His first wife was the mother of another Robert, the poet's father, born in 1781.
When the boy had reached the age of seven he lost his mother, and five years later his father married again.

This younger Robert when a youth desired to become an artist, but such a career was denied to him.

He longed for a University education, and, through the influence of his stepmother, this also was refused.

They shipped the young man to St Kitts, purposing that he should oversee the West Indian estate.

There, as Browning on the authority of his mother told Miss Barrett, "he conceived such a hatred to the slave-system ...