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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
One branch of source study concerns an author's use of events, localities, works of art, and artifacts. We may sometimes ask ourselves whether it matters what porridge had John Keats, which Withens was the original of Wuthering Heights, whether there was a single identifiable Lucy. Yet so fascinated are we by the alchemy which the creative mind performs that we wish to view from all possible angles how it works on its raw material, how it transmutes crude fact into poetic truth, how it changes baser metal into gold. By doing this we deepen our knowledge of that mind. And so we seek for accuracy in our identification.
I wish to thank the following people for their assistance in this investigation: E. V. Quinn, Librarian, Balliol College, Oxford; Margaret Kincaid; Elaine Baly; Gerald Taylor, Assistant Keeper of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and Judith Rudoe, Research Assistant, Department of Mediaeval and Later Antiquities, British Museum.
1. The Ring and the Book, i. 1–4.Google Scholar Allusions to this work are from the edition of Altick, Richard D. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).Google Scholar
2. British Library Add. ms. 45,563, ff. 43–43V. Further references to documents in this volume will be given in the text. Brackets indicate authorial deletion. The “american lady” referred to is probably Mrs. Sophia Eckley.
3. Griffin, W. Hall and Minchin, Harry Christopher, The Life of Robert Browning (London: Methuen, 1910), pp. 230 f.Google Scholar
4. Hodell, Charles W., The Old Yellow Book (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1908), pp. 337 f., n. 539.Google Scholar
5. Cook, A. K., A Commentary upon Browning's The Ring and the Book (London: Oxford University Press, 1920), p. 7, n. to line 1.Google Scholar
6. DeVane, William C., A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p. 330.Google Scholar
7. McAleer, Edward C., ed., Dearest Isa (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), p. 12, n. 5.Google Scholar
8. Honan, Park, “A Murder Poem for Elizabeth,” Victorian Poetry, 6 (1968), 219Google Scholar; reprinted in The Book, the Ring and the Poet (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), p. 430.Google Scholar
9. Altick in his edition of The Ring and the Book, p. 637Google Scholar, n. to line 1.
10. Taylor, Gerald, Finger Rings from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (London: Lund Humphries, 1978), p. 90, no. 921.Google Scholar Type 28, classified as “Roman,” is round with flattened bezel; this ring's bezel is in fact curved. The alternate ribs are not beaded but zigzag. Size P is 18mm. Gere, Charlotte in Victorian Jewellery Design (London: William Kimber, 1972)Google Scholar prints photographs of Castellani work from collections all over the world, including, on p. 124, a gold bracelet very similar in style and shape to the Ring. A more detailed description of it will appear in the introduction to Vol. 7 of The Complete Works of Robert Browning (Ohio University Press).
11. I wish to thank the Master and Fellows of Balliol College for permission to reproduce this letter.
12. Kelley, Philip and Hudson, Ronald, The Brownings' Correspondence: A Checklist (New York: Browning Institute, 1978), p. 90.Google Scholar
13. ms Add. 40,730, f. 40. Printed in McAleer, , p. 11, n. 5.Google Scholar
14. Gere, , pp. 129 f.Google Scholar, says that the device aei “was extremely popular for Victorian sentimental jewellery of quasi-archaeological design.”
15. McAleer, , p. 11, n. 5.Google Scholar
16. Ibid., p. 55.
17. Ibid., p. 10.
18. Ibid., p. 198.
19. Ibid., p. 200, n. 2.
20. Blagden, I., Agnes Tremorne (London: Smith, Elder, 1861), i, 152.Google Scholar
21. The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Kenyon, Frederic G. (London: Smith, Elder, 1897), ii, 354 f.Google Scholar
22. Castellani, A[ugusto], Antique Jewellery and Its Revival (London: printed for private circulation, 1862), p. 19. Pp. 23 f.Google Scholar in the Italian version, Dell'Oreficeria Antica (Firenze: Felice de Monnier, 1862).Google Scholar
23. Bronson, Katharine de Kay, “Browning in Venice,” The Cornhill Magazine, ns 12 (1902), 152.Google Scholar
24. Sotheby Sale Catalogue of the Browning Collections (05 1913), pp. 156 f.Google Scholar
25. See The Times and the Guardian for 4 12 1971.Google Scholar
26. He wears a ring on this finger in the Gordigiani and Talfourd portraits of 1859. The ring in the Gordigiani might be this one, though it is more likely to be the larger cornelian signet he wears in the Talfourd portrait. Before 1870, Browning gave his uncle, Reuben Browning, two companion signet rings of Italian gold which he had had made for himself in Italy, a smaller one of red cornelian and a larger of orange cornelian. These eventually passed to Reuben's direct descendants, Mrs. Elaine Baly (née Deacon) of Hertfordshire and her sister Sybil. The larger, which Mrs. Baly still has, is size Q½R. The smaller, which was stolen from her brother-in-law in Benghazi about thirty-five years ago, she guesses to have been about 0½ and to have been worn as a little finger ring. This is probably the ring seen in the portraits, and its probable size confirms my assumption (which the pattern of wear makes virtually certain) that the Balliol ring was worn on Browning's little finger.
27. For a more detailed, technical description of this ring and further observations on the relation of the details cited in the poem to the details of its actual fashioning, see my discussion in the introduction to The Ring and the Book, I, Vol. 7 in The Complete Works of Robert Browning with Variant Readings and Annotations (Ohio University Press, forthcoming).