. 425 in 1820 though he attended earlier. Relevant church documents are listed in the Robert Browning Settlement's, The Browning Bulletin [London, 1928].Google Scholar
3. Chesterton, G. K., Robert Browning (New York: Macmillan, 1903), p. 12.Google Scholar
4. RB to EBB, [5 Mar. 1846]Google Scholar, in The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, I, 510Google Scholar, speaks of Clayton's father, John Clayton (1754–1843), also a minister, as an “Evangelical.” I deliberately use the term evangelical with a small “e” to distinguish the general religious movement, in which Clayton even as an Independent is included, from the more specific Evangelical movement within the Church of England.
5. Aveling, Thomas W., Memorials of the Clayton Family with Unpublished Correspondence (London: Jackson, 1867), pp. 13–44Google Scholar, recounts John's early career, primarily quoting an unfinished memoir by George Clayton. John Clayton was a student at the Countess of Huntingdon's Trevecca College (later Cheshunt); after his conversion he became minister of the prosperous Congregational Church in Little Eastcheap, London. He remained friends with many Anglican divines.
6. Griffin, W. H. and Minchin, H. C., The Life of Robert Browning, rev. ed. (London: Methuen, 1938), p. 50Google Scholar, quoting from an article in the British Weekly, 20 Dec. 1889.Google Scholar George Clayton (1783–1862) joined the Locks Fields congregation in April 1804 at the age of twenty. The church itself had been erected in 1793. Clayton's brothers, John (1780–1865) and William (1784–1838), were also Congregational evangelical ministers. There are published sermons and books of devotion by the Claytons in the British Library as well as the records of an unfortunate pamphlet controversy waged by the father against theater-going.
7. Rogers, Frederick, The Early Environment of Robert Browning (London: privately printed, 1904), p. 15.Google Scholar (A copy of this rare pamphlet is in the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University.)
8. Ibid., p. 12.
9. London and Provincial New Commercial Directory (London: Pigot and Company, 1823), p. 79.Google Scholar
10. Rogers, , p. 13.Google Scholar
11. Aveling, p. 219.Google Scholar Clayton was educated at Reading with a Dr. Valpy and at Hoxton College.
12. Ibid., pp. 453–58. Mrs. Clayton, née Whennel (1779–1842), was succeeded by Mary Giles in 1845.
13. Bertram Dobell catalogue, Browning Memorials (London, 1913)Google Scholar, Item 119.
14. Report of Edward, White's “Browning as a Chapel-Goer,” Daily News, 28 Feb. 1898 (clipping at Baylor).Google Scholar
15. Aveling, p. 224.Google Scholar
16. Parker, P. L., “Browning as a Chapel-Goer,” Review of Reviews (New York), 17 (1898), 461, reporting Edward White.Google Scholar
17. Rogers, , p. 8Google Scholar, notes that Sarah Anna kept a missionary box for the London Missionary Society and later subscribed a fixed amount each year until 1847. The Clayton Jubilee Memorial Schools were founded in his honor.
18. RB to Sarianna Browning, 2 July 1849Google Scholar, in Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Hood, Thurman L. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1933), p. 23.Google Scholar
19. The Bible given to Browning on 28 Feb. 1834Google Scholar is now in the Wellesley College Library (Lot 396 in the Sotheby catalogue, The Browning Collections [London, 1913])Google Scholar; there is a Latin Novum Jesu-Christi Testamentum (Limoges, 1812)Google Scholar at Baylor inscribed to RB by his mother. The concordance is Lot 600 in the Sotheby catalogue. Her commonplace book (Dobell catalogue, Item 460), consisting mostly of Biblical texts, suggests the same interest. It dates from before her marriage.
20. George Clayton not only used the term “evangelical” for his family's religious mission but also described his father's development as an explicit part of the Evangelical Movement. Even after his technical break with the Countess of Huntingdon in joining the Congregational Church, John remained on friendly terms with her; he was also closely connected with the work of the Clapham Sect through friendship with John Thornton, a close associate of Wilberforce. (Aveling, pp. 4, 90–91.)Google Scholar
21. Copy now at Baylor.
22. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 389.Google Scholar That this was still the theology at York Street is indicated by a “Solemn Covenant with Almighty God, Made through His Beloved Son Jesus Christ, and by the Aid of His Holy Spirit” left by Clayton's wife (Aveling, p. 458).Google Scholar
23. Coles, Practical Discourse, p. 186.Google Scholar
24. Her copy is at Baylor.
25. Spiritual Gleanings, p. 95.Google Scholar
26. Ibid., pp. 93–94.
27. Ibid., p. 161.
28. MS letter dated 6 Sept. [1841] (Scripps College Library).Google Scholar
29. Coles, p. 102.Google Scholar
30. Spiritual Gleanings, p. 102.Google Scholar
31. Copy at Baylor.
32. Advice, p. 91.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., p. 96.
34. Ibid.
35. Aveling, pp. 249, 266Google Scholar, quoting an unpublished “Diary.” The present location of the “Diary” is unknown. None of Aveling's frequent quotations from the “Diary” refers to the Brownings. Aveling incidentally provides a number of indications that some members of the Clayton family were driven by the atmosphere of too self-conscious religion into morbidity: a daughter went insane; a sister spent her life generally in depression about her spiritual state.
36. MrsOrr, Sutherland, Life and Letters of Robert Browning, rev. Kenyon, F. G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1908), p. 25.Google Scholar
37. Griffin, and Minchin, , p. 50Google Scholar, quoting Edward, White in the British Weekly, 20 Dec. 1889.Google Scholar
38. Flower, Sarah to Fox, W. J., 23 Nov. 1827Google Scholar, in Conway, M. D., Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), II, 26.Google Scholar
39. [Grove, William], “Browning as I Knew Him. By His Valet,” Sunday Express (London), 4 Dec. 1927, p. 466 (copy at Baylor).Google Scholar
40. Chap. 10.
