ABSTRACT
In 1842 Robert Browning published two poems that were to enter into the national consciousness in a profoundly significant way. 'Home-Thoughts, from Abroad' with its famous opening lines 'Oh, to be in England / Now that April's there'1 is still frequently anthologized and taught in schools, but the companion poem, 'Home-Thoughts, from the Sea' is less well-known today, for reasons that may become obvious when a contemporary reader encounters it. Here, for the benefit of that reader, is Browning's poem in full:
It would be easy, at the start of the 21st century, to dismiss this as a jingoistic relic from an imperial past. Nevertheless, I choose deliberately to begin with this poem, because it touches on what we shall call 'the matter of England', the mythical construction of an ideal of England and Englishness that is still very much present in contemporary discourse. For in Browning's short lyric, the myth of English greatness is connected both to geography and to historical circumstance, following a long-established tradition, perhaps most clearly exemplified in John of Gaunt's description of England in Shakespeare's Richard II as a 'sceptred isle':
Here the sea is depicted as a moat and as a wall, a defensive ring around the island home. It was a view that found support in the 1590s, in the uneasy final years of the reign of Elizabeth I, when the cult of Gloriara was being created, building upon the epic defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. That historical turning-point is suggested by Browning's reference to Cadiz, where Sir Francis Drake attacked the Spanish fleet in 1587 in an attempt to prevent the launching of the Armada, an action enshrined in folklore as 'singeing the King of Spain's beard'. Drake's triumph at Cadiz is then linked to Nelson's later victory at Trafalgar in 1805. English pride, Browning is suggesting, is bound up with English naval success and always has been. Not for nothing did the navy style itself the Senior Service: England's survival and England's greatness were the result of England's long-standing control of the seas. And Browning was well aware of the popular importance of that myth: the death of Nelson inspired national mourning; and prints depicting the dying Admiral sold in great numbers at fairs across the country, along with Staffordshire pottery figures purporting to represent him. The year that saw the publication of Browning's poem was also the year when a column celebrating the greatness of Nelson was erected in London's Trafalgar Square.
