diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/60433-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/60433-0.txt | 3607 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 3607 deletions
diff --git a/old/60433-0.txt b/old/60433-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8addb3b..0000000 --- a/old/60433-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3607 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, by John Keats - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne - -Author: John Keats - -Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60433] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS TO FANNY BRAWNE *** - - - - -Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - -LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS TO FANNY BRAWNE - - - - - Where wert thou mighty Mother, when he lay, - When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies - In darkness? - - - - -[Illustration: by Joseph Severn 28 Jan^y 1821, 3 O’Clock morn^g] - -London. Reeves & Turner 1878. - - - - - _LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS - TO FANNY BRAWNE - WRITTEN IN THE YEARS - MDCCCXIX AND MDCCCXX - AND NOW GIVEN FROM - THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS - WITH INTRODUCTION - AND NOTES BY - HARRY BUXTON FORMAN_ - - _LONDON REEVES & TURNER_ - - _196 STRAND MDCCCLXXVIII_ - - [_All rights reserved_] - - - - -NOTE. - - -There is good reason to think that the lady to whom the following letters -were addressed did not, towards the end of her life, regard their -ultimate publication as unlikely; and it is by her family that they have -been entrusted to the editor, to be arranged and prepared for the press. - -The owners of these letters reserve to themselves all rights of -reproduction and translation. - - - - -_TO JOSEPH SEVERN, ROME._ - - -_The happy circumstance that the fifty-seventh year since you watched at -the death-bed of Keats finds you still among us, makes it impossible to -inscribe any other name than yours in front of these letters, intimately -connected as they are with the decline of the poet’s life, concerning the -latter part of which you alone have full knowledge._ - -_It cannot be but that some of the letters will give you pain,—and -notably the three written when the poet’s face was already turned towards -that land whither you accompanied him, whence he knew there was no return -for him, and where you still live near the hallowed place of his burial. -All who love Keats’s memory must share such pain in the contemplation of -his agony of soul. But you who love him having known, and we who love -him unknown except by faith in what is written, must alike rejoice in -the good hap that has preserved, for our better knowledge of his heart, -these vivid and varied transcripts of his inner life during his latter -years,—must alike be content to take the knowledge with such alloy of -pain as the hapless turn of events rendered inevitable._ - -_On a memorable occasion it was said of you by a great poet and prophet -that, had he known of the circumstances of your unwearied attendance -at the death-bed, he should have been tempted to add his “tribute of -applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in -the recollection of his own motives;” and he uttered the wish that the -“unextinguished Spirit” of Keats might “plead against Oblivion” for -your name. Were any such plea needed, the Spirit to prefer it, then -unextinguished, is now known for inextinguishable; and whithersoever the -name of “our Adonais” travels, there will yours also be found._ - -_This opportunity may not unfitly serve to record my gratitude for your -ready kindness in affording me information on various points concerning -your friend’s life and death, and also for the permission to engrave your -solemn portraiture of the beautiful countenance seen, as you only of all -men living saw it, in its final agony._ - - _H. B. F._ - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - PUBLISHERS’ NOTE v. - - TO JOSEPH SEVERN, ROME vii. - - INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR xiii. - - LETTERS TO FANNY BRAWNE:— - - First Period, I to IX, Shanklin, Winchester, Westminster 3 - - Second Period, X to XXXII, Wentworth Place 43 - - Third Period, XXXIII to XXXVII, Kentish Town—Preparing for Italy 91 - - APPENDIX, THE LOCALITY OF WENTWORTH PLACE 111 - - INDEX 123 - -Transcriber’s Note: Despite the date on the title page, this is the 1888 -edition (see date at end of introduction). The front matter from the -prior edition of 1878 seems to have been carried across to this one -without being fully checked and updated. This edition doesn’t have an -index, and the Appendix about Wentworth Place isn’t on page 111. - - - - -ILLUSTRATIONS. - - - PORTRAIT OF KEATS, DRAWN BY JOSEPH SEVERN AND ETCHED BY - W. B. SCOTT _Frontispiece._ - - SILHOUETTE OF FANNY BRAWNE, CUT BY EDOUART AND - PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHED BY G. F. TUPPER _Opposite page 3._ - - FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER XXVII, EXECUTED BY G. I. F. - TUPPER _Opposite page 76._ - - - - -INTRODUCTION. - - -The sympathetic and discerning biographer of John Keats says, in the -memoir prefixed to Moxon’s edition of the Poems[1], “The publication of -three small volumes of verse, some earnest friendships, one profound -passion, and a premature death are the main incidents here to be -recorded.” These words have long become “household words,” at all events -in the household of those who make the lives and works of English poets -their special study; and nothing is likely to be discovered which shall -alter the fact thus set forth. But that documents illustrating the fact -should from time to time come to the surface, is to be expected; and the -present volume portrays the “one profound passion” as perfectly as it is -possible for such a passion to be portrayed without the revelation of -things too sacred for even the most reverent and worshipful public gaze, -while it gives considerable insight into the refinements of a nature only -too keenly sensitive to pain and injury and the inherent hardness of -things mundane. - -The three final years of Keats’s life are in all respects the fullest -of vivid interest for those who, admiring the poet and loving the -memory of the man, would fain form some conception of the working of -those forces within him which went to the shaping of his greatest works -and his greatest woes. In those three years were produced most of the -compositions wherein the lover of poetry can discern the supreme hand of -a master, the ultimate and sovereign perfection beyond which, in point -of quality, the poet could never have gone had he lived a hundred years, -whatever he might have done in magnitude and variety; and in those years -sprang up and grew the one passion of his life, sweet to him as honey in -the intervals of brightness and unimpeded vigour which he enjoyed, bitter -as wormwood in those times of sickness and poverty and the deepening -shadow of death which we have learned to associate almost constantly with -our thoughts of him. - -Of certain phases of his life during these final years we have long had -substantial and most fascinating records in the beautiful collection of -documents entrusted to Lord Houghton, and to what admirable purpose used, -all who name the name of Keats know too well to need reminding,—documents -published, it is true, under certain restrictions, and subject to the -depreciatory operation of asterisks and blanks of varying significance -and magnitude, proper enough, no doubt, thirty years ago, but surely now -a needless affliction. But of the all-important phases in the healthy and -morbid psychology of the poet connected with the over-mastering passion -of his latter days, the record was necessarily scanty,—a few hints -scattered through the letters written in moderately good health, and a -few agonized and burning utterances wrung from him, in the despair of his -soul, in those last three letters addressed to Charles Brown,—one during -the sea voyage and two after the arrival of Keats and Severn in Italy. - -It was with the profoundest feeling of the sacredness as well as the -great importance of the record entrusted to me that I approached the -letters now at length laid before the public: after reading them through, -it seemed to me that I knew Keats to some extent as a different being -from the Keats I had known; the features of his mind took clearer form; -and certain mental and moral characteristics not before evident made -their appearance. It remained to consider whether this enhanced knowledge -of so noble a soul should be confined to two or three persons, or should -not rather be given to the world at large; and the decision arrived at -was that the world’s claim to participate in the gift of these letters -was good. - -The office of editor was not an arduous one so far as the text is -concerned, for the letters are wholly free from anything which it -seems desirable to omit; they are legibly and, except in some minute -and trivial details, correctly written, leaving little to do beyond -the correction of a few obvious clerical errors, and such amendment of -punctuation as is invariably required by letters not written for the -press. The arrangement of the series in proper sequence, however, was -not nearly so simple a matter; for, except as regards the first nine, -the evidence in this behalf is almost wholly inferential and collateral; -and I have had to be content with strong probability in many cases in -which it is impossible to arrive at any absolute certainty. Of the whole -thirty-seven letters, not one bears the date of the year, except as -furnished in the postmarks of numbers I to IX; two only go so far as to -specify in writing the day of the month, or even the month itself; and -one of these two Keats has dated a day later than the date shewn by the -postmark. Those which passed through the post, numbers I to IX, are fully -addressed to “Miss Brawne, Wentworth Place, Hampstead,” the word “Middx.” -being added in the case of the six from the country, but not in that of -the three from London. Numbers X to XVII and XIX to XXXII are addressed -simply to “Miss Brawne”; while numbers XVIII, XXXIII, XXXIV, and XXXVI -are addressed to “Mrs. Brawne,” and numbers XXXV and XXXVII bear no -address whatever. - -These material details are not without a psychological significance: -the total absence of interest in the progress of time (the sordid -current time) tallies with the profound worship of things so remote as -perfect beauty; and the addressing of four of the letters to Mrs. Brawne -instead of Miss Brawne indicates, to my mind, not mere accident, but a -sensitiveness to observation from any unaccustomed quarter: three of the -letters so addressed were certainly written at Kentish Town, and would -not be likely to be sent by the same hand usually employed to take those -written while the poet was next door to his betrothed; the other one was, -I have no doubt, sent only from one house to the other; but perhaps the -usual messenger may have chanced to be out of the way. - -The letters fall naturally into three groups, namely (1) those written -during Keats’s sojourn with Charles Armitage Brown in the Isle of Wight, -and his brief stay in lodgings in Westminster in the Summer and Autumn -of 1819, (2) those written from Brown’s house in Wentworth Place during -Keats’s illness in the early part of 1820 and sent by hand to Mrs. -Brawne’s house, next door, and (3) those written after he was able to -leave Wentworth Place to stay with Leigh Hunt at Kentish Town, and before -his departure for Italy in September, 1820. Of the order of the first and -last groups there is no reasonable doubt; and, although there can be no -absolute certainty in regard to the whole series of the central group, I -do not think any important error will have been made in the arrangement -here adopted. - -The slight service to be done beside this of arranging the letters, -involving a great deal of minute investigation, was simply to elucidate -as far as possible by brief foot-notes references that were not -self-explanatory, to give such attainable particulars of the principal -persons and places concerned as are desirable by way of illustration, -and to fix as nearly as may be the chronology of that part of Keats’s -life at the time represented by these letters,—especially the two -important dates involved. The first date is that of the passion which -Keats conceived for Miss Brawne,—the second that of the rupture of a -blood-vessel, marking distinctly the poet’s graveward tendency,—two -events probably connected with some intimacy, and concerning which it -is not unnoteworthy that we should have to be making guesses at all. If -these and other conjectural conclusions turn out to be inaccurate (which -I do not think will be the case), they can only be proved so by the -production of more documents; and if documents be produced confuting my -conclusions, my aim will have been attained by two steps instead of one. - -The lady to whom these letters were addressed was born on the 9th of -August in the year 1800, and baptized Frances, though, as usual with -bearers of that name, she was habitually called Fanny. Her father, Mr. -Samuel Brawne, a gentleman of independent means, died while she was -still a child; and Mrs. Brawne then went to reside at Hampstead, with -her three children, Fanny, Samuel, and Margaret. Samuel, being next in -age to Fanny, was a youth going to school in 1819; and Margaret was many -years younger than her sister, being in fact a child at the time of the -engagement to Keats, which event took place certainly between the Autumn -of 1818 and the Summer of 1819, and probably, as I find good reason to -suppose, quite early in the year 1819. In the Summer of 1818 Mrs. Brawne -and her children occupied the house of Charles Armitage Brown next -to that of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wentworth Dilke, in Wentworth Place, -Hampstead, which is not now known by that name. On Brown’s return from -Scotland, the Brawne’s moved to another house in the neighbourhood; but -they afterwards returned to Wentworth Place, occupying the house of -Mr. Dilke. Mr. Severn remembered that when he visited Keats during the -residence of the poet with Brown, Keats used to take his visitor “next -door” to call upon the Brawne family. “The house was double,” wrote Mr. -Severn, “and had side entrances.” - -It is said to have been at the house of Mr. Dilke, who was the -grandfather of the present Baronet of that name, that Keats first met -Miss Brawne. Mr. Dilke eventually gave up possession of his residence in -Wentworth Place, and took quarters in Great Smith Street, Westminster, -where he and Mrs. Dilke went to live in order that their only child, -bearing his father’s name, and afterwards the first Baronet, might be -educated at Westminster School. - -Keats’s well known weakness in regard to the statement of dates leaves -us without such assistance as might be expected from his general -correspondence in fixing the date of this first meeting with Miss -Brawne. I learn from members of her family that it was certainly in 1818; -and, as far as I can judge, it must have been in the last quarter of that -year; for it seems pretty evident that he had not conceived the passion, -which was his “pleasure and torment,” up to the end of October, and had -conceived it before Tom’s death “early in December”; and, as he says in -Letter III of the present series, “the very first week I knew you I wrote -myself your vassal,” we must perforce regard the date of first meeting as -between the end of October and the beginning of December, 1818. - -In conducting the reader to this conclusion it will be necessary to -remove a misapprehension which has been current for nearly thirty years -in regard to a passage in the letter that yields us our starting-point. -This is the long letter to George Keats, dated the 29th of October, 1818, -given in Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._,[2] and commencing at page -227 of Vol. I, wherein is the following passage: - - “The Misses —— are very kind to me, but they have lately - displeased me much, and in this way:—now I am coming the - Richardson!—On my return, the first day I called, they were - in a sort of taking or bustle about a cousin of theirs, who, - having fallen out with her grandpapa in a serious manner, was - invited by Mrs. —— to take asylum in her house. She is an - East-Indian, and ought to be her grandfather’s heir. At the - time I called, Mrs. —— was in conference with her up stairs, - and the young ladies were warm in her praise down stairs, - calling her genteel, interesting, and a thousand other pretty - things, to which I gave no heed, not being partial to nine - days’ wonders. Now all is completely changed: they hate her, - and, from what I hear, she is not without faults of a real - kind; but she has others, which are more apt to make women of - inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at - least, a Charmian: she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine - eyes, and fine manners. When she comes into the room she makes - the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too - fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may - address her: from habit she thinks that _nothing particular_. I - always find myself more at ease with such a woman: the picture - before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot - possibly feel with anything inferior. I am, at such times, - too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: - I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will, - by this time, think I am in love with her, so, before I go - any further, I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one - night, as a tune of Mozart’s might do. I speak of the thing as - a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper - than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very ‘yes’ and - ‘no’ of whose life is to me a banquet. I don’t cry to take - the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave - her behind me. I like her, and her like, because one has no - _sensations_: what we both are is taken for granted. You will - suppose I have, by this, had much talk with her—no such thing; - there are the Misses —— on the look out. They think I don’t - admire her because I don’t stare at her; they call her a flirt - to me—what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in - such a manner that a man is drawn towards her with a magnetic - power; this they call flirting! They do not know things; they - do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she has faults, - the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had. Yet she - is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are - two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things—the - worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly, - spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, - and this Charmian, hold the first place in our minds; in the - latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child’s cradle, - and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man - of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal - being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, - and I should like you to save me. - - ‘I am free from men of pleasure’s cares, - By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs.’ - - This is ‘Lord Byron,’ and is one of the finest things he has - said.” - -Now it is clear from this passage that a lady had made a certain -impression on Keats; and Lord Houghton in his latest publication states -explicitly what is only indicated in general terms in the Memoirs -published in 1848 and 1867,—that the lady here described was Miss Brawne. -In the earlier Memoirs, three letters to Rice, Woodhouse, and Reynolds -follow the long letter to George Keats; then comes the statement that -“the lady alluded to in the above pages inspired Keats with the passion -that only ceased with his existence”; and, as the letter to Reynolds -contains references to a lady, it might have been possible to regard Lord -Houghton’s expression as an allusion to that letter only. But in the -brief and masterly Memoir prefixed to the Aldine Edition of Keats[3], -his Lordship cites the passage from the letter of the 29th of October as -descriptive of Miss Brawne,—thus confirming by explicit statement what -has all along passed current as tradition in literary circles. - -When Lord Houghton’s inestimable volumes of 1848 were given to the world -there might have been indelicacy in making too close a scrutiny into the -bearings of these passages; but the time has now come when such cannot be -the case; and I am enabled to give the grounds on which it is absolutely -certain that the allusion here was not to Miss Brawne. As Lord Houghton -has elsewhere recorded, Keats met Miss Brawne at the house of Mr. and -Mrs. Dilke, who had no daughters, while the relationship of “the Misses -——” and “Mrs. ——” of the passage in question is clearly that of mother -and daughters. Mrs. Brawne had already been settled with her children at -Hampstead for several years at this time, whereas this cousin of “the -Misses ——” had just arrived when Keats returned there from Teignmouth. -The “Charmian” of this anecdote was an East-Indian, having a grandfather -to quarrel with; while Miss Brawne never had a grandfather living during -her life, and her family had not the remotest connexion with the East -Indies. Moreover, Keats’s sister, who is still happily alive, assures me -positively that the reference is not to Miss Brawne. In regard to the -blank for a surname, I had judged from various considerations internal -and external that it should be filled by that of Reynolds; and, on asking -Mr. Severn (without expressing any view whatever) whether he knew to whom -the story related, he wrote to me that he knew the story well from Keats, -and that the reference is to the Misses Reynolds, the sisters of John -Hamilton Reynolds. Mr. Severn does not know the name of the cousin of -these ladies. - -It is clear then that the lady who had impressed Keats some little time -before the 29th of October, 1818, and was still fresh in his mind, was -not Fanny Brawne. That the impression was not lasting the event shewed; -and we may safely assume that it was really limited in the way which -Keats himself averred,—that he was not “in love with her.” But it is -incredible, almost, that, in his affectionate frankness with his brother, -he would ever have written thus of another woman, had he been already -enamoured of Fanny Brawne. This view is strengthened by reading the -letter to the end: in such a perusal we come upon the following passage: - - “Notwithstanding your happiness and your recommendations, I - hope I shall never marry: though the most beautiful creature - were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though - the carpet were of silk, and the curtains of the morning - clouds, the chairs and sofas stuffed with cygnet’s down, the - food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on - Winandermere, I should not feel, or rather my happiness should - not be, so fine; my solitude is sublime—for, instead of what - I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome me home; - the roaring of the wind is my wife; and the stars through my - window-panes are my children; the mighty abstract Idea of - Beauty in all things, I have, stifles the more divided and - minute domestic happiness. An amiable wife and sweet children I - contemplate as part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand - of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart. I feel more - and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do - not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No - sooner am I alone, than shapes of epic greatness are stationed - around me, and serve my spirit the office which is equivalent - to a King’s Body-guard: ‘then Tragedy with scepter’d pall comes - sweeping by:’ according to my state of mind, I am with Achilles - shouting in the trenches, or with Theocritus in the vales of - Sicily; or throw my whole being into Troilus, and, repeating - those lines, ‘I wander like a lost soul upon the Stygian bank, - staying for waftage,’ I melt into the air with a voluptuousness - so delicate, that I am content to be alone. Those things, - combined with the opinion I have formed of the generality of - women, who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give - a sugar-plum than my time, form a barrier against matrimony - which I rejoice in. I have written this that you might see - that I have my share of the highest pleasures of life, and - that though I may choose to pass my days alone, I shall be no - solitary; you see there is nothing splenetic in all this. The - only thing that can ever affect me personally for more than one - short passing day, is any doubt about my powers of poetry: I - seldom have any, and I look with hope to the nighing time when - I shall have none.”[4] - -There is but little after this in the letter, and apparently no break -between the time at which he thus expressed himself and that at which -he signed the letter and added—“This is my birthday.” If therefore my -conclusion as to the negative value of this and the “Charmian” passage be -correct, we may say that he was certainly not enamoured of Miss Brawne -up to the 29th of October, 1818, although it is tolerably clear, from -the evidence of Mr. Dilke, that Keats first met her about October or -November. Again, in a highly interesting and important letter to Keats’s -most intimate friend John Hamilton Reynolds, a letter which Lord Houghton -placed immediately after one to Woodhouse dated the 18th of December, -1818, we read the following ominous passage suggesting a doom not long to -be deferred:— - - “I never was in love, yet the voice and shape of a woman has - haunted me these two days—at such a time when the relief, - the feverish relief of poetry, seems a much less crime. This - morning poetry has conquered—I have relapsed into those - abstractions which are my only life—I feel escaped from a - new, strange, and threatening sorrow, and I am thankful for - it. There is an awful warmth about my heart, like a load of - Immortality. - - “Poor Tom—that woman and poetry were ringing changes in my - senses. Now I am, in comparison, happy.”[5] - -There is no date to this letter; and, although it was most reasonable to -suppose that the fervid expressions used pointed to the real heroine of -the poet’s tragedy,—that he wrote in one of those moments of mastery of -the intellect over the emotions such as he experienced when writing the -extraordinary fifth Letter of the present series,—the fact is that the -reference is to “Charmian,” and that the letter was misplaced by Lord -Houghton. It really belongs to September 1818, and should precede instead -of following this “Charmian” letter. - -When Keats wrote the next letter in Lord Houghton’s series (also undated) -to George and his wife, Tom was dead; and there is another clue to the -date in the fact that he transcribes a letter from Miss Jane Porter dated -the 4th of December, 1818. After making this transcript he proceeds to -draw the following verbal portrait of a young lady: - - “Shall I give you Miss ——? She is about my height, with a - fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort; she wants - sentiment in every feature; she manages to make her hair look - well; her nostrils are very fine, though a little painful; her - mouth is bad and good; her profile is better than her full - face, which, indeed, is not full, but pale and thin, without - showing any bone; her shape is very graceful, and so are her - movements; her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet - tolerable. She is not seventeen, but she is ignorant; monstrous - in her behaviour, flying out in all directions, calling - people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the - term—Minx: this is, I think, from no innate vice, but from a - penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, tired of - such style, and shall decline any more of it. She had a friend - to visit her lately; you have known plenty such—she plays the - music, but without one sensation but the feel of the ivory at - her fingers; she is a downright Miss, without one set-off. - We hated her, and smoked her, and baited her, and, I think, - drove her away. Miss ——, thinks her a paragon of fashion, - and says she is the only woman in the world she would change - persons with. What a stupe,—she is as superior as a rose to a - dandelion.”[6] - -There is nothing explicit as to the date of this passage; but there is no -longer any doubt that this sketch has reference to Miss Brawne, and that -Keats had now found that most dangerous of objects a woman “alternating -attraction and repulsion.” - -The lady’s children assured me that the description answered to the facts -in every particular except that of age: the correct expression would -be “not nineteen”; but Keats was not infallible on such a point; and -the holograph letter in which he wrote “Miss Brawne” in full shews that -he made a mistake as to her age. When he wrote this passage, he was, I -should judge, feeling a certain resentment analogous to what found a -much more tender expression in the first letter of the present series, -when the circumstances made increased tenderness a matter of course,—a -resentment of the feeling that he was becoming enslaved. - -There is no announcement of his engagement in the original letter to -his brother and sister-in-law, which I have read; and it would seem -improbable that he was engaged when he wrote it. But of the journal -letter begun on the 14th of February, 1819, and finished on the 3rd of -May, only a part of the holograph is accessible; and there may possibly -have been such an announcement in the missing part, while, under some -date between the 19th of March and the 15th of April, Keats writes the -following paragraph and sonnet, from which it might be inferred that the -engagement had been announced in an unpublished letter. - - “I am afraid that your anxiety for me leads you to fear for the - violence of my temperament, continually smothered down: for - that reason, I did not intend to have sent you the following - Sonnet; but look over the two last pages, and ask yourself if I - have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. - It will be the best comment on my Sonnet; it will show you that - it was written with no agony but that of ignorance, with no - thirst but that of knowledge, when pushed to the point; though - the first steps to it were through my human passions, they went - away, and I wrote with my mind, and, perhaps, I must confess, a - little bit of my heart. - - Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell: - No God, no Demon of severe response, - Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell. - Then to my human heart I turn at once. - Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone; - I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! - O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, - To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. - Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease, - My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads; - Yet would I on this very midnight cease, - And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds; - Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, - But Death intenser—Death is Life’s high meed.”[7] - -Again in the same letter, on the 15th of April, Keats says “Brown, -this morning, is writing some Spenserian stanzas against Miss B —— and -me,”—a reference, doubtless, to Miss Brawne, probably indicative of the -engagement being an understood thing; and, seemingly on the same date, he -writes as follows: - - “The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more; it is that - one in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca. I had passed - many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of - them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was - one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life; I - floated about the wheeling atmosphere, as it is described, with - a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined, it seemed - for an age; and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I - was warm; ever-flowery tree-tops sprung up, and we rested on - them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind - blew us away again. I tried a Sonnet on it: there are fourteen - lines in it, but nothing of what I felt. Oh! that I could dream - it every night. - - As Hermes once took to his feathers light, - When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept, - So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright, - So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft - The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes, - And seeing it asleep, so fled away, - Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, - Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, - But to that second circle of sad Hell, - Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw - Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell - Their sorrows,—pale were the sweet lips I saw, - Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form - I floated with, about that melancholy storm.”[8] - -The meaning of this dream is sufficiently clear without any light from -the fact that the sonnet itself was written in a little volume given by -Keats to Miss Brawne, a volume of Taylor & Hessey’s miniature edition of -Cary’s Dante, which had remained up to the year 1877 in the possession -of that lady’s family.[9] - -Although the present citation of extant documents does not avail to fix -the date of Keats’s passion more nearly than to shew that it almost -certainly lies somewhere between the 29th of October and beginning of -December, 1818, there can be little doubt that, if a competent person -should be permitted to examine all the original documents concerned, -the date might be ascertained much more nearly;—that is to say that -the particular “first week” of acquaintance in which Keats “wrote -himself the vassal” of Miss Brawne, as he says (see page 13), might be -identified. But in any case it must be well to bring into juxtaposition -these passages bearing upon the subject of the letters now made public. - -The natural inference from all we know of the matter in hand is that -after his brother Tom’s death, Keats’s passion had more time and more -temptation to feed upon itself; and that, as an unoccupied man living -in the same village with the object of that passion, an avowal followed -pretty speedily. It is not surprising that there are no letters to shew -for the first half of the year 1819, during which Keats and Miss Brawne -probably saw each other constantly, and to judge from the expressions in -Letter XI, were in the habit of walking out together. - -The tone of Letter I is unsuggestive of more than a few weeks’ -engagement; but it is impossible, on this alone, to found safely any -conclusion whatever. From the date of that letter, the 3rd of July, -1819, we have plainer sailing for awhile: Keats appears to have remained -in the Isle of Wight till the 11th or 12th of August, when he and Brown -crossed from Cowes to Southampton and proceeded to Winchester. At page -19 we read under the date “9 August,” “This day week we shall move to -Winchester”; but in the letter bearing the postmark of the 16th (though -dated the 17th) Keats says he has been in Winchester four days; so that -the patience of the friends with Shanklin did not hold out for anything -like a week. - -At Winchester the poet remained till the 11th of September, when bad -news from George Keats hurried him up to Town for a few days: he meant -to have returned on the 15th, and was certainly there again by the 22nd, -remaining until some day between the 1st and 10th of October, by which -date he seems to have taken up his abode at lodgings in College Street, -Westminster. Here he cannot have remained long; for on the 19th he was -already proposing to return to Hampstead; and it must have been very soon -after this that he accepted the invitation of Brown to “domesticate with” -him again at Wentworth Place; and on the 19th of the next month he was -writing from that place to his friend and publisher, Taylor.[10] - -This brings us to the fatal winter of 1819-20, during which, until the -date of Keats’s first bad illness, we should not expect any more letters -to Miss Brawne, because, in the natural course of things, he would be -seeing her daily. - -The absence of any current record as to the exact date whereon he was -struck down with that particular phase of his malady which he himself -felt from the first to be fatal, must have seemed peculiarly regretworthy -to Keats’s lovers; but it is not impossible to deduce from the various -materials at command the day to which Lord Houghton’s account refers. -This well-known passage leaves us in no doubt as to the place wherein the -beginning of the end came upon the poet,—the house of Charles Brown; but -the day we must seek for ourselves. - -Passing over such premonitions of disease as that recorded in the letter -to George Keats and his wife dated the 14th of February, 1819, and -printed at page 257 of the first volume of the _Life_, namely that he had -“kept in doors lately, resolved, if possible, to rid” himself of “sore -throat,”—the first date important to bear in mind is Thursday, the 13th -of January, 1820, which is given at the head of a somewhat remarkable -version of a well-known letter addressed to Mrs. George Keats. This -letter first appeared without date in the _Life_; but, on the 25th of -June, 1877, it was printed in the New York _World_, with many striking -variations from the previous text, and with several additions, including -the date already quoted, the genuineness of which I can see no reason -for doubting. The letter begins thus in the _Life, Letters, &c._— - - “My dear Sister, - - By the time you receive this your troubles will be over, and - George have returned to you.” - -In _The World_ it opens thus— - - “My dear Sis.: By the time that you receive this your troubles - will be over. I wish you knew that they were half over; I mean - that George is safe in England, and in good health.” - -It is not my part to account here for the _verbal_ inconsistency between -these two versions; but the inconsistency as regards _fact_, which has -been charged against them, is surely not real. Both versions alike -indicate that Keats was writing with the knowledge that his letter would -not reach Mrs. George Keats till after the return of her husband from -his sudden and short visit to England; and, assuming the genuineness of -another document, this was certainly the case. - -In _The Philobiblion_[11] for August, 1862, was printed a fragment -purporting to be from a letter of Keats’s, which seems to me, on internal -evidence alone, of indubitable authenticity; and, if it is Keats’s, it -must belong to the particular letter now under consideration. It is -headed _Friday 27th_, is written in higher spirits, if anything, than the -rest of this brilliant letter, giving a ludicrous string of comparisons -for Mrs. George Keats’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Henry Wylie, which, together -with a final joke, were apparently deemed unripe for publication in 1848, -being represented by asterisks in the _Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. -49). The fragment closes with the promise of “a close written sheet on -the first of next month,” varying in phrase, just as the _World_ version -of the whole letter varies, from Lord Houghton’s.[12] - -Keats explains, under the inaccurate and unexplicit date _Friday 27th_, -that he has been writing a letter for George to take back to his wife, -has unfortunately forgotten to bring it to town, and will have to send -it on to Liverpool, whither George has departed that morning “by the -coach,” at six o’clock. The 27th of January, 1820, was a Thursday, not a -Friday; and there can be hardly any doubt that George Keats left London -on the 28th of January, 1820, because John, who professed to know nothing -of the days of the month, seems generally to have known the days of -the week; and this Friday cannot have been in any other month: it was -after the 13th of January, and before the 16th of February, on which day -Keats wrote to Rice, referring to his illness.[13] But whether the date -at the head of the fragment should be _Thursday 27th_ or _Friday 28th_ -is immaterial for our present purpose, because the Thursday after that -date would be the same day in either case; and it was on the Thursday -after George left London that Keats was taken ill. This appears from -the following passage extracted by Sir Charles Dilke from a letter of -George Keats’s to John, and communicated to _The Athenæum_ of the 4th of -August, 1877: - - “Louisville, June 18th, 1820. - - My dear John, - - Where will our miseries end? So soon as the Thursday after I - left London you were attacked with a dangerous illness, an hour - after I left this for England my little girl became so ill as - to approach the grave, dragging our dear George after her. - You are recovered (thank [_sic_] I hear the bad and good news - together), they are recovered, and yet....” - -Thus, it was on Thursday, the 3rd of February, 1820, that Keats, as -recounted by Lord Houghton (Vol. II, pp. 53-4), returned home at about -eleven o’clock, “in a state of strange physical excitement,” and told -Brown he had received a severe chill outside the stage-coach,—that he -coughed up some blood on getting into bed, and read in its colour his -death-warrant. Mr. Severn tells me that Keats left his bed-room within a -week of his being taken ill: within a fortnight, as we have seen, he was -so far better as to be writing (dismally enough, it is true) to Rice; -but, that he was confined to the house for some months, is evident. The -whole of the letters forming the second division of the series, Numbers X -to XXXII, seem to me to have been written during this confinement; and I -should doubt whether Keats did much better, if any, than realize his hope -of getting out for a walk on the 1st of May. - -At that time he was not sufficiently recovered to accompany Brown on his -second tour in Scotland; and was yet well enough by the 7th to be at -Gravesend with his friend for the final parting. I understand from the -_Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. 60), that Keats then went at once to -Kentish Town: Lord Houghton says “to lodge at Kentish Town, to be near -his friend Leigh Hunt”; but Hunt says in his _Autobiography_ (1850), -Vol. II, p. 207, “On Brown’s leaving home a second time, ... Keats, who -was too ill to accompany him, came to reside with me, when his last and -best volume of poems appeared....”[14] These accounts are not necessarily -contradictory; for Keats may have tried lodgings _near_ Hunt first, -and moved under the same roof with his friend when the lodgings became -intolerable, as those in College Street had done before. He was reading -the proofs of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ on the 11th of June, as shown by a -letter to Taylor of that date;[15] and, on the 28th, appeared in _The -Indicator_, beside the Sonnet - - “As Hermes once took to his feathers light....” - -the paper entitled “A Now,” at the composition of which Keats is said to -have been not only present but assisting;[16] and, as Hunt wrote pretty -much “from hand to mouth” for _The Indicator_, we may safely assume that -Keats was with him, at all events till just the end of June. On a second -attack of spitting of blood, he returned to Wentworth Place to be nursed -by Mrs. and Miss Brawne; and he was writing from there to Taylor on the -14th of August. - -Between these two attacks he would seem to have written the letters -forming the third series, Numbers XXXIII to XXXVII. I suspect the -desperate tone of Number XXXVII had some weight in bringing about the -return to Wentworth Place; and that this was the last letter Keats -ever wrote to Fanny Brawne; for Mr. Severn tells me that his friend was -absolutely unable to write to her either on the voyage or in Italy. - -There are certain passages in the letters, taking exception to Miss -Brawne’s behaviour, particularly with Charles Armitage Brown, which -should not, I think, be read without making good allowance for the -extreme sensitiveness natural to Keats, and exaggerated to the last -degree by terrible misfortunes. Keats was himself endowed with such -an exquisite refinement of nature, and, without being in any degree a -prophet or propagandist like Shelley, was so intensely in earnest both in -art and in life, that anything that smacked of trifling with the sacred -passion of love must have been to him more horrible and appalling than to -most persons of refinement and culture. Add to this that, for the greater -part of the time during which his good or evil hap cast him near the -object of his affection, his robust spirit of endurance was disarmed by -the advancing operations of disease, and his discomfiture in this behalf -aggravated by material difficulties of the most galling kind; and we need -not be surprised to find things that might otherwise have been deemed -of small account making a violent impression upon him. In a memoir[17] -of his friend Dilke, written by that gentleman’s grandson, there is an -extract from some letter or journal, emanating from whom, and at what -date, we are not told, but probably from Mr. or Mrs. Dilke, and which is -significant enough: it is at page 11: - - “It is quite a settled thing between Keats and Miss ——. God - help them. It’s a bad thing for them. The mother says she - cannot prevent it, and that her only hope is that it will go - off. He don’t like anyone to look at her or to speak to her.” - -This indicates, at all events, a morbid susceptibility on the part -of Keats as to the relations of his betrothed with the rest of the -world, and must be taken into account in weighing his own words in this -connexion. That things went uncomfortably enough to attract the attention -of others is indicated again in an extract which Sir Charles Dilke has -published on the same page with the foregoing, from a letter written to -Mrs. Dilke by Miss Reynolds: - - “I hear that Keats is going to Rome, which must please all his - friends on every account. I sincerely hope it will benefit his - health, poor fellow! His mind and spirits must be bettered - by it; and absence may probably weaken, if not break off, a - connexion that has been a most unhappy one for him.” - -Unhappy, the connexion doubtless was, as the connexion of a doomed man -with the whole world is likely to be; but it would be unfair to assume -that the engagement to Miss Brawne took a more unfortunate turn than any -engagement would probably take for a man circumstanced as Keats was,—a -man without independent means, and debarred by ill-health from earning an -independence. Above all, it would be both unsafe and extremely unfair to -conclude that either Miss Brawne or Keats’s amiable and admirable true -friend Charles Brown was guilty of any real levity. - -That Keats’s passion was the cause of his death is an assumption which -also should be looked at with reserve. Shelley’s immortal Elegy and -Byron’s ribald stanzas have been yoked together to draw down the track -of years the false notion that adverse criticism killed him; and now -that that form of murder has been shewn not to have been committed, -there seems to be a reluctance to admit that there was no killing in the -matter. Sir Charles Dilke says, at page 7 of the Memoir already cited, -that Keats “‘gave in’ to a passion which killed him as surely as ever any -man was killed by love.” This may be perfectly true; for perhaps love -never did kill any man; but surely it must be superfluous to assume any -such dire agency in the decease of a man who had hereditary consumption. -Coleridge’s often-quoted verdict, “There is death in that hand,” does -not stand alone; and the careful reader of Keats’s Life and Letters -will find ample evidence of a state of health likely to lead but to one -result,—such as the passage already cited in regard to his staying at -home determined to rid himself of sore throat, the account of his return, -invalided, from the tour in Scotland, which his friends agreed he ought -never to have undertaken, and his own statement to Mr. Dilke, printed in -the _Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. 7), that he “was not in very good -health” when at Shanklin. - -Lord Houghton’s fine perception of character and implied fact sufficed -to prevent his giving any colour to the supposition that Keats was not -sufficiently cherished and considered in his latter days: the reproaches -that occur in some of the present letters do not lead me to alter the -impression conveyed to me on this subject by his Lordship’s memoirs; -nor do I doubt that others will make the necessary allowance for the -fevered condition of the poet’s mind and the harassed state of body and -spirit. Mr. Severn tells me that Mrs. and Miss Brawne felt the keenest -regret that they had not followed him and Keats to Rome; and, indeed, I -understand that there was some talk of a marriage taking place before -the departure. Even twenty years after Keats’s death, when Mr. Severn -returned to England, the bereaved lady was unable to receive him on -account of the extreme painfulness of the associations connected with him. - -In Sir Charles Dilke’s Memoir of his grandfather, there is a strange -passage wherein he quotes from a letter of Miss Brawne’s written ten -years after Keats’s death,—a passage which might lead to an inference -very far from the truth: - - “Keats died admired only by his personal friends, and by - Shelley; and even ten years after his death, when the first - memoir was proposed, the woman he had loved had so little - belief in his poetic reputation, that she wrote to Mr. Dilke, - ‘The kindest act would be to let him rest for ever in the - obscurity to which circumstances have condemned him.’” - -That Miss Brawne should have written thus at the end of ten years’ -widowhood does not by any means imply weakness of belief in Keats’s -fame. Obscurity of life is not identical with obscurity of works; and any -one must surely perceive that an application made to her for material -for a biography, or even any proposal to publish one, must have been -intensely painful to her. She could not bear any discussion of him, and -was, till her death in 1865, peculiarly reticent about him; but in her -latter years, as a matron with grown-up children, when the world had -decided that Keats was not to be left in that obscurity, she said more -than once that the letters of the poet, which form the present volume, -and about which she was otherwise most uncommunicative, should be -carefully guarded, “as they would some day be considered of value.” - -It would be irrelevant to the present purpose to recount the facts -of this honoured lady’s life; but one or two personal traits may be -recorded. She had the gift of independence or self-sufficingness in a -high degree; and it was not easy to turn her from a settled purpose. -This strength of character showed itself in a noticeable manner in the -great crisis of her life, and in a manner, too, that has to some extent -robbed her of the small credit of devotion to the man whose love she had -accepted; for those who knew the truth would not have it discussed, and -those who decried her did not know the truth. - -On the news of Keats’s death, she cut her hair short and took to a -widow’s cap and mourning. She wandered about solitary, day after day, -on Hampstead Heath, frequently alarming the family by staying there far -into the night, and having to be sought with lanterns. Before friends and -acquaintance she affected a buoyancy of spirit which has tended to wrong -her memory; but her sister carried into advanced life the recollection -that, when the stress of keeping up appearances passed, Fanny spent such -time as she remained at home in her own room,—into which the child would -peer with awe, and see the unwedded widow poring in helpless despair over -Keats’s letters. - -Without being in general a systematic student she was a voluminous -reader in widely varying branches of literature; and some out-of-the-way -subjects she followed up with great perseverance. One of her strong -points of learning was the history of costume, in which she was so well -read as to be able to answer any question of detail at a moment’s notice. -This was quite independent of individual adornment; though, _à propos_ -of Keats’s remark, “she manages to make her hair look well,” it may be -mentioned that some special pains were taken in this particular, the hair -being worn in curls over the forehead, interlaced with ribands. She was -an eager politician, with very strong convictions, fiery and animated in -discussion; and this characteristic she preserved till the end. - -The sonnet on Keats’s preference for blue eyes, - - “Blue! ’tis the hue of heaven,” &c., - -written in reply to John Hamilton Reynolds’s sonnet[18] in which a -preference is expressed for dark eyes,— - - “Dark eyes are dearer far - Than orbs that mock the hyacinthine bell”— - -has no immediate connexion with Miss Brawne; but it is of interest to -note that the colour of her eyes was blue, so that the poet was faithful -to his preference. No good portrait of her is extant, except the -silhouette of which a reproduction is given opposite page 3: a miniature -which is perhaps no longer extant is said by her family to have been -almost worthless, while the silhouette is regarded as characteristic and -accurate as far as such things can be. Mr. Severn, however, told me that -the draped figure in Titian’s picture of Sacred and Profane Love, in the -Borghese Palace at Rome, resembled her greatly, so much so that he used -to visit it frequently, and copied it, on this account. Keats, it seems, -never saw this noble picture containing the only satisfactory likeness of -Fanny Brawne. - -The portrait of Keats which forms the frontispiece to this volume has -been etched by Mr. W. B. Scott from a drawing of Severn’s, to which the -following words are attached: - - “28th Jany. 3 o’clock mg. Drawn to keep me awake—a deadly sweat - was on him all this night.” - -Keats’s old schoolfellow, the late Charles Cowden Clarke, assured me in -1876 that this drawing was “a marvellously correct likeness.” - -_Postscript._—During the past ten years my work in connexion with the -writings and doings of Keats has involved the discovery and examination -of a great mass of documents of a more or less authoritative kind, both -printed and manuscript; and many points which were matters of conjecture -in 1877 are now no longer so. - -Others also have busied themselves about Keats; and, since the foregoing -remarks were first published in 1878, Mr. J. G. Speed, a grandson of -George Keats, has identified himself with the contributor to the New York -_World_, alluded to at pages xlviii and xlix, in reissuing in America -Lord Houghton’s edition of Keats’s Poems, together with a collection of -letters.[19] This work, though containing one new letter, unhappily threw -no real light whatever either on the inconsistencies of text already -referred to or on any other question connected with Keats. Later, -Professor Sidney Colvin has issued, with a very different result, his -volume on Keats[20] included in the “English Men of Letters” series; -and I have not hesitated to use, without individual specification, such -illustrative facts as have become available, whether from Mr. Colvin’s -work or from my own edition of Keats’s whole writings,[21] which also -appeared some time after the publication of the Letters to Fanny Brawne, -though years before Mr. Colvin’s book. - -Two letters, traced since the body of the present volume passed through -the press are added at the close of the series; and I have now reason to -think that the letter numbered XXVIII should precede that numbered XXV, -the date being probably the 23rd or 25th of February, 1820, rather than -the 4th of March as suggested in the foot-note at page 78. - -The cousin of the Misses Reynolds whom Keats described as a Charmian was -Miss Jane Cox,[22] at least so I was most positively assured by Miss -Charlotte Reynolds in 1883. - -It is now pretty clear that the intention to return to Winchester on -the 14th of September, 1819, was not carried out quite literally, and -that Keats really returned to that city on the 15th. In regard to -the foot-note at page 33, it should now be stated that, in a letter -post-marked the 16th of October, 1819, he speaks of having returned to -Hampstead after lodging two or three days in the neighbourhood of Mrs. -Dilke. - -Having mentioned in the foot-note at page 101 that Keats had elsewhere -recorded himself and Tom as firm believers in immortality, I must now -state that the record cited was a garbled one. Lord Houghton, working -from transcripts furnished to him by the late Mr. Jeffrey, the second -husband of George Keats’s widow, printed the words “I have a firm belief -in immortality, and so had Tom.” The corresponding sentence in the -autograph letter is “I have scarce a doubt of an immortality of some kind -or another, neither had Tom.” - -Finally, it remains to supply an omission which I find it hard to account -for. In Medwin’s Life of Shelley occur some important extracts about -Keats, seeming to emanate from Fanny Brawne. In 1877 I learnt from the -lady’s family that Medwin’s mysteriously introduced correspondent was -no other than she. Indeed I had actually cut the relative portion of -Medwin’s book out for use in this Introduction; but by some inexplicable -oversight I omitted even to refer to it; and it remained for Professor -Colvin to call attention to it. I now gladly follow his lead in citing -words which have a direct bearing upon the vexed question of the -appreciation of Keats by her whom he loved; and, in the appendix to the -present edition, the passage in question will be found. - - H. BUXTON FORMAN. - -46 MARLBOROUGH HILL, ST. JOHN’S WOOD, _November, 1888_. - - - - -CORRECTIONS. - - -Page xxxi, line 6 from foot, for _does_ read _did_. - -Page 16, end of foot-note 3, add _or perhaps a dog_. - -Page 18, there should be a foot-note to the effect that _Meleager_ in -line 6 is written _Maleager_ in the original. - -Page 73, end of foot-note, strike out the words _of which period there -are still indications in Letter XXVIII_. - -Page 94, line 2 of note, for _in_ read _on_. - -Page 95, line 2 of notes, for 1819 read 1820. - -Page 96, line 3 of note, for 1819 read 1820. - - - - -LETTERS TO FANNY BRAWNE. - - - - -I TO IX. - -SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER. - - - - -[Illustration: Fanny Brawne from a silhouette by Mons^r Edouart.] - - - - -I-IX. - -SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER. - - -I. - - Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Thursday. - - [_Postmark_, Newport, 3 July, 1819.] - - My dearest Lady, - - I am glad I had not an opportunity of sending off a Letter - which I wrote for you on Tuesday night—’twas too much like - one out of Rousseau’s Heloise. I am more reasonable this - morning. The morning is the only proper time for me to write - to a beautiful Girl whom I love so much: for at night, when - the lonely day has closed, and the lonely, silent, unmusical - Chamber is waiting to receive me as into a Sepulchre, then - believe me my passion gets entirely the sway, then I would - not have you see those Rhapsodies which I once thought it - impossible I should ever give way to, and which I have often - laughed at in another, for fear you should [think me[23]] - either too unhappy or perhaps a little mad. I am now at a - very pleasant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly - country, with a glimpse of the sea; the morning is very fine. - I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I - might have in living here and breathing and wandering as free - as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remembrance of you - did not weigh so upon me. I have never known any unalloy’d - Happiness for many days together: the death or sickness of some - one[24] has always spoilt my hours—and now when none such - troubles oppress me, it is you must confess very hard that - another sort of pain should haunt me. Ask yourself my love - whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so - destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you - must write immediately and do all you can to console me in - it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write - the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch - my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to - express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word - than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were - butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days - with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years - could ever contain. But however selfish I may feel, I am sure I - could never act selfishly: as I told you a day or two before I - left Hampstead, I will never return to London if my Fate does - not turn up Pam[25] or at least a Court-card. Though I could - centre my Happiness in you, I cannot expect to engross your - heart so entirely—indeed if I thought you felt as much for me - as I do for you at this moment I do not think I could restrain - myself from seeing you again tomorrow for the delight of one - embrace. But no—I must live upon hope and Chance. In case of - the worst that can happen, I shall still love you—but what - hatred shall I have for another! Some lines I read the other - day are continually ringing a peal in my ears: - - To see those eyes I prize above mine own - Dart favors on another— - And those sweet lips (yielding immortal nectar) - Be gently press’d by any but myself— - Think, think Francesca, what a cursed thing - It were beyond expression! - - J. - - Do write immediately. There is no Post from this Place, so - you must address Post Office, Newport, Isle of Wight. I know - before night I shall curse myself for having sent you so cold - a Letter; yet it is better to do it as much in my senses as - possible. Be as kind as the distance will permit to your - - J. KEATS. - - Present my Compliments to your mother, my love to Margaret[26] - and best remembrances to your Brother—if you please so. - - -II. - - July 8th. - - [_Postmark_, Newport, 10 July, 1819.] - - My sweet Girl, - - Your Letter gave me more delight than any thing in the world - but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any - absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses - which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive - your influence and a tenderer nature stealing upon me. All my - thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights, have I find not at all - cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am - miserable that you are not with me: or rather breathe in that - dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. I never knew - before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did - not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should - burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be - some fire, ’twill not be more than we can bear when moistened - and bedewed with Pleasures. You mention ‘horrid people’ and - ask me whether it depend upon them whether I see you again. - Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in - my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm - befalling you. I would never see any thing but Pleasure in - your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps. I - would wish to see you among those amusements suitable to your - inclinations and spirits; so that our loves might be a delight - in the midst of Pleasures agreeable enough, rather than a - resource from vexations and cares. But I doubt much, in case - of the worst, whether I shall be philosopher enough to follow - my own Lessons: if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could - not. Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I - could never have lov’d you?—I cannot conceive any beginning - of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort - of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the - highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the - richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love - after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to - my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try - elsewhere its Power. You say you are afraid I shall think you - do not love me—in saying this you make me ache the more to be - near you. I am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do - not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging - some rhymes; and here I must confess, that (since I am on that - subject) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked - me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women - whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to - be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, and only - wish it was a sign that poor Rice would get well whose illness - makes him rather a melancholy companion: and the more so as so - to conquer his feelings and hide them from me, with a forc’d - Pun. I kiss’d your writing over in the hope you had indulg’d me - by leaving a trace of honey. What was your dream? Tell it me - and I will tell you the interpretation thereof. - - Ever yours, my love! - - JOHN KEATS. - - Do not accuse me of delay—we have not here an opportunity of - sending letters every day. Write speedily. - - -III. - - Sunday Night. - - [_Postmark_, 27 July, 1819.[27]] - - My sweet Girl, - - I hope you did not blame me much for not obeying your request - of a Letter on Saturday: we have had four in our small room - playing at cards night and morning leaving me no undisturb’d - opportunity to write. Now Rice and Martin are gone I am at - liberty. Brown to my sorrow confirms the account you give of - your ill health. You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: - how I would die for one hour——for what is in the world? I say - you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with - such eyes upon me as I have upon you: it cannot be. Forgive - me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day - employ’d in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with - you—two things which must excuse me. I have, believe me, not - been an age in letting you take possession of me; the very - first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal; but burnt - the Letter as the very next time I saw you I thought you - manifested some dislike to me. If you should ever feel for Man - at the first sight what I did for you, I am lost. Yet I should - not quarrel with you, but hate myself if such a thing were to - happen—only I should burst if the thing were not as fine as - a Man as you are as a Woman. Perhaps I am too vehement, then - fancy me on my knees, especially when I mention a part of your - Letter which hurt me; you say speaking of Mr. Severn “but you - must be satisfied in knowing that I admired you much more - than your friend.” My dear love, I cannot believe there ever - was or ever could be any thing to admire in me especially as - far as sight goes—I cannot be admired, I am not a thing to be - admired. You are, I love you; all I can bring you is a swooning - admiration of your Beauty. I hold that place among Men which - snub-nos’d brunettes with meeting eyebrows do among women—they - are trash to me—unless I should find one among them with a - fire in her heart like the one that burns in mine. You absorb - me in spite of myself—you alone: for I look not forward with - any pleasure to what is call’d being settled in the world; - I tremble at domestic cares—yet for you I would meet them, - though if it would leave you the happier I would rather die - than do so. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, - your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have - possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world: - it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I - could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. - From no others would I take it. I am indeed astonish’d to find - myself so careless of all charms but yours—remembering as I do - the time when even a bit of ribband was a matter of interest - with me. What softer words can I find for you after this—what - it is I will not read. Nor will I say more here, but in a - Postscript answer any thing else you may have mentioned in your - Letter in so many words—for I am distracted with a thousand - thoughts. I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray - to your star like a Heathen. - - Your’s ever, fair Star, - - JOHN KEATS. - - My seal is mark’d like a family table cloth with my Mother’s - initial F for Fanny:[28] put between my Father’s initials. You - will soon hear from me again. My respectful Compliments to your - Mother. Tell Margaret I’ll send her a reef of best rocks and - tell Sam[29] I will give him my light bay hunter if he will tie - the Bishop hand and foot and pack him in a hamper and send him - down for me to bathe him for his health with a Necklace of good - snubby stones about his Neck.[30] - - -IV. - - Shanklin, Thursday Night. - - [_Postmark,_ Newport, 9 August, 1819.] - - My dear Girl, - - You say you must not have any more such Letters as the last: - I’ll try that you shall not by running obstinate the other - way. Indeed I have not fair play—I am not idle enough for - proper downright love-letters—I leave this minute a scene in - our Tragedy[31] and see you (think it not blasphemy) through - the mist of Plots, speeches, counterplots and counterspeeches. - The Lover is madder than I am—I am nothing to him—he has a - figure like the Statue of Meleager and double distilled fire - in his heart. Thank God for my diligence! were it not for - that I should be miserable. I encourage it, and strive not to - think of you—but when I have succeeded in doing so all day and - as far as midnight, you return, as soon as this artificial - excitement goes off, more severely from the fever I am left - in. Upon my soul I cannot say what you could like me for. I - do not think myself a fright any more than I do Mr. A., Mr. - B., and Mr. C.—yet if I were a woman I should not like A. B. - C. But enough of this. So you intend to hold me to my promise - of seeing you in a short time. I shall keep it with as much - sorrow as gladness: for I am not one of the Paladins of old - who liv’d upon water grass and smiles for years together. What - though would I not give tonight for the gratification of my - eyes alone? This day week we shall move to Winchester; for I - feel the want of a Library.[32] Brown will leave me there to - pay a visit to Mr. Snook at Bedhampton: in his absence I will - flit to you and back. I will stay very little while, for as I - am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have - its course bad or good—in it I shall try my own strength and - the public pulse. At Winchester I shall get your Letters more - readily; and it being a cathedral City I shall have a pleasure - always a great one to me when near a Cathedral, of reading them - during the service up and down the Aisle. - - _Friday Morning._—Just as I had written thus far last night, - Brown came down in his morning coat and nightcap, saying he - had been refresh’d by a good sleep and was very hungry. I left - him eating and went to bed, being too tired to enter into - any discussions. You would delight very greatly in the walks - about here; the Cliffs, woods, hills, sands, rocks &c. about - here. They are however not so fine but I shall give them a - hearty good bye to exchange them for my Cathedral.—Yet again - I am not so tired of Scenery as to hate Switzerland. We might - spend a pleasant year at Berne or Zurich—if it should please - Venus to hear my “Beseech thee to hear us O Goddess.” And - if she should hear, God forbid we should what people call, - _settle_—turn into a pond, a stagnant Lethe—a vile crescent, - row or buildings. Better be imprudent moveables than prudent - fixtures. Open my Mouth at the Street door like the Lion’s head - at Venice to receive hateful cards, letters, messages. Go out - and wither at tea parties; freeze at dinners; bake at dances; - simmer at routs. No my love, trust yourself to me and I will - find you nobler amusements, fortune favouring. I fear you will - not receive this till Sunday or Monday: as the Irishman would - write do not in the mean while hate me. I long to be off for - Winchester, for I begin to dislike the very door-posts here—the - names, the pebbles. You ask after my health, not telling me - whether you are better. I am quite well. You going out is no - proof that you are: how is it? Late hours will do you great - harm. What fairing is it? I was alone for a couple of days - while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient - knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man’s, yet - regretted his return—it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt. - I had got in a dream among my Books—really luxuriating in a - solitude and silence you alone should have disturb’d. - - Your ever affectionate - - JOHN KEATS. - - -V. - - Winchester, August 17th.[33] - - [_Postmark_, 16 August, 1819.] - - My dear Girl—what shall I say for myself? I have been here - four days and not yet written you—’tis true I have had many - teasing letters of business to dismiss—and I have been in the - Claws, like a serpent in an Eagle’s, of the last act of our - Tragedy. This is no excuse; I know it; I do not presume to - offer it. I have no right either to ask a speedy answer to - let me know how lenient you are—I must remain some days in a - Mist—I see you through a Mist: as I daresay you do me by this - time. Believe in the first Letters I wrote you: I assure you I - felt as I wrote—I could not write so now. The thousand images I - have had pass through my brain—my uneasy spirits—my unguess’d - fate—all spread as a veil between me and you. Remember I have - had no idle leisure to brood over you—’tis well perhaps I - have not. I could not have endured the throng of jealousies - that used to haunt me before I had plunged so deeply into - imaginary interests. I would fain, as my sails are set, sail - on without an interruption for a Brace of Months longer—I am - in complete cue—in the fever; and shall in these four Months - do an immense deal. This Page as my eye skims over it I see is - excessively unloverlike and ungallant—I cannot help it—I am - no officer in yawning quarters; no Parson-Romeo. My Mind is - heap’d to the full; stuff’d like a cricket ball—if I strive to - fill it more it would burst. I know the generality of women - would hate me for this; that I should have so unsoften’d, so - hard a Mind as to forget them; forget the brightest realities - for the dull imaginations of my own Brain. But I conjure you - to give it a fair thinking; and ask yourself whether ’tis not - better to explain my feelings to you, than write artificial - Passion.—Besides, you would see through it. It would be vain - to strive to deceive you. ’Tis harsh, harsh, I know it. My - heart seems now made of iron—I could not write a proper answer - to an invitation to Idalia. You are my Judge: my forehead is - on the ground. You seem offended at a little simple innocent - childish playfulness in my last. I did not seriously mean to - say that you were endeavouring to make me keep my promise. I - beg your pardon for it. ’Tis but _just_ your Pride should - take the alarm—_seriously_. You say I may do as I please—I do - not think with any conscience I can; my cash resources are for - the present stopp’d; I fear for some time. I spend no money, - but it increases my debts. I have all my life thought very - little of these matters—they seem not to belong to me. It may - be a proud sentence; but by Heaven I am as entirely above all - matters of interest as the Sun is above the Earth—and though - of my own money I should be careless; of my Friends’ I must be - spare. You see how I go on—like so many strokes of a hammer. - I cannot help it—I am impell’d, driven to it. I am not happy - enough for silken Phrases, and silver sentences. I can no more - use soothing words to you than if I were at this moment engaged - in a charge of Cavalry. Then you will say I should not write at - all.—Should I not? This Winchester is a fine place: a beautiful - Cathedral and many other ancient buildings in the Environs. - The little coffin of a room at Shanklin is changed for a large - room, where I can promenade at my pleasure—looks out onto a - beautiful—blank side of a house. It is strange I should like it - better than the view of the sea from our window at Shanklin. I - began to hate the very posts there—the voice of the old Lady - over the way was getting a great Plague. The Fisherman’s face - never altered any more than our black teapot—the knob however - was knock’d off to my little relief. I am getting a great - dislike of the picturesque; and can only relish it over again - by seeing you enjoy it. One of the pleasantest things I have - seen lately was at Cowes. The Regent in his Yatch[34] (I think - they spell it) was anchored opposite—a beautiful vessel—and all - the Yatchs and boats on the coast were passing and repassing - it; and circuiting and tacking about it in every direction—I - never beheld anything so silent, light, and graceful.—As we - pass’d over to Southampton, there was nearly an accident. - There came by a Boat well mann’d, with two naval officers at - the stern. Our Bow-lines took the top of their little mast - and snapped it off close by the board. Had the mast been a - little stouter they would have been upset. In so trifling an - event I could not help admiring our seamen—neither officer nor - man in the whole Boat moved a muscle—they scarcely notic’d it - even with words. Forgive me for this flint-worded Letter, and - believe and see that I cannot think of you without some sort of - energy—though mal à propos. Even as I leave off it seems to me - that a few more moments’ thought of you would uncrystallize and - dissolve me. I must not give way to it—but turn to my writing - again—if I fail I shall die hard. O my love, your lips are - growing sweet again to my fancy—I must forget them. Ever your - affectionate - - KEATS. - - -VI. - - Fleet Street,[35] Monday Morn. - - [_Postmark_, Lombard Street, 14 September, 1819.] - - My dear Girl, - - I have been hurried to town by a Letter from my brother George; - it is not of the brightest intelligence. Am I mad or not? - I came by the Friday night coach and have not yet been to - Hampstead. Upon my soul it is not my fault. I cannot resolve - to mix any pleasure with my days: they go one like another, - undistinguishable. If I were to see you today it would - destroy the half comfortable sullenness I enjoy at present - into downright perplexities. I love you too much to venture - to Hampstead, I feel it is not paying a visit, but venturing - into a fire. _Que feraije?_ as the French novel writers say - in fun, and I in earnest: really what can I do? Knowing well - that my life must be passed in fatigue and trouble, I have - been endeavouring to wean myself from you: for to myself alone - what can be much of a misery? As far as they regard myself - I can despise all events: but I cannot cease to love you. - This morning I scarcely know what I am doing. I am going to - Walthamstow. I shall return to Winchester tomorrow;[36] whence - you shall hear from me in a few days. I am a Coward, I cannot - bear the pain of being happy: ’tis out of the question: I must - admit no thought of it. - - Yours ever affectionately - - JOHN KEATS. - - -VII. - - College Street.[37] - - [_Postmark_, 11 October, 1819.] - - My sweet Girl, - - I am living today in yesterday: I was in a complete fascination - all day. I feel myself at your mercy. Write me ever so few - lines and tell me you will never for ever be less kind to - me than yesterday.—You dazzled me. There is nothing in the - world so bright and delicate. When Brown came out with that - seemingly true story against me last night, I felt it would - be death to me if you had ever believed it—though against any - one else I could muster up my obstinacy. Before I knew Brown - could disprove it I was for the moment miserable. When shall - we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which - with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the - thousand and first—’twould put me to the proof how great a - misery I could live through. If you should ever carry your - threat yesterday into execution—believe me ’tis not my pride, - my vanity or any petty passion would torment me—really ’twould - hurt my heart—I could not bear it. I have seen Mrs. Dilke this - morning; she says she will come with me any fine day. - - Ever yours - - JOHN KEATS. - - Ah hertè mine! - - -VIII. - - 25 College Street. - - [_Postmark_, 13 October, 1819.] - - My dearest Girl, - - This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I - cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a - line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from - my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of - nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise - and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My - love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am - forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to - stop there—I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a - sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I - should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing - you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My - sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I - have no limit now to my love.... Your note came in just here. I - cannot be happier away from you. ’Tis richer than an Argosy of - Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished - that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shudder’d at it. - I shudder no more—I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is - my religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed - is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away - by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw - you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often - “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no - more—the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot - breathe without you. - - Yours for ever - - JOHN KEATS. - - -IX. - - Great Smith Street, Tuesday Morn. - - [_Postmark_, College Street, 19 October, 1819.] - - My sweet Fanny, - - On awakening from my three days dream (“I cry to dream - again”) I find one and another astonish’d at my idleness and - thoughtlessness. I was miserable last night—the morning is - always restorative. I must be busy, or try to be so. I have - several things to speak to you of tomorrow morning. Mrs. - Dilke I should think will tell you that I purpose living at - Hampstead. I must impose chains upon myself. I shall be able to - do nothing. I should like to cast the die for Love or death. I - have no Patience with any thing else—if you ever intend to be - cruel to me as you say in jest now but perhaps may sometimes - be in earnest, be so now—and I will—my mind is in a tremble, I - cannot tell what I am writing. - - Ever my love yours - - JOHN KEATS. - - - - -X TO XXXII. - -WENTWORTH PLACE. - - - - -X—XXXII. - -WENTWORTH PLACE. - - -X. - - Dearest Fanny, I shall send this the moment you return. They - say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The - consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of - the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently: - this evening, without fail—when you must not mind about my - speaking in a low tone for I am ordered to do so though I _can_ - speak out. - - Yours ever sweetest love.— - - J. KEATS. - - turn over - - Perhaps your Mother is not at home and so you must wait till - she comes. You must see me tonight and let me hear you promise - to come tomorrow. - - Brown told me you were all out. I have been looking for the - stage the whole afternoon. Had I known this I could not have - remain’d so silent all day. - - -XI. - - My dearest Girl, - - If illness makes such an agreeable variety in the manner of - your eyes I should wish you sometimes to be ill. I wish I had - read your note before you went last night that I might have - assured you how far I was from suspecting any coldness. You - had a just right to be a little silent to one who speaks so - plainly to you. You must believe—you shall, you will—that I - can do nothing, say nothing, think nothing of you but what - has its spring in the Love which has so long been my pleasure - and torment. On the night I was taken ill—when so violent a - rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated—I - assure you I felt it possible I might not survive, and at that - moment thought of nothing but you. When I said to Brown “this - is unfortunate”[38] I thought of you. ’Tis true that since - the first two or three days other subjects have entered my - head.[39] I shall be looking forward to Health and the Spring - and a regular routine of our old Walks. - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XII. - - My sweet love, I shall wait patiently till tomorrow before I - see you, and in the mean time, if there is any need of such - a thing, assure you by your Beauty, that whenever I have at - any time written on a certain unpleasant subject, it has been - with your welfare impress’d upon my mind. How hurt I should - have been had you ever acceded to what is, notwithstanding, - very reasonable! How much the more do I love you from the - general result! In my present state of Health I feel too much - separated from you and could almost speak to you in the words - of Lorenzo’s Ghost to Isabella - - “Your Beauty grows upon me and I feel - A greater love through all my essence steal.” - - My greatest torment since I have known you has been the - fear of you being a little inclined to the Cressid; but that - suspicion I dismiss utterly and remain happy in the surety of - your Love, which I assure you is as much a wonder to me as a - delight. Send me the words ‘Good night’ to put under my pillow. - - Dearest Fanny, - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XIII. - - My dearest Girl, - - According to all appearances I am to be separated from you as - much as possible. How I shall be able to bear it, or whether - it will not be worse than your presence now and then, I cannot - tell. I must be patient, and in the mean time you must think - of it as little as possible. Let me not longer detain you from - going to Town—there may be no end to this imprisoning of you. - Perhaps you had better not come before tomorrow evening: send - me however without fail a good night. - - You know our situation——what hope is there if I should be - recovered ever so soon—my very health will not suffer me to - make any great exertion. I am recommended not even to read - poetry, much less write it. I wish I had even a little hope. - I cannot say forget me—but I would mention that there are - impossibilities in the world. No more of this. I am not strong - enough to be weaned—take no notice of it in your good night. - - Happen what may I shall ever be my dearest Love - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XIV. - - My dearest Girl, how could it ever have been my wish to forget - you? how could I have said such a thing? The utmost stretch my - mind has been capable of was to endeavour to forget you for - your own sake seeing what a chance there was of my remaining - in a precarious state of health. I would have borne it as I - would bear death if fate was in that humour: but I should as - soon think of choosing to die as to part from you. Believe too - my Love that our friends think and speak for the best, and - if their best is not our best it is not their fault. When I - am better I will speak with you at large on these subjects, - if there is any occasion—I think there is none. I am rather - nervous today perhaps from being a little recovered and - suffering my mind to take little excursions beyond the doors - and windows. I take it for a good sign, but as it must not be - encouraged you had better delay seeing me till tomorrow. Do not - take the trouble of writing much: merely send me my good night. - - Remember me to your Mother and Margaret. - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XV. - - My dearest Fanny, - - Then all we have to do is to be patient. Whatever violence I - may sometimes do myself by hinting at what would appear to any - one but ourselves a matter of necessity, I do not think I could - bear any approach of a thought of losing you. I slept well last - night, but cannot say that I improve very fast. I shall expect - you tomorrow, for it is certainly better that I should see you - seldom. Let me have your good night. - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XVI. - - My dearest Fanny, - - I read your note in bed last night, and that might be the - reason of my sleeping so much better. I think Mr Brown[40] - is right in supposing you may stop too long with me, so very - nervous as I am. Send me every evening a written Good night. If - you come for a few minutes about six it may be the best time. - Should you ever fancy me too low-spirited I must warn you to - ascribe it to the medicine I am at present taking which is of - a nerve-shaking nature. I shall impute any depression I may - experience to this cause. I have been writing with a vile old - pen the whole week, which is excessively ungallant. The fault - is in the Quill: I have mended it and still it is very much - inclin’d to make blind es. However these last lines are in a - much better style of penmanship, tho’ a little disfigured by - the smear of black currant jelly; which has made a little mark - on one of the pages of Brown’s Ben Jonson, the very best book - he has. I have lick’d it but it remains very purple. I did not - know whether to say purple or blue so in the mixture of the - thought wrote purplue which may be an excellent name for a - colour made up of those two, and would suit well to start next - spring. Be very careful of open doors and windows and going - without your duffle grey. God bless you Love! - - J. KEATS. - - P.S. I am sitting in the back room. Remember me to your Mother. - - -XVII. - - My dear Fanny, - - Do not let your mother suppose that you hurt me by writing at - night. For some reason or other your last night’s note was not - so treasureable as former ones. I would fain that you call me - _Love_ still. To see you happy and in high spirits is a great - consolation to me—still let me believe that you are not half - so happy as my restoration would make you. I am nervous, I - own, and may think myself worse than I really am; if so you - must indulge me, and pamper with that sort of tenderness you - have manifested towards me in different Letters. My sweet - creature when I look back upon the pains and torments I have - suffer’d for you from the day I left you to go to the Isle of - Wight; the ecstasies in which I have pass’d some days and the - miseries in their turn, I wonder the more at the Beauty which - has kept up the spell so fervently. When I send this round I - shall be in the front parlour watching to see you show yourself - for a minute in the garden. How illness stands as a barrier - betwixt me and you! Even if I was well——I must make myself as - good a Philosopher as possible. Now I have had opportunities of - passing nights anxious and awake I have found other thoughts - intrude upon me. “If I should die,” said I to myself, “I have - left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends - proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty - in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself - remember’d.” Thoughts like these came very feebly whilst I - was in health and every pulse beat for you—now you divide with - this (may _I_ say it?) “last infirmity of noble minds” all my - reflection. - - God bless you, Love. - - J. KEATS. - - -XVIII. - - My dearest Girl, - - You spoke of having been unwell in your last note: have you - recover’d? That note has been a great delight to me. I am - stronger than I was: the Doctors say there is very little the - matter with me, but I cannot believe them till the weight and - tightness of my Chest is mitigated. I will not indulge or pain - myself by complaining of my long separation from you. God alone - knows whether I am destined to taste of happiness with you: at - all events I myself know thus much, that I consider it no mean - Happiness to have lov’d you thus far—if it is to be no further - I shall not be unthankful—if I am to recover, the day of my - recovery shall see me by your side from which nothing shall - separate me. If well you are the only medicine that can keep me - so. Perhaps, aye surely, I am writing in too depress’d a state - of mind—ask your Mother to come and see me—she will bring you a - better account than mine. - - Ever your affectionate - - JOHN KEATS. - - -XIX. - - My dearest Girl, - - Indeed I will not deceive you with respect to my Health. This - is the fact as far as I know. I have been confined three - weeks[41] and am not yet well—this proves that there is - something wrong about me which my constitution will either - conquer or give way to. Let us hope for the best. Do you hear - the Thrush singing over the field? I think it is a sign of mild - weather—so much the better for me. Like all Sinners now I am - ill I philosophize, aye out of my attachment to every thing, - Trees, Flowers, Thrushes, Spring, Summer, Claret, &c. &c.—aye - every thing but you.—My sister would be glad of my company a - little longer. That Thrush is a fine fellow. I hope he was - fortunate in his choice this year. Do not send any more of - my Books home. I have a great pleasure in the thought of you - looking on them. - - Ever yours my sweet Fanny - - J. K. - - -XX. - - My dearest Girl, - - I continue much the same as usual, I think a little better. My - spirits are better also, and consequently I am more resign’d to - my confinement. I dare not think of you much or write much to - you. Remember me to all. - - Ever your affectionate - - JOHN KEATS. - - -XXI. - - My dear Fanny, - - I think you had better not make any long stay with me when Mr. - Brown is at home. Whenever he goes out you may bring your work. - You will have a pleasant walk today. I shall see you pass. I - shall follow you with my eyes over the Heath. Will you come - towards evening instead of before dinner? When you are gone, - ’tis past—if you do not come till the evening I have something - to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a - moment when you have read this. Thank your Mother, for the - preserves, for me. The raspberry will be too sweet not having - any acid; therefore as you are so good a girl I shall make you - a present of it. Good bye - - My sweet Love! - - J. KEATS. - - -XXII. - - My dearest Fanny, - - The power of your benediction is of not so weak a nature as - to pass from the ring in four and twenty hours—it is like a - sacred Chalice once consecrated and ever consecrate. I shall - kiss your name and mine where your Lips have been—Lips! why - should a poor prisoner as I am talk about such things? Thank - God, though I hold them the dearest pleasures in the universe, - I have a consolation independent of them in the certainty - of your affection. I could write a song in the style of Tom - Moore’s Pathetic about Memory if that would be any relief to - me. No—’twould not. I will be as obstinate as a Robin, I will - not sing in a cage. Health is my expected heaven and you are - the Houri——this word I believe is both singular and plural—if - only plural, never mind—you are a thousand of them. - - Ever yours affectionately my dearest, - - J. K. - - You had better not come to day. - - -XXIII. - - My dearest Love, - - You must not stop so long in the cold—I have been suspecting - that window to be open.—Your note half-cured me. When I want - some more oranges I will tell you—these are just à propos. I am - kept from food so feel rather weak—otherwise very well. Pray do - not stop so long upstairs—it makes me uneasy—come every now and - then and stop a half minute. Remember me to your Mother. - - Your ever affectionate - - J. KEATS. - - -XXIV. - - Sweetest Fanny, - - You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish? My - dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The - more I have known the more have I lov’d. In every way—even - my jealousies have been agonies of Love, in the hottest fit - I ever had I would have died for you. I have vex’d you too - much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The - last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the - brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d - my window home yesterday, I was fill’d with as much admiration - as if I had then seen you for the first time. You uttered - a half complaint once that I only lov’d your beauty. Have I - nothing else then to love in you but that? Do not I see a heart - naturally furnish’d with wings imprison itself with me? No ill - prospect has been able to turn your thoughts a moment from me. - This perhaps should be as much a subject of sorrow as joy—but I - will not talk of that. Even if you did not love me I could not - help an entire devotion to you: how much more deeply then must - I feel for you knowing you love me. My Mind has been the most - discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too - small for it. I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with - complete and undistracted enjoyment—upon no person but you. - When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: - you always concentrate my whole senses. The anxiety shown about - our Loves in your last note is an immense pleasure to me: - however you must not suffer such speculations to molest you any - more: nor will I any more believe you can have the least pique - against me. Brown is gone out—but here is Mrs. Wylie[42]—when - she is gone I shall be awake for you.—Remembrances to your - Mother. - - Your affectionate - - J. KEATS. - - -XXV. - - My dear Fanny, - - I am much better this morning than I was a week ago: indeed I - improve a little every day. I rely upon taking a walk with you - upon the first of May: in the mean time undergoing a babylonish - captivity I shall not be jew enough to hang up my harp upon - a willow, but rather endeavour to clear up my arrears in - versifying, and with returning health begin upon something new: - pursuant to which resolution it will be necessary to have my or - rather Taylor’s manuscript,[43] which you, if you please, will - send by my Messenger either today or tomorrow. Is Mr. D.[44] - with you today? You appeared very much fatigued last night: you - must look a little brighter this morning. I shall not suffer - my little girl ever to be obscured like glass breath’d upon, - but always bright as it is her _nature to_. Feeding upon sham - victuals and sitting by the fire will completely annul me. I - have no need of an enchanted wax figure to duplicate me, for - I am melting in my proper person before the fire. If you meet - with anything better (worse) than common in your Magazines let - me see it. - - Good bye my sweetest Girl. - - J. K. - - -XXVI. - - My dearest Fanny, whenever you know me to be alone, come, no - matter what day. Why will you go out this weather? I shall - not fatigue myself with writing too much I promise you. Brown - says I am getting stouter.[45] I rest well and from last - night do not remember any thing horrid in my dream, which is a - capital symptom, for any organic derangement always occasions a - Phantasmagoria. It will be a nice idle amusement to hunt after - a motto for my Book which I will have if lucky enough to hit - upon a fit one—not intending to write a preface. I fear I am - too late with my note—you are gone out—you will be as cold as a - topsail in a north latitude—I advise you to furl yourself and - come in a doors. - - Good bye Love. - - J. K. - - -XXVII. - - My dearest Fanny, I slept well last night and am no worse this - morning for it. Day by day if I am not deceived I get a more - unrestrain’d use of my Chest. The nearer a racer gets to the - Goal the more his anxiety becomes; so I lingering upon the - borders of health feel my impatience increase. Perhaps on your - account I have imagined my illness more serious than it is: - how horrid was the chance of slipping into the ground instead - of into your arms—the difference is amazing Love. Death must - come at last; Man must die, as Shallow says; but before that - is my fate I fain would try what more pleasures than you have - given, so sweet a creature as you can give. Let me have another - opportunity of years before me and I will not die without - being remember’d. Take care of yourself dear that we may both - be well in the Summer. I do not at all fatigue myself with - writing, having merely to put a line or two here and there, a - Task which would worry a stout state of the body and mind, but - which just suits me as I can do no more. - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - -[Illustration] - -[Illustration] - -[Illustration] - -[Illustration] - - -XXVIII. - - My dearest Fanny, - - I had a better night last night than I have had since my - attack, and this morning I am the same as when you saw me. I - have been turning over two volumes of Letters written between - Rousseau and two Ladies in the perplexed strain of mingled - finesse and sentiment in which the Ladies and gentlemen of - those days were so clever, and which is still prevalent among - Ladies of this Country who live in a state of reasoning - romance. The likeness however only extends to the mannerism, - not to the dexterity. What would Rousseau have said at seeing - our little correspondence! What would his Ladies have said! - I don’t care much—I would sooner have Shakspeare’s opinion - about the matter. The common gossiping of washerwomen must be - less disgusting than the continual and eternal fence and attack - of Rousseau and these sublime Petticoats. One calls herself - Clara and her friend Julia, two of Rousseau’s heroines—they all - [_sic_, but qy. _at_] the same time christen poor Jean Jacques - St. Preux—who is the pure cavalier of his famous novel. Thank - God I am born in England with our own great Men before my eyes. - Thank God that you are fair and can love me without being - Letter-written and sentimentaliz’d into it.—Mr. Barry Cornwall - has sent me another Book, his first, with a polite note.[46] I - must do what I can to make him sensible of the esteem I have - for his kindness. If this north east would take a turn it would - be so much the better for me. Good bye, my love, my dear love, - my beauty— - - love me for ever. - - J. K. - - -XXIX. - - My dearest Fanny, - - Though I shall see you in so short a time I cannot forbear - sending you a few lines. You say I did not give you yesterday a - minute account of my health. Today I have left off the Medicine - which I took to keep the pulse down and I find I can do very - well without it, which is a very favourable sign, as it shows - there is no inflammation remaining. You think I may be wearied - at night you say: it is my best time; I am at my best about - eight o’Clock. I received a Note from Mr. Procter[47] today. - He says he cannot pay me a visit this weather as he is fearful - of an inflammation in the Chest. What a horrid climate this - is? or what careless inhabitants it has? You are one of them. - My dear girl do not make a joke of it: do not expose yourself - to the cold. There’s the Thrush again—I can’t afford it—he’ll - run me up a pretty Bill for Music—besides he ought to know I - deal at Clementi’s. How can you bear so long an imprisonment at - Hampstead? I shall always remember it with all the gusto that a - monopolizing carle should. I could build an Altar to you for it. - - Your affectionate - - J. K. - - -XXX. - - My dearest Girl, - - As, from the last part of my note you must see how gratified I - have been by your remaining at home, you might perhaps conceive - that I was equally bias’d the other way by your going to Town, - I cannot be easy tonight without telling you you would be - wrong to suppose so. Though I am pleased with the one, I am - not displeased with the other. How do I dare to write in this - manner about my pleasures and displeasures? I will tho’ whilst - I am an invalid, in spite of you. Good night, Love! - - J. K. - - -XXXI. - - My dearest Girl, - - In consequence of our company I suppose I shall not see you - before tomorrow. I am much better today—indeed all I have to - complain of is want of strength and a little tightness in the - Chest. I envied Sam’s walk with you today; which I will not do - again as I may get very tired of envying. I imagine you now - sitting in your new black dress which I like so much and if - I were a little less selfish and more enthusiastic I should - run round and surprise you with a knock at the door. I fear - I am too prudent for a dying kind of Lover. Yet, there is a - great difference between going off in warm blood like Romeo, - and making one’s exit like a frog in a frost. I had nothing - particular to say today, but not intending that there shall be - any interruption to our correspondence (which at some future - time I propose offering to Murray) I write something. God bless - you my sweet Love! Illness is a long lane, but I see you at the - end of it, and shall mend my pace as well as possible. - - J. K. - - -XXXII. - - Dear Girl, - - Yesterday you must have thought me worse than I really was. I - assure you there was nothing but regret at being obliged to - forego an embrace which has so many times been the highest - gust of my Life. I would not care for health without it. Sam - would not come in—I wanted merely to ask him how you were - this morning. When one is not quite well we turn for relief - to those we love: this is no weakness of spirit in me: you - know when in health I thought of nothing but you; when I shall - again be so it will be the same. Brown has been mentioning - to me that some hint from Sam, last night, occasions him - some uneasiness. He whispered something to you concerning - Brown and old Mr. Dilke[48] which had the complexion of being - something derogatory to the former. It was connected with - an anxiety about Mr. D. Sr’s death and an anxiety to set - out for Chichester. These sort of hints point out their own - solution: one cannot pretend to a delicate ignorance on the - subject: you understand the whole matter. If any one, my sweet - Love, has misrepresented, to you, to your Mother or Sam, any - circumstances which are at all likely, at a tenth remove, to - create suspicions among people who from their own interested - notions slander others, pray tell me: for I feel the least - attaint on the disinterested character of Brown very deeply. - Perhaps Reynolds or some other of my friends may come towards - evening, therefore you may choose whether you will come to see - me early today before or after dinner as you may think fit. - Remember me to your Mother and tell her to drag you to me if - you show the least reluctance— - - ... - - - - -XXXIII to XXXVII. - -KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY. - - - - -XXXIII-XXXVII. - -KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY. - - -XXXIII. - - My dearest Girl, - - I endeavour to make myself as patient as possible. Hunt amuses - me very kindly—besides I have your ring on my finger and your - flowers on the table. I shall not expect to see you yet because - it would be so much pain to part with you again. When the - Books you want come you shall have them. I am very well this - afternoon. My dearest ... - - [Signature cut off.[49]] - - -XXXIV. - - Tuesday Afternoon. - - My dearest Fanny, - - For this Week past I have been employed in marking the most - beautiful passages in Spenser, intending it for you, and - comforting myself in being somehow occupied to give you however - small a pleasure. It has lightened my time very much. I am much - better. God bless you. - - Your affectionate - - J. KEATS. - - -XXXV. - - Wednesday Morning. - - My dearest Fanny, - - I have been a walk this morning with a book in my hand, but as - usual I have been occupied with nothing but you: I wish I could - say in an agreeable manner. I am tormented day and night. They - talk of my going to Italy. ’Tis certain I shall never recover - if I am to be so long separate from you: yet with all this - devotion to you I cannot persuade myself into any confidence - of you. Past experience connected with the fact of my long - separation from you gives me agonies which are scarcely to be - talked of. When your mother comes I shall be very sudden and - expert in asking her whether you have been to Mrs. Dilke’s, for - she might say no to make me easy. I am literally worn to death, - which seems my only recourse. I cannot forget what has pass’d. - What? nothing with a man of the world, but to me deathful. I - will get rid of this as much as possible. When you were in the - habit of flirting with Brown you would have left off, could - your own heart have felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown - is a good sort of Man—he did not know he was doing me to death - by inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in - my side now; and for that cause, though he has done me many - services, though I know his love and friendship for me, though - at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his - assistance, I will never see or speak to him[50] until we are - both old men, if we are to be. I _will_ resent my heart having - been made a football. You will call this madness. I have heard - you say that it was not unpleasant to wait a few years—you have - amusements—your mind is away—you have not brooded over one - idea as I have, and how should you? You are to me an object - intensely desirable—the air I breathe in a room empty of you is - unhealthy. I am not the same to you—no—you can wait—you have a - thousand activities—you can be happy without me. Any party, any - thing to fill up the day has been enough. How have you pass’d - this month?[51] Who have you smil’d with? All this may seem - savage in me. You do not feel as I do—you do not know what it - is to love—one day you may—your time is not come. Ask yourself - how many unhappy hours Keats has caused you in Loneliness. For - myself I have been a Martyr the whole time, and for this reason - I speak; the confession is forc’d from me by the torture. I - appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in: Do - not write to me if you have done anything this month which it - would have pained me to have seen. You may have altered—if - you have not—if you still behave in dancing rooms and other - societies as I have seen you—I do not want to live—if you have - done so I wish this coming night may be my last. I cannot live - without you, and not only you but _chaste you_; _virtuous you_. - The Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and you follow the bent - of your inclination to a certain extent—you have no conception - of the quantity of miserable feeling that passes through me in - a day.—Be serious! Love is not a plaything—and again do not - write unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. I would - sooner die for want of you than—— - - Yours for ever - - J. KEATS. - - -XXXVI. - - My dearest Fanny, - - My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce know what I - shall say though I am full of a hundred things. ’Tis certain I - would rather be writing to you this morning, notwithstanding - the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than enjoy any other - pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with you. Upon my - soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you could know the - Tenderness with which I continually brood over your different - aspects of countenance, action and dress. I see you come down - in the morning: I see you meet me at the Window—I see every - thing over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I get - on the pleasant clue I live in a sort of happy misery, if - on the unpleasant ’tis miserable misery. You complain of my - illtreating you in word, thought and deed—I am sorry,—at times - I feel bitterly sorry that I ever made you unhappy—my excuse - is that those words have been wrung from me by the sharpness - of my feelings. At all events and in any case I have been - wrong; could I believe that I did it without any cause, I - should be the most sincere of Penitents. I could give way to - my repentant feelings now, I could recant all my suspicions, - I could mingle with you heart and Soul though absent, were - it not for some parts of your Letters. Do you suppose it - possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think of - myself and what of you. You know that I should feel how much - it was my loss and how little yours. My friends laugh at you! - I know some of them—when I know them all I shall never think - of them again as friends or even acquaintance. My friends - have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and there - they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct: - spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with any - body’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care - not to see any of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be - the Friend of idle Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our - Loves should be so put into the microscope of a Coterie. Their - laughs should not affect you (I may perhaps give you reasons - some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate - me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have pretended a - great friendship for me) when in competition with one, who if - he never should see you again would make you the Saint of his - memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for - your Beauty, who would have God-bless’d me from you for ever: - who were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you - eternally. People are revengful—do not mind them—do nothing - but love me—if I knew that for certain life and health will in - such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less painful. - I long to believe in immortality. I shall never be able to - bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with - you here—how short is the longest Life. I wish to believe in - immortality[52]—I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let - my name ever pass between you and those laughers; if I have no - other merit than the great Love for you, that were sufficient - to keep me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have - been cruel and unjust I swear my love has ever been greater - than my cruelty which last [_sic_] but a minute whereas my Love - come what will shall last for ever. If concession to me has - hurt your Pride God knows I have had little pride in my heart - when thinking of you. Your name never passes my Lips—do not let - mine pass yours. Those People do not like me. After reading - my Letter you even then wish to see me. I am strong enough to - walk over—but I dare not. I shall feel so much pain in parting - with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to see you; I am - strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever - round you again, and if so shall I be obliged to leave you - again? My sweet Love! I am happy whilst I believe your first - Letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul, - and I could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If - you think me cruel—if you think I have sleighted you—do muse it - over again and see into my heart. My love to you is “true as - truth’s simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth” as I - think I once said before. How could I sleight you? How threaten - to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you—no—but in - the spirit of Wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious, - my angel Fanny! do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will - be as patient in illness and as believing in Love as I am able. - - Yours for ever my dearest - - JOHN KEATS. - - -XXXVII. - - I do not write this till the last, - that no eye may catch it.[53] - - My dearest Girl, - - I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy - without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in - you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it - almost impossible to go to Italy—the fact is I cannot leave - you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it - pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will - not go on at this rate. A person in health as you are can have - no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine - go through. What Island do your friends propose retiring to? - I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company - I should object to it; the backbitings and jealousies of - new colonists who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is - unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a - very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able - any more to endure the society of any of those who used to meet - at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste - like brass upon my Palate. If I cannot live with you I will - live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I - am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you—I - cannot bear flashes of light and return into my gloom again. - I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you - yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility! it - requires a luckier Star than mine! it will never be. I enclose - a passage from one of your letters which I want you to alter - a little—I want (if you will have it so) the matter express’d - less coldly to me. If my health would bear it, I could write - a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation - for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one - in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you - do. Shakespeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign - manner. Hamlet’s heart was full of such Misery as mine is when - he said to Ophelia “Go to a Nunnery, go, go!” Indeed I should - like to give up the matter at once—I should like to die. I - am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I - hate men, and women more. I see nothing but thorns for the - future—wherever I may be next winter, in Italy or nowhere, - Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no - prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome—well, I should there - see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all - hours,——I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human - nature into my heart. I cannot muster any—the world is too - brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am - sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate - I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown - or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full - of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me. - - God bless you. - - J. K. - - - - -ADDITIONAL LETTERS. - - - - -ADDITIONAL LETTERS. - - -II _bis_. - - Shanklin - - Thursday Evening - - [15 July 1819?[54]] - - My love, - - I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or - three last days, that I did not think I should be able to - write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as only - to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To night I am - greatly recovered only to feel the languor I have felt after - you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps might have made - me better: you would then have made me worse: now you could - quite effect a cure: What fee my sweet Physician would I not - give you to do so. Do not call it folly, when I tell you I took - your letter last night to bed with me. In the morning I found - your name on the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the - bad omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my - dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You must have - found out by this time I am a little given to bode ill like - the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; it has proceeded - from the general tenor of the circumstances of my life, and - rendered every event suspicious. However I will no more trouble - either you or myself with sad prophecies; though so far I am - pleased at it as it has given me opportunity to love your - disinterestedness towards me. I can be a raven no more; you - and pleasure take possession of me at the same moment. I am - afraid you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched - you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be selfish - enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive me this? I - have been reading lately an oriental tale of a very beautiful - color[55]—It is of a city of melancholy men, all made so by - this circumstance. Through a series of adventures each one of - them by turns reach some gardens of Paradise where they meet - with a most enchanting Lady; and just as they are going to - embrace her, she bids them shut their eyes—they shut them—and - on opening their eyes again find themselves descending to the - earth in a magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their - delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy ever - after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I palpitated - at it; how the certainty that you were in the same world with - myself, and though as beautiful, not so talismanic as that - Lady; how I could not bear you should be so you must believe - because I swear it by yourself. I cannot say when I shall get - a volume ready. I have three or four stories half done, but as - I cannot write for the mere sake of the press, I am obliged - to let them progress or lie still as my fancy chooses. By - Christmas perhaps they may appear,[56] but I am not yet sure - they ever will. ’Twill be no matter, for Poems are as common - as newspapers and I do not see why it is a greater crime in - me than in another to let the verses of an half-fledged brain - tumble into the reading-rooms and drawing-room windows. Rice - has been better lately than usual: he is not suffering from - any neglect of his parents who have for some years been able - to appreciate him better than they did in his first youth, and - are now devoted to his comfort. Tomorrow I shall, if my health - continues to improve during the night, take a look fa[r]ther - about the country, and spy at the parties about here who come - hunting after the picturesque like beagles. It is astonishing - how they raven down scenery like children do sweetmeats. The - wondrous Chine here is a very great Lion: I wish I had as many - guineas as there have been spy-glasses in it. I have been, - I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What - reason? When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely - room, without the thought as I fall asleep, of seeing you - tomorrow morning? or the next day, or the next—it takes on the - appearance of impossibility and eternity—I will say a month—I - will say I will see you in a month at most, though no one but - yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour. I should not - like to be so near you as London without being continually with - you: after having once more kissed you Sweet I would rather be - here alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary - chitchat. Meantime you must write to me—as I will every - week—for your letters keep me alive. My sweet Girl I cannot - speak my love for you. Good night! and - - Ever yours - - JOHN KEATS. - - -XXXIV _bis_. - - Tuesday Morn. - - My dearest Girl, - - I wrote a letter[57] for you yesterday expecting to have seen - your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know - it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how - unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can - to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole - existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid - but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you. Do not think - of anything but me. Do not live as if I was not existing. Do - not forget me—But have I any right to say you forget me? - Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you - to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it if - you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me—and - for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but - me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I - have been haunted with a sweet vision—I have seen you the whole - time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at - it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been - full of tears at it! I[n]deed I think a real love is enough - to occupy the widest heart. Your going to town alone when I - heard of it was a shock to me—yet I expected it—_promise me - you will not for some time till I get better_. Promise me this - and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you - cannot do so with good will, do my love tell me—say what you - think—confess if your heart is too much fasten’d on the world. - Perhaps then I may see you at a greater distance, I may not be - able to appropriate you so closely to myself. Were you to loose - a favourite bird from the cage, how would your eyes ache after - it as long as it was in sight; when out of sight you would - recover a little. Perhaps if you would, if so it is, confess to - me how many things are necessary to you besides me, I might be - happier; by being less tantaliz’d. Well may you exclaim, how - selfish, how cruel not to let me enjoy my youth! to wish me to - be unhappy. You must be so if you love me. Upon my soul I can - be contented with nothing else. If you would really what is - call’d enjoy yourself at a Party—if you can smile in people’s - faces, and wish them to admire you _now_—you never have nor - ever will love me. I see _life_ in nothing but the certainty of - your Love—convince me of it my sweetest. If I am not somehow - convinced I shall die of agony. If we love we must not live - as other men and women do—I cannot brook the wolfsbane of - fashion and foppery and tattle—you must be mine to die upon the - rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say that I have more - feeling than my fellows, but I wish you seriously to look over - my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the person who - wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and - uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create. My - recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you - are not mine when I am well. For God’s sake save me—or tell me - my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless - you. - - J. K. - - No—my sweet Fanny—I am wrong—I do not wish you to be - unhappy—and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a - Beauty—my loveliest, my darling! good bye! I kiss you—O the - torments! - - - - -APPENDIX. - - -I. - -FANNY BRAWNE’S ESTIMATE OF KEATS. - -In discussing the effect which the _Quarterly Review_ article had on -Keats, Medwin[58] quotes the following passages from a communication -addressed to him by Fanny Brawne after her marriage:— - - “I did not know Keats at the time the review appeared. It was - published, if I remember rightly, in June, 1818.[59] However - great his mortification might have been, he was not, I should - say, of a character likely to have displayed it in the manner - mentioned in Mrs. Shelley’s Remains of her husband. Keats, - soon after the appearance of the review in question, started - on a walking expedition into the Highlands. From thence he was - forced to return, in consequence of the illness of a brother, - whose death a few months afterwards affected him strongly. - - “It was about this time that I became acquainted with Keats. - We met frequently at the house of a mutual friend, (not Leigh - Hunt’s), but neither then nor afterwards did I see anything - in his manner to give the idea that he was brooding over any - secret grief or disappointment. His conversation was in the - highest degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting - at moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health - dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in January - 1820,[60] began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold. In - coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to - consumption was aggravated by the excessive susceptibility of - his temperament, for I never see those often quoted lines of - Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:— - - The fiery soul, that working out its way, - Fretted the pigmy body to decay. - - From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write - a line of poetry,[61] and his failing health, joined to the - uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into deep - melancholy. - - “The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr. Finch, - seems calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That - his sensibility was most acute, is true, and his passions - were very strong, but not violent, if by that term violence - of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his - anger seemed rather to turn on himself than on others, and in - moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage - despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends. - Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his - nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I - saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental - and bodily, and I do not hesitate to say that he never could - have addressed an unkind expression, much less a violent one, - to any human being. During the last few months before leaving - his native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for - whatever in moments of grief or disappointment he might say or - think, his most ardent desire was to live to redeem his name - from the obloquy cast upon it;[62] nor was it till he knew his - death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch’s - letter goes on to say—‘Keats might be judged insane,’—I believe - the fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary - species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s task a - painful one.” - - -II. - -THE LOCALITY OF WENTWORTH PLACE. - -The precise locality of Wentworth Place, Hampstead, has been a matter of -uncertainty and dispute; and I found even the children of the lady to -whom the foregoing letters were addressed without any exact knowledge -on the subject. The houses which went to make up Wentworth Place were -those inhabited respectively by the Dilke family, the Brawne family, -and Charles Armitage Brown; but these were not three houses as might be -supposed, the fact being that Mrs. Brawne rented first Brown’s house -during his absence with Keats in the summer of 1818, and then Dilke’s -when the latter removed to Westminster. - -At page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’s _Northern Heights of London_,[63] it -is said of Keats:— - - “From this time till 1820, when he left—in the last stage of - consumption—for Italy, he resided principally at Hampstead. - During most of this time, he lived with his very dear friend - Mr. Charles Brown, a Russia merchant, at Wentworth Place, - Downshire Hill, by Pond Street, Hampstead. Previously, he and - his brother Thomas had occupied apartments at the next house - to Mr. Brown’s, at a Mrs. ——’s whose name his biographers have - carefully omitted. With the daughter of this lady Keats was - deeply in love—a passion which deepened to the last.” - -No authority is given for the statement that John and Tom Keats lodged -with the mother of the lady to whom John was attached; and I think it -must have arisen from a misapprehension of something communicated to -Mr. Howitt, perhaps in such ambiguous terms as every investigator has -experienced in his time. At all events I must contradict the statement -positively; nor is there any doubt where the brothers did lodge, namely -in Well Walk, with the family of the local postman, Benjamin Bentley. -Charles Cowden Clarke mentions in his Recollections that the lodging was -“in the first or second house on the right hand, going up to the Heath”; -and the rate books show that Bentley was rated from 1814 to 1824 for the -house which, in 1838, was numbered 1, the house next to the public house -formerly called the “Green Man,” but now known as the “Wells” Tavern. At -page 102, Mr. Howitt says:— - - “It is to be regretted that Wentworth Place, where Keats - lodged, and wrote some of his finest poetry, either no longer - exists or no longer bears that name. At the bottom of John - Street, on the left hand in descending, is a villa called - Wentworth House; but no Wentworth Place exists between - Downshire Hill and Pond Street, the locality assigned to it. - I made the most rigorous search in that quarter, inquiring - of the tradesmen daily supplying the houses there, and of - two residents of forty and fifty years. None of them had - any knowledge or recollection of a Wentworth Place. Possibly - Keats’s friend, Mr. Brown, lived at Wentworth House, and that - the three cottages standing in a line with it and facing - South-End Road, but at a little distance from the road in a - garden, might then bear the name of Wentworth Place. The end - cottage would then, as stated in the lines of Keats, be next - door to Mr. Brown’s. These cottages still have apartments - to let, and in all other respects accord with the assigned - locality.” - -Mr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth House _with_ the cottages -may possibly have borne the name of Wentworth Place; and he should have -said that the house was on the _right_ hand in descending John Street. -But the fact of the case is correctly stated in Mr. Thorne’s _Handbook to -the Environs of London_,[64] Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more -explicit localization is given: - - “The House in which he [Keats] lodged for the greater part of - the time, then called Wentworth Place, is now called Lawn Bank, - and is the end house but one on the rt. side of John Street, - next Wentworth House.” - -Mr. Thorne adduces no authority for the statement; and it must be -assumed that it is based on some of the private communications which he -acknowledges generally in his preface. He may possibly have been biassed -by the plane-tree which Mr. Howitt, at page 101 of _Northern Heights_, -substitutes for the traditional plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s -account of the composition of the _Ode to a Nightingale_. Certainly there -is a fine old plane-tree in front of the house at Lawn Bank; and there -is a local tradition of a nightingale and a poet connected with that -tree; but this dim tradition may be merely a misty repetition, from mouth -to mouth, of Mr. Howitt’s extract from Lord Houghton’s volumes. _Primâ -facie_, a plane-tree might seem to be a very much more likely shelter -than a plum-tree for Keats to have chosen to place his chair beneath; -and yet one would think that, had Mr. Howitt purposely substituted the -plane-tree for the plum-tree, it would have been because he found it by -the house which he supposed to be Brown’s. This however is not the case; -and it should also be mentioned that at the western end of Lawn Bank, -among some shrubs &c., there is an old and dilapidated plum-tree which -grows so as to form a kind of leafy roof. - -Eleven years ago, when I attempted to identify Wentworth Place beyond -a doubt by local and other enquiries, the gardener at Wentworth House -assured me very positively that, some fifteen or twenty years before, -when Lawn Bank (then called Lawn Cottage) was in bad repair, and the -rain had washed nearly all the colour off the front, he used to read the -words “Wentworth Place,” painted in large letters beside the top window -at the extreme left of the old part of the house as one faces it; and I -have since had the pleasure of reading the words there myself; for the -colour got washed thin enough again some time afterwards. After a great -deal of enquiry among older inhabitants of Hampstead than this gardener, -I found a musician, born there in 1801, and resident there ever since, -a most intelligent and clear-headed man, who had been in the habit of -playing at various houses in Hampstead from the year 1812 onwards. When -asked, simply and without any “leading” remark, what he could tell about -a group of houses formerly known as Wentworth Place, he replied without -hesitation that Lawn Bank, when he was a youth, certainly bore that name, -that it was two houses, with entrances at the sides, in one of which -he played as early as 1824, and that subsequently the two houses were -converted into one, at very great expense, to form a residence for Miss -Chester,[65] who called the place Lawn Cottage. This informant did not -remember the names of the persons occupying the two houses. A surgeon -of repute, among the oldest inhabitants of Hampstead, told me, as an -absolute certainty, that he was there as early as 1827, knew the Brawne -family, and attended them professionally at Wentworth Place, in the house -forming the western half of Lawn Bank. Of Charles Brown, however, this -gentleman had no knowledge. - -Not perfectly satisfied with the local evidence, I forwarded to Mr. -Severn a sketch-plan of the immediate locality, in order that he might -identify the houses in which he visited Keats and Brown and the Brawne -family: he replied that it was in Lawn Bank that Brown and Mrs. Brawne -had their respective residences; and he also mentioned side entrances; -but Sir Charles Dilke says his grandfather’s house had the entrance -in front, and only Brown’s had a side entrance. Two relatives of Mrs. -Brawne’s who were still living in 1877, and were formerly residents in -the house, also identified this block as that in which she resided, and -so did the late Mr. William Dilke of Chichester, by whose instructions, -during the absence of his brother, the name was first painted upon the -house. It is hard to see what further evidence can be wanted on the -subject. The recollection of one person may readily be distrusted; but -where so many memories converge in one result, their evidence must be -accepted; and I leave these details on record here, mainly on the ground -that doubts may possibly arise again. At present it does not seem as if -there could be any possible question that, in Lawn Bank, we have the -immortalized Wentworth Place where Keats spent so much time, first as -co-inmate with Brown in the eastern half of the block, and at last when -he went to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne in the western half. - -It should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. Thorne’s expression -that Keats _lodged_ there, that this was not a case of lodging in the -ordinary sense: he was a sharing inmate; and his share of the expenses -was duly acquitted, as recorded by Mr. Dilke. In the hope of identifying -the houses by some documentary evidence, I had the parish rate-books -searched; in these there is no mention of John Street; but that part of -Hampstead is described as the Lower Heath Quarter: no names of houses are -given; and the only evidence to the purpose is that, among the ratepayers -of the Lower Heath Quarter, very few in number, were Charles Wentworth -Dilk (without the final _e_) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs. Brawne -does not appear; but, as she rented the house in Wentworth Place of Mr. -Dilke, it may perhaps be assumed that it was he who paid the rates. - -It will perhaps be thought that the steps of the enquiry in this matter -are somewhat “prolixly set forth”; and the only plea in mitigation to -be offered is that, without evidence, those who really care to know the -facts of the case could hardly be satisfied. - - -THE END. - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard -Monckton Milnes. A new Edition._ 1863 (and other dates). See p. ix, -Memoir. - -[2] _Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by -Richard Monckton Milnes_ (Two Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references, -throughout, are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite -it henceforth simply as _Life, Letters, &c._, specifying the volume -and page. - -[3] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and -edited, with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of -Trin. Coll. Cambridge_ (Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir. - -[4] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 234-6. - -[5] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 240. - -[6] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 252-3. - -[7] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. 301. -Should not the semicolon at _point_ change places with the comma at -_knowledge_? - -[8] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, p. 302. - -[9] This little book, now in my collection, is of great interest. -It is marked throughout for Miss Brawne’s use,—according to Keats’s -fashion of “marking the most beautiful passages” in his books for -her. At one end is written the sonnet referred to in the text, -apparently composed by Keats with the book before him, as there are -two “false starts,” as well as erasures; and at the other end, in -the handwriting of Miss Brawne, is copied Keats’s last sonnet, - - Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art. - -The Spenser similarly marked, the subject of Letter XXXIV, is -missing. - -[10] See _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 35. - -[11] _The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical Journal. -Containing Critical Notices of, and Extracts from, Rare, Curious, -and Valuable Old Books._ (Two Volumes. Geo. P. Philes & Co., 51 -Nassau Street, New York. 1862-3.) The Keats letter is at p. 196 -of Vol. I, side by side with one purporting to be Shelley’s, a -flagrant forgery which has been publicly animadverted on several -times lately, having been reprinted as genuine. - -[12] The correspondent of _The World_ would seem (I only say -_seem_; for the matter is obscure) to have used Lord Houghton’s -pages for “copy” where a cursory examination indicated that they -gave the same matter as the original letter,—transcribing what -presented itself as new matter from the original. The fragment -of _Friday 27th_ was, on this supposition, in its place when the -copies were made for Lord Houghton, because there is the close; but -between that time and 1862 it must have been separated from the -letter. - -[13] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 55. - -[14] It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following note -of locality from the _Autobiography_ (Vol. II, p. 230): “It was not -at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York-buildings, in -the New-road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the _Indicator_; and he -resided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, Kentish-town (No. 13), -where I concluded it.” - -[15] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 61. - -[16] See Hunt’s _Autobiography_, Vol. II, p. 216. It may be noted -in passing that the _Indicator_ version of the Sonnet varies in -some slight details from the Original in the volume of Dante -referred to at page xliv, and from Lord Houghton’s text. It is -natural to suppose that Hunt’s copy was the latest of the three; -and his text is certainly an improvement on the others where it -varies from them. - -[17] _The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the -late Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his -Grandson, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P., &c. In Two -Volumes._ (London. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.) See Vol. -I, p. 11. - -[18] This sonnet occurs at page 128 of _The Garden of Florence; -and other Poems. By John Hamilton_. (London: John Warren, Old -Bond-street. 1821.) - -[19] _The Letters and Poems of John Keats._ In three volumes. -(Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). Vol. I is called _The Letters -of John Keats, edited by Jno. Gilmer Speed_: Vol. II and III, _The -Poems of John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a -Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed_. - -[20] _Keats by Sidney Colvin._ (Macmillan & Co., 1887). Mr. Colvin -has also contributed to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (August, 1888) -an Article _On Some Letters of Keats_, which I have also duly -consulted. - -[21] _The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats_, (Four -volumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably earlier than Mr. -Speed’s volumes appeared.) - -[22] Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name was Jane. - -[23] These two words are wanting in the original. - -[24] His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven months before -the date of this letter. - -[25] - - Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew, - And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo, - Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid, - Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!— - - Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_, iii, 61-4. - -[26] Fanny’s younger sister: see Introduction. - -[27] The word _Newport_ is not stamped on this letter, as on -Numbers I, II, and IV; but it is pretty evident that Keats and his -friend were still at Shanklin. - -[28] I am not aware of any other published record that this name -belonged to Keats’s Mother, as well as his sister and his betrothed. - -[29] Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: see Introduction. - -[30] I am unable to obtain or suggest any explanation of the -allusion made in this strange sentence. It is not, however, -impossible that “the Bishop” was merely a nickname of some one in -the Hampstead circle. - -[31] The Tragedy referred to is, of course, _Otho the Great_, which -was composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage -Brown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot, -&c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly -Keats’s. See Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol. -II, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of -Keats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of -the progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by -Brown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by -Sir Charles Dilke to _The Papers of a Critic_, referred to in the -Introduction to the present volume, p. lviii. - -[32] He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated -Winchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the -hopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this -letter see _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk_ -(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also -Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where -there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and -arranged. - -[33] The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that -given in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement -(_Life, Letters, &c._, 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the -date: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never -know....” - -[34] This word is of course left as found in the original -letter: an editor who should spell it _yacht_ would be guilty of -representing Keats as thinking what he did not think. - -[35] Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and -publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street. - -[36] Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know -not; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all -events, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing -thence to Reynolds (_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 23). - -[37] It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke -obtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in -the letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p. -16, Vol. II, of the _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848). How long Keats -remained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a -day; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great -Smith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living -at Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place, -Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of the _Life, -Letters, &c._ - -[38] It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced -this moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to -is that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’s _Life_ (Vol. II, -pp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he -“might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the -colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in -that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.” - -[39] This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from -the 3rd of February, 1820. - -[40] This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence -or presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful -phase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See Letters -XXI, XXIV, XXVI, XXXV, and XXXVII. - -[41] If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us -to the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the -day on which Keats broke a blood-vessel. - -[42] George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significant _but_ indicates -that the absence of Brown was still, as was natural, more or less a -condition of the presence of Miss Brawne. That Keats had, however, -or thought he had, some reason for this condition, beyond the -mere delicacy of lovers, is dimly shadowed by the cold _My dear -Fanny_ with which in Letter XXI the condition was first expressly -prescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a -morbid sensibility in Letters XXXV and XXXVII. Probably a man in -sound health would have found the cause trivial enough. - -[43] The MS. of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ (the volume containing -_Hyperion_, and most of Keats’s finest work). - -[44] I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke. - -[45] This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the -belief that this letter and the preceding one were written about -the same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in the -_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark, -“Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend -Brown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and -he refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal -food, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as in Letter XXV he speaks -to Miss Brawne of his “feeding upon sham victuals.” In the letter -to Dilke he says: “If I can keep off inflammation for the next six -weeks, I trust I shall do very well.” In Letter XXV he expresses -to Miss Brawne the hope that he may go out for a walk with her on -the 1st of May. If these correspondences may be trusted, we are now -dealing with letters of the first week in March, of which period -there are still indications in Letter XXVIII. - -[46] The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate -that this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in -the letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date, -already referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair -of the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he -“shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the -weather changes for the warmer.” - -[47] Misspelt _Proctor_ in the original. - -[48] It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old -Mr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father -of Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious -letter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not -been mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut -off,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture. - -[49] The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so -small that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably -given to an autograph-collector. - -[50] This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened, -one would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was -clearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend, -which took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion -there is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in -attachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a -week of this time had there been any opportunity. - -[51] This question may perhaps be fairly taken to indicate the -lapse of a month from the time when Keats left the house at -Hampstead next door to Miss Brawne’s, at which he probably knew her -employments well enough from day to day. If so, the time would be -about the first week in June, 1819. - -[52] He was seemingly in a different phase of belief from that -in which the death of his brother Tom found him. At that time he -recorded that he and Tom both firmly believed in immortality. See -_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication of his -having shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy may be found in the -expression in Letter XXXV, “I appeal to you by the blood of that -Christ you believe in:”—not “_we_ believe in.” - -[53] This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to the end, and -then filled in the words _My dearest Girl_, left out lest any one -coming near him should chance to see them. These words are written -more heavily than the beginning of the letter, and indicate a state -of pen corresponding with that shown by the words _God bless you_ -at the end. - -[54] This letter appears to belong between those of the 8th and -25th of July, 1819; and of the two Thursdays between these dates -it seems likelier that the 15th would be the one than that the -letter should have been written so near the 25th as on the 22nd. -The original having been mislaid, I have not been able to take the -evidence of the postmark. It will be noticed that at the close he -speaks of a weekly exchange of letters with Miss Brawne; and by -placing this letter at the 15th this programme is pretty nearly -realized so far as Keats’s letters from the Isle of Wight are -concerned. - -[55] The story in question is one of the many derivatives from the -Third Calender’s Story in _The Thousand and One Nights_ and the -somewhat similar tale of “The Man who laughed not,” included in -the Notes to Lane’s _Arabian Nights_ and in the text of Payne’s -magnificent version of the complete work. I am indebted to Dr. -Reinhold Köhler, Librarian of the Grand-ducal Library of Weimar, -for identifying the particular variant referred to by Keats as the -“Histoire de la Corbeille,” in the _Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_ of -the Comte de Caylus. Mr. Morris’s beautiful poem “The Man who never -laughed again,” in _The Earthly Paradise_, has familiarized to -English readers one variant of the legend. - -[56] It will of course be remembered that no such collection -appeared until the following summer, when the _Lamia_ volume was -published. - -[57] I do not find in the present series any letter which I can -regard as the particular one referred to in the opening sentence. -If Letter XXXV (p. 93) were headed _Tuesday_ and this _Wednesday_, -that might well be the peccant document which appears to be missing. - -[58] _The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In Two Volumes._ London: -1847 (see Vol. II, pp. 86-93). - -[59] It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on page 1, -but described on the wrapper as “published in September, 1818.” - -[60] See p. liii: it was the 3rd of February, 1820. - -[61] See Letter XIII, pp. 49-50. - -[62] See Letter XVII, pp. 57-8. - -[63] _The Northern Heights of London or Historical Associations -of Hampstead, Highgate, Muswell Hill, Hornsey, and Islington. By -William Howitt, author of ‘Visits to Remarkable Places.’_ (London: -Longmans, Green, & Co. 1869.) - -[64] _Handbook to the Environs of London, Alphabetically Arranged, -containing an account of every town and village, and of all the -places of interest, within a circle of twenty miles round London. -By James Thorne, F.S.A. In Two Parts._ (London: John Murray, -Albemarle Street. 1876.) - -[65] She first appeared upon the London boards in 1822, and -afterwards became “Private Reader” to George IV. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, by -John Keats - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS TO FANNY BRAWNE *** - -***** This file should be named 60433-0.txt or 60433-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/4/3/60433/ - -Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - - - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - |