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diff --git a/old/60433-h/60433-h.htm b/old/60433-h/60433-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 8aaa250..0000000 --- a/old/60433-h/60433-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5872 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, by Harry Buxton Forman. - </title> - - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - -<style type="text/css"> - -a { - text-decoration: none; -} - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - -h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -hr { - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - clear: both; - width: 65%; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; -} - -p { - margin-top: 0.5em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: 0.5em; - text-indent: 1em; -} - -table { - margin: 1em auto 1em auto; - max-width: 40em; - border-collapse: collapse; -} - -td { - padding-left: 2.25em; - padding-right: 0.25em; - vertical-align: top; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -.tdpg { - vertical-align: bottom; - text-align: right; - white-space: nowrap; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 10%; -} - -.caption { - text-align: center; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-size: 90%; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.center { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -.footnotes { - margin-top: 1em; - border: dashed 1px; -} - -.footnote { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - font-size: 0.9em; -} - -.footnote .label { - position: absolute; - right: 84%; - text-align: right; -} - -.fnanchor { - vertical-align: super; - font-size: .8em; - text-decoration: none; -} - -.hanging { - padding-left: 2em; - text-indent: -2em; -} - -.larger { - font-size: 150%; -} - -.noindent { - text-indent: 0em; -} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - right: 4%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; -} - -.poetry-container { - text-align: center; - margin: 1em; -} - -.poetry { - display: inline-block; - text-align: left; -} - -.poetry .verse { - text-indent: -3em; - padding-left: 3em; -} - -.poetry .indent1 { - text-indent: -2em; -} - -.poetry .indent6 { - text-indent: 3em; -} - -.right { - text-align: right; - margin-right: 1em; -} - -.smaller { - font-size: 80%; -} - -.smcap { - font-variant: small-caps; - font-style: normal; -} - -.titlepage { - text-align: center; - margin-top: 3em; - text-indent: 0em; -} - -@media handheld { - -img { - max-width: 100%; - width: auto; - height: auto; -} - -.poetry { - display: block; - margin-left: 1.5em; -} - -.blockquote { - margin: 1.5em 5%; -} -} - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -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) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> - -<p class="titlepage larger">LETTERS<br /> -OF JOHN KEATS TO<br /> -FANNY BRAWNE</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Where wert thou mighty Mother, when he lay,</div> -<div class="verse">When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies</div> -<div class="verse">In darkness?</div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;" id="illus1"> -<img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="600" height="600" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">by Joseph Severn 28 Jan<sup>y</sup> 1821, 3 O’Clock morn<sup>g</sup></p> -</div> - -<p class="titlepage">London. Reeves & Turner 1878.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 25em;"> - -<p class="hanging larger"><i>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</i></p> - -</div> - -<p class="titlepage"><i>LONDON REEVES & TURNER</i><br /> -<i>196 STRAND MDCCCLXXVIII</i></p> - -<p class="center smaller">[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="NOTE">NOTE.</h2> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>The owners of these letters reserve -to themselves all rights of -reproduction and translation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="TO_JOSEPH_SEVERN"><i>TO JOSEPH SEVERN, ROME.</i></h2> - -<p><i>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.</i></p> - -<p><i>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> -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.</i></p> - -<p><i>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> -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.</i></p> - -<p><i>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.</i></p> - -<p class="right"><i>H. B. F.</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table summary="Contents"> - <tr> - <td></td> - <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Publishers’ Note</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#NOTE">v.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">To Joseph Severn, Rome</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#TO_JOSEPH_SEVERN">vii.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Introduction by the Editor</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">xiii.</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Letters to Fanny Brawne</span>:—</td> - <td class="tdpg"></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>First Period, I to IX, Shanklin, Winchester, Westminster</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#I_to_IX">3</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Second Period, X to XXXII, Wentworth Place</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#X_to_XXXII">43</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>Third Period, XXXIII to XXXVII, Kentish Town—Preparing for Italy</td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#XXXIII_to_XXXVII">91</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Appendix, The Locality of Wentworth Place</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX">111</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Index</span></td> - <td class="tdpg">123</td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2> - -<table summary="List of illustrations"> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Portrait of Keats, drawn by Joseph Severn and etched by W. B. Scott</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus1"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Silhouette of Fanny Brawne, cut by Edouart and photo-lithographed by G. F. Tupper</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus2"><i>Opposite page 3.</i></a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="smcap">Fac-simile of <a href="#LETTER_XXVII">Letter XXVII</a>, executed by G. I. F. Tupper</span></td> - <td class="tdpg"><a href="#letter"><i>Opposite page 76.</i></a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</h2> - -<p>The sympathetic and discerning biographer -of John Keats says, in the -memoir prefixed to Moxon’s edition of -the Poems<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>, “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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</a></span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</a></span> -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 <a href="#LETTER_III">Letter -III</a> 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</a></span> -<cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>,<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and commencing at -page 227 of Vol. I, wherein is the following -passage:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</a></span> -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 <em>nothing particular</em>. -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</a></span> -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 <em>sensations</em>: -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">‘I am free from men of pleasure’s cares,</div> -<div class="verse">By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs.’</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">This is ‘Lord Byron,’ and is one of the -finest things he has said.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Now it is clear from this passage that -a lady had made a certain impression -on Keats; and Lord Houghton in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>, his Lordship -cites the passage from the letter of -the 29th of October as descriptive of -Miss Brawne,—thus confirming by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</a></span> -explicit statement what has all along -passed current as tradition in literary -circles.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[xxxi]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[xxxii]</a></span> -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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[xxxiii]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxiv" id="Page_xxxiv">[xxxiv]</a></span> -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.”<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxv" id="Page_xxxv">[xxxv]</a></span></p> - -<p>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:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I never was in love, yet the voice -and shape of a woman has haunted me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxvi" id="Page_xxxvi">[xxxvi]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>“Poor Tom—that woman and poetry -were ringing changes in my senses. -Now I am, in comparison, happy.”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxvii" id="Page_xxxvii">[xxxvii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxviii" id="Page_xxxviii">[xxxviii]</a></span> -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.”<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xxxix" id="Page_xxxix">[xxxix]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>There is no announcement of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xl" id="Page_xl">[xl]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xli" id="Page_xli">[xli]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell:</div> -<div class="verse indent1">No God, no Demon of severe response,</div> -<div class="verse">Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Then to my human heart I turn at once.</div> -<div class="verse">Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone;</div> -<div class="verse indent1">I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!</div> -<div class="verse">O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain.</div> -<div class="verse">Why did I laugh? I know this Being’s lease,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;</div> -<div class="verse">Yet would I on this very midnight cease,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And the world’s gaudy ensigns see in shreds;</div> -<div class="verse">Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed,</div> -<div class="verse">But Death intenser—Death is Life’s high meed.”<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlii" id="Page_xlii">[xlii]</a></span></p> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xliii" id="Page_xliii">[xliii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">As Hermes once took to his feathers light,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,</div> -<div class="verse">So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft</div> -<div class="verse">The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">And seeing it asleep, so fled away,</div> -<div class="verse">Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day,</div> -<div class="verse">But to that second circle of sad Hell,</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw</div> -<div class="verse">Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell</div> -<div class="verse indent1">Their sorrows,—pale were the sweet lips I saw,</div> -<div class="verse">Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form</div> -<div class="verse">I floated with, about that melancholy storm.”<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xliv" id="Page_xliv">[xliv]</a></span> -had remained up to the year 1877 in -the possession of that lady’s family.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlv" id="Page_xlv">[xlv]</a></span> -vassal” of Miss Brawne, as he says (<a href="#Page_13">see -page 13</a>), 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.</p> - -<p>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 <a href="#LETTER_XI">Letter XI</a>, were in the habit of -walking out together.</p> - -<p>The tone of <a href="#LETTER_I">Letter I</a> is unsuggestive -of more than a few weeks’ engagement; -but it is impossible, on this alone, to -found safely any conclusion whatever.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlvi" id="Page_xlvi">[xlvi]</a></span> -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 <a href="#Page_19">page -19</a> 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.</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlvii" id="Page_xlvii">[xlvii]</a></span> -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.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlviii" id="Page_xlviii">[xlviii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<cite>Life</cite>, 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 <cite>Life</cite>; but, -on the 25th of June, 1877, it was printed -in the New York <cite>World</cite>, with many -striking variations from the previous -text, and with several additions, including -the date already quoted, the genuineness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xlix" id="Page_xlix">[xlix]</a></span> -of which I can see no reason for -doubting. The letter begins thus in -the <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">“My dear Sister,</p> - -<p>By the time you receive this -your troubles will be over, and George -have returned to you.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>In <cite>The World</cite> it opens thus—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>It is not my part to account here for -the <em>verbal</em> inconsistency between these -two versions; but the inconsistency as -regards <em>fact</em>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_l" id="Page_l">[l]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>In <cite>The Philobiblion</cite><a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> 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 <i>Friday 27th</i>, 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_li" id="Page_li">[li]</a></span> -together with a final joke, were apparently -deemed unripe for publication in -1848, being represented by asterisks in -the <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite> (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 <cite>World</cite> version of the whole letter -varies, from Lord Houghton’s.<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> - -<p>Keats explains, under the inaccurate -and unexplicit date <i>Friday 27th</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lii" id="Page_lii">[lii]</a></span> -“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.<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> But -whether the date at the head of the -fragment should be <i>Thursday 27th</i> or -<i>Friday 28th</i> 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 Keat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_liii" id="Page_liii">[liii]</a></span>s’s -to John, and communicated to <cite>The -Athenæum</cite> of the 4th of August, 1877:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">“Louisville, June 18th, 1820.</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dear John,</p> - -<p>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 [<i>sic</i>] I hear the bad and -good news together), they are recovered, -and yet....”</p> - -</div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_liv" id="Page_liv">[liv]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite> -(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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lv" id="Page_lv">[lv]</a></span> -Hunt says in his <cite>Autobiography</cite> (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....”<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> These accounts -are not necessarily contradictory; for -Keats may have tried lodgings <em>near</em> -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 <cite>Lamia, Isabella, &c.</cite> -on the 11th of June, as shown by a -letter to Taylor of that date;<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and, on -the 28th, appeared in <cite>The Indicator</cite>, -beside the Sonnet</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“As Hermes once took to his feathers light....”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lvi" id="Page_lvi">[lvi]</a></span></p> - -<p class="noindent">the paper entitled “A Now,” at the -composition of which Keats is said to -have been not only present but assisting;<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> -and, as Hunt wrote pretty much -“from hand to mouth” for <cite>The Indicator</cite>, -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lvii" id="Page_lvii">[lvii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lviii" id="Page_lviii">[lviii]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> 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:</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lix" id="Page_lix">[lix]</a></span></p><div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lx" id="Page_lx">[lx]</a></span> -absence may probably weaken, if not -break off, a connexion that has been a -most unhappy one for him.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxi" id="Page_lxi">[lxi]</a></span> -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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxii" id="Page_lxii">[lxii]</a></span> -and his own statement to Mr. -Dilke, printed in the <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite> -(Vol. II, p. 7), that he “was not in very -good health” when at Shanklin.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxiii" id="Page_lxiii">[lxiii]</a></span> -bereaved lady was unable to receive him -on account of the extreme painfulness -of the associations connected with him.</p> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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.’”</p> - -</div> - -<p>That Miss Brawne should have written -thus at the end of ten years’ widowhood -does not by any means imply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxiv" id="Page_lxiv">[lxiv]</a></span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxv" id="Page_lxv">[lxv]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxvi" id="Page_lxvi">[lxvi]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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, <i>à propos</i> 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.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxvii" id="Page_lxvii">[lxvii]</a></span></p> - -<p>The sonnet on Keats’s preference for -blue eyes,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Blue! ’tis the hue of heaven,” &c.,</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">written in reply to John Hamilton Reynolds’s -sonnet<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> in which a preference is -expressed for dark eyes,—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse indent6">“Dark eyes are dearer far</div> -<div class="verse">Than orbs that mock the hyacinthine bell”—</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">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 <a href="#illus2">opposite page 3</a>: 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxviii" id="Page_lxviii">[lxviii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“28th Jany. 3 o’clock mg. Drawn -to keep me awake—a deadly sweat was -on him all this night.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Keats’s old schoolfellow, the late -Charles Cowden Clarke, assured me in -1876 that this drawing was “a marvellously -correct likeness.”</p> - -<p><i>Postscript.</i>—During the past ten years -my work in connexion with the writings -and doings of Keats has involved the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxix" id="Page_lxix">[lxix]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <cite>World</cite>, -alluded to at pages <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a> and <a href="#Page_xlix">xlix</a>, in -reissuing in America Lord Houghton’s -edition of Keats’s Poems, together with -a collection of letters.<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxx" id="Page_lxx">[lxx]</a></span> -question connected with Keats. Later, -Professor Sidney Colvin has issued, with -a very different result, his volume on -Keats<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> 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,<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> which also appeared some -time after the publication of the Letters -to Fanny Brawne, though years before -Mr. Colvin’s book.</p> - -<p>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 <a href="#LETTER_XXVIII">XXVIII</a> should -precede that numbered <a href="#LETTER_XXV">XXV</a>, the date<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxxi" id="Page_lxxi">[lxxi]</a></span> -being probably the 23rd or 25th of -February, 1820, rather than the 4th of -March as suggested in the foot-note at -<a href="#Page_78">page 78</a>.</p> - -<p>The cousin of the Misses Reynolds -whom Keats described as a Charmian -was Miss Jane Cox,<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> at least so I was -most positively assured by Miss -Charlotte Reynolds in 1883.</p> - -<p>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 <a href="#Page_33">page 33</a>, 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.</p> - -<p>Having mentioned in the foot-note at -<a href="#Page_101">page 101</a> that Keats had elsewhere recorded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxxii" id="Page_lxxii">[lxxii]</a></span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_lxxiii" id="Page_lxxiii">[lxxiii]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="right">H. BUXTON FORMAN.</p> - -<p class="smaller hanging"><span class="smcap">46 Marlborough Hill, St. John’s Wood</span>,<br /> -<i>November, 1888</i>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="blockquote smaller"> - -<h2 id="CORRECTIONS">CORRECTIONS.</h2> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_xxxi">Page xxxi</a>, line 6 from foot, for <i>does</i> read <i>did</i>.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_16">Page 16</a>, end of foot-note 3, add <i>or perhaps a dog</i>.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_18">Page 18</a>, there should be a foot-note to the effect that -<i>Meleager</i> in line 6 is written <i>Maleager</i> in the -original.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_73">Page 73</a>, end of foot-note, strike out the words <i>of -which period there are still indications in Letter -XXVIII</i>.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_94">Page 94</a>, line 2 of note, for <i>in</i> read <i>on</i>.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_95">Page 95</a>, line 2 of notes, for 1819 read 1820.</p> - -<p class="hanging"><a href="#Page_96">Page 96</a>, line 3 of note, for 1819 read 1820.</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> - -<h1>LETTERS<br /> -TO FANNY BRAWNE.</h1> - -<hr /> - -<h2 id="I_to_IX"><span class="smcap">I to IX.</span><br /> -SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER.</h2> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;" id="illus2"> -<img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="375" height="700" alt="" /> -<p class="caption">Fanny Brawne from a silhouette by Mons<sup>r</sup> Edouart.</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> - -<h3>I-IX.<br /> -<span class="smaller">SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER.</span></h3> - -<h4 id="LETTER_I">I.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Thursday.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, Newport, 3 July, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Lady,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>] 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<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> has always spoilt my hours—and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> -not turn up Pam<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> 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:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">To see those eyes I prize above mine own</div> -<div class="verse">Dart favors on another—</div> -<div class="verse">And those sweet lips (yielding immortal nectar)</div> -<div class="verse">Be gently press’d by any but myself—</div> -<div class="verse">Think, think Francesca, what a cursed thing</div> -<div class="verse">It were beyond expression!</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="right">J.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> - -<p>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</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -<p>Present my Compliments to your mother, -my love to Margaret<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and best remembrances -to your Brother—if you please -so.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_II">II.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">July 8th.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, Newport, 10 July, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My sweet Girl,</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever yours, my love!</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -<p>Do not accuse me of delay—we have -not here an opportunity of sending -letters every day. Write speedily.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_III">III.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Sunday Night.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, 27 July, 1819.<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My sweet Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your’s ever, fair Star,</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -<p>My seal is mark’d like a family table -cloth with my Mother’s initial F for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> -Fanny:<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> 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<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> -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.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_IV">IV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Shanklin, Thursday Night.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark,</i> Newport, 9 August, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dear Girl,</p> - -<p>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<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> -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.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p><i>Friday Morning.</i>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> -should what people call, <em>settle</em>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your ever affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_V">V.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Winchester, August 17th.<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, 16 August, 1819.]</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> -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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> -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 <em>just</em><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> -your Pride should take the alarm—<em>seriously</em>. -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> (I think they -spell it) was anchored opposite—a -beautiful vessel—and all the Yatchs <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> -fail I shall die hard. O my love, your -lips are growing sweet again to my -fancy—I must forget them. Ever your -affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_VI">VI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Fleet Street,<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> Monday Morn.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, Lombard Street, 14 September, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dear Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> -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. <i>Que feraije?</i> -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;<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> -whence you shall hear from me in a -few days. I am a Coward, I cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> -bear the pain of being happy: ’tis out -of the question: I must admit no -thought of it.</p> - -<p class="center">Yours ever affectionately</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_VII">VII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">College Street.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, 11 October, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My sweet Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever yours</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -<p>Ah hertè mine!</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_VIII">VIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">25 College Street.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, 13 October, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> -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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>” -I can do that no more—the pain would -be too great. My love is selfish. I -cannot breathe without you.</p> - -<p class="center">Yours for ever</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_IX">IX.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Great Smith Street, Tuesday Morn.</p> - -<p class="right">[<i>Postmark</i>, College Street, 19 October, 1819.]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My sweet Fanny,</p> - -<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever my love yours</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="X_to_XXXII"><span class="smcap">X to XXXII.</span><br /> -WENTWORTH PLACE.</h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> - -<h3>X—XXXII.<br /> -<span class="smaller">WENTWORTH PLACE.</span></h3> - -<h4 id="LETTER_X">X.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>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 <em>can</em> -speak out.</p> - -<p class="center">Yours ever sweetest love.—</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -<p class="noindent">turn over</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XI">XI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> -that moment thought of nothing but -you. When I said to Brown “this is -unfortunate”<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> I thought of you. ’Tis -true that since the first two or three -days other subjects have entered my -head.<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> I shall be looking forward to -Health and the Spring and a regular -routine of our old Walks.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XII">XII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>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</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">“Your Beauty grows upon me and I feel</div> -<div class="verse">A greater love through all my essence steal.”</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">My greatest torment since I have known<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XIII">XIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Happen what may I shall ever be my -dearest Love</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XIV">XIV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>Remember me to your Mother and -Margaret.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XV">XV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XVI">XVI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>I read your note in bed last -night, and that might be the reason of -my sleeping so much better. I think -Mr Brown<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> -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!</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -<p>P.S. I am sitting in the back room. -Remember me to your Mother.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XVII">XVII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dear Fanny,</p> - -<p>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 <em>Love</em> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> -feebly whilst I was in health and every -pulse beat for you—now you divide -with this (may <em>I</em> say it?) “last infirmity -of noble minds” all my reflection.</p> - -<p class="center">God bless you, Love.</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XVIII">XVIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XIX">XIX.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever yours my sweet Fanny</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XX">XX.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right"><span class="smcap">John Keats.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXI">XXI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dear Fanny,</p> - -<p>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</p> - -<p class="center">My sweet Love!</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXII">XXII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Ever yours affectionately my dearest,</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -<p>You had better not come to day.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXIII">XXIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Love,</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your ever affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXIV">XXIV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">Sweetest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> -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:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>—when -she is gone I shall be awake for -you.—Remembrances to your Mother.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXV">XXV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dear Fanny,</p> - -<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> which you, if you -please, will send by my Messenger -either today or tomorrow. Is Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> -D.<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> 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 <em>nature to</em>. 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.</p> - -<p class="center">Good bye my sweetest Girl.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXVI">XXVI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Good bye Love.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXVII">XXVII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 430px;" id="letter"> -<img src="images/letter1.jpg" width="430" height="550" alt="" /> -<img src="images/letter2.jpg" width="430" height="700" alt="" /> -<img src="images/letter3.jpg" width="430" height="550" alt="" /> -<img src="images/letter4.jpg" width="430" height="650" alt="" /> -</div> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> -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 [<i>sic</i>, but qy. <i>at</i>] 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.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> I must do what I can to make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> -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—</p> - -<p class="center">love me for ever.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXIX">XXIX.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> today. He says he cannot -pay me a visit this weather as he is -fearful of an inflammation in the Chest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXX">XXX.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXI">XXXI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXII">XXXII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">Dear Girl,</p> - -<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> -occasions him some uneasiness. He -whispered something to you concerning -Brown and old Mr. Dilke<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> -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—</p> - -<p class="center">...</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="XXXIII_to_XXXVII">XXXIII to XXXVII.<br /> -KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.</h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> - -<h3>XXXIII-XXXVII.<br /> -<span class="smaller">KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.</span></h3> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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 ...</p> - -<p class="center">[Signature cut off.<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>]</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Tuesday Afternoon.</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class="center">Your affectionate</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXV">XXXV.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Wednesday Morning.</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> until we are both old men, if we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> -are to be. I <em>will</em> 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?<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> Who have you -smil’d with? All this may seem savage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> -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 <em>chaste you</em>; <em>virtuous you</em>. The -Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and -you follow the bent of your inclination<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> -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——</p> - -<p class="center">Yours for ever</p> - -<p class="right">J. KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXVI">XXXVI.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Fanny,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> -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, <em>for reasons I know of</em>, 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> -has ever been greater than my cruelty -which last [<i>sic</i>] 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">Yours for ever my dearest</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXVII">XXXVII.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right smaller">I do not write this till the last,<br /> -that no eye may catch it.<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="center">God bless you.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="ADDITIONAL">ADDITIONAL LETTERS.</h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> - -<h3>ADDITIONAL LETTERS.</h3> - -<h4 id="LETTER_II_bis">II <i>bis</i>.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Shanklin</p> - -<p class="right">Thursday Evening</p> - -<p class="right">[15 July 1819?<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>]</p> - -<p class="noindent">My love,</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> -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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> -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<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>—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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> -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,<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> but I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> -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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> -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</p> - -<p class="center">Ever yours</p> - -<p class="right">JOHN KEATS.</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p> - -<h4 id="LETTER_XXXIV_bis">XXXIV <i>bis</i>.</h4> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p class="right">Tuesday Morn.</p> - -<p class="noindent">My dearest Girl,</p> - -<p>I wrote a letter<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> -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—<em>promise -me you will not for some time -till I get better</em>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> -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 <em>now</em>—you never -have nor ever will love me. I see <em>life</em> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p class="right">J. K.</p> - -<p>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!</p> - -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p> - -<h2 id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.</h2> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> - -<h3>I.<br /> -<span class="smaller">FANNY BRAWNE’S ESTIMATE OF KEATS.</span></h3> - -<p>In discussing the effect which the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> -article had on Keats, Medwin<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> quotes the following -passages from a communication addressed to him by -Fanny Brawne after her marriage:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“I did not know Keats at the time the review -appeared. It was published, if I remember rightly, -in June, 1818.<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> 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.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> -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,<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> 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:—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">The fiery soul, that working out its way,</div> -<div class="verse">Fretted the pigmy body to decay.</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden -to write a line of poetry,<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> and his failing -health, joined to the uncertainty of his prospects, -often threw him into deep melancholy.</p> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> -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;<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> 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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p> - -<h3>II.<br /> -<span class="smaller">THE LOCALITY OF WENTWORTH PLACE.</span></h3> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>At page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’s <cite>Northern Heights -of London</cite>,<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> it is said of Keats:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> -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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>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:—</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> -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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>Mr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth -House <em>with</em> the cottages may possibly have borne the -name of Wentworth Place; and he should have said -that the house was on the <em>right</em> hand in descending -John Street. But the fact of the case is correctly -stated in Mr. Thorne’s <cite>Handbook to the Environs of -London</cite>,<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more -explicit localization is given:</p> - -<div class="blockquote"> - -<p>“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.”</p> - -</div> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> -101 of <cite>Northern Heights</cite>, substitutes for the traditional -plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s account of the -composition of the <cite>Ode to a Nightingale</cite>. 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. <i>Primâ facie</i>, 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> -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,<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> 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.</p> - -<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>It should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. -Thorne’s expression that Keats <em>lodged</em> 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 <i>e</i>) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="footnotes"> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <cite>The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a -Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes. A new -Edition.</cite> 1863 (and other dates). See p. ix, -Memoir.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John -Keats. Edited by Richard Monckton Milnes</cite> (Two -Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references, throughout, -are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite it -henceforth simply as <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, specifying -the volume and page.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <cite>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</cite> (Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, pp. 234-6.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, p. 240.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, pp. 252-3.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. -301. Should not the semicolon at <i>point</i> change places -with the comma at <i>knowledge</i>?</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, -p. 302.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> 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,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.</div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="noindent">The Spenser similarly marked, the subject of <a href="#LETTER_XXXIV">Letter -XXXIV</a>, is missing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. II, p. 35.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <cite>The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical -Journal. Containing Critical Notices of, and Extracts -from, Rare, Curious, and Valuable Old Books.</cite> (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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The correspondent of <cite>The World</cite> would seem (I -only say <em>seem</em>; 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 <i>Friday 27th</i> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. II, p. 55.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following -note of locality from the <cite>Autobiography</cite> (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 <cite>Indicator</cite>; -and he resided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, -Kentish-town (No. 13), where I concluded it.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. II, p. 61.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> See Hunt’s <cite>Autobiography</cite>, Vol. II, p. 216. It -may be noted in passing that the <cite>Indicator</cite> version -of the Sonnet varies in some slight details from the -Original in the volume of Dante referred to at <a href="#Page_xliv">page -xliv</a>, 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <cite>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.</cite> (London. John Murray, Albemarle -Street. 1875.) See Vol. I, p. 11.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> This sonnet occurs at page 128 of <cite>The Garden of -Florence; and other Poems. By John Hamilton</cite>. -(London: John Warren, Old Bond-street. 1821.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <cite>The Letters and Poems of John Keats.</cite> In three -volumes. (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). -Vol. I is called <cite>The Letters of John Keats, edited by -Jno. Gilmer Speed</cite>: Vol. II and III, <cite>The Poems of -John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton -and a Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed</cite>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <cite>Keats by Sidney Colvin.</cite> (Macmillan & Co., -1887). Mr. Colvin has also contributed to <cite>Macmillan’s -Magazine</cite> (August, 1888) an Article <cite>On Some Letters -of Keats</cite>, which I have also duly consulted.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <cite>The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John -Keats</cite>, (Four volumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably -earlier than Mr. Speed’s volumes appeared.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name -was Jane.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> These two words are wanting in the original.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven -months before the date of this letter.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="verse">Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,</div> -<div class="verse">And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,</div> -<div class="verse">Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,</div> -<div class="verse">Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—</div> -<div class="verse right">Pope’s <cite>Rape of the Lock</cite>, iii, 61-4.</div> -</div> -</div> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Fanny’s younger sister: see <a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The word <i>Newport</i> is not stamped on this letter, -as on Numbers <a href="#LETTER_I">I</a>, <a href="#LETTER_II">II</a>, and <a href="#LETTER_IV">IV</a>; but it is pretty -evident that Keats and his friend were still at -Shanklin.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: see -<a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> The Tragedy referred to is, of course, <cite>Otho the -Great</cite>, 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 <cite>Life, Letters, -&c.</cite> (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 <cite>The -Papers of a Critic</cite>, referred to in the Introduction -to the present volume, <a href="#Page_lviii">p. lviii</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> 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 <cite>Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence -and Table-Talk</cite> (Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, -1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also Lord Houghton’s -<cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite> (1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where -there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently -worded and arranged.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The discrepancy between the date written by -Keats and that given in the postmark is curious as -a comment on his statement (<cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, 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....”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> This word is of course left as found in the original -letter: an editor who should spell it <i>yacht</i> would be -guilty of representing Keats as thinking what he did -not think.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Written, I presume, from the house of his friends -and publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, -Fleet Street.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> 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 (<cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. II, p. 23).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> 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 -<cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite> (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 <cite>Life, Letters, &c.</cite></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> 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 <cite>Life</cite> (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.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps -about a week from the 3rd of February, 1820.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> 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 <a href="#LETTER_XXI">XXI</a>, -<a href="#LETTER_XXIV">XXIV</a>, <a href="#LETTER_XXVI">XXVI</a>, <a href="#LETTER_XXXV">XXXV</a>, and <a href="#LETTER_XXXVII">XXXVII</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significant -<em>but</em> 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 <i>My dear Fanny</i> with which in <a href="#LETTER_XXI">Letter -XXI</a> the condition was first expressly prescribed, and -more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a -morbid sensibility in Letters <a href="#LETTER_XXXV">XXXV</a> and <a href="#LETTER_XXXVII">XXXVII</a>. -Probably a man in sound health would have found -the cause trivial enough.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> The MS. of <cite>Lamia, Isabella, &c.</cite> (the volume containing -<cite>Hyperion</cite>, and most of Keats’s finest work).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> 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 <cite>Life, Letters, -&c.</cite>, 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 <a href="#LETTER_XXV">Letter XXV</a> 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 <a href="#LETTER_XXV">Letter XXV</a> 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 <a href="#LETTER_XXVIII">Letter XXVIII</a>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> 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 (<a href="#Page_73">see page 73</a>), 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.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Misspelt <i>Proctor</i> in the original.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> 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 <cite>Life, -Letters, &c.</cite>, Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication -of his having shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy -may be found in the expression in <a href="#LETTER_XXXV">Letter XXXV</a>, -“I appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you -believe in:”—not “<em>we</em> believe in.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to -the end, and then filled in the words <i>My dearest Girl</i>, -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 -<i>God bless you</i> at the end.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> The story in question is one of the many derivatives -from the Third Calender’s Story in <cite>The Thousand -and One Nights</cite> and the somewhat similar tale of -“The Man who laughed not,” included in the Notes -to Lane’s <cite>Arabian Nights</cite> 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 <cite>Nouveaux Contes Orientaux</cite> -of the Comte de Caylus. Mr. Morris’s beautiful poem -“The Man who never laughed again,” in <cite>The Earthly -Paradise</cite>, has familiarized to English readers one -variant of the legend.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> It will of course be remembered that no such collection -appeared until the following summer, when the -<cite>Lamia</cite> volume was published.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> 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 <a href="#LETTER_XXXV">Letter XXXV (p. 93)</a> -were headed <i>Tuesday</i> and this <i>Wednesday</i>, that might -well be the peccant document which appears to be -missing.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <cite>The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In Two Volumes.</cite> -London: 1847 (see Vol. II, pp. 86-93).</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on -page 1, but described on the wrapper as “published in September, -1818.”</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <a href="#Page_liii">See p. liii</a>: it was the 3rd of February, 1820.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <a href="#LETTER_XIII">See Letter XIII, pp. 49-50.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <a href="#LETTER_XVII">See Letter XVII, pp. 57-8.</a></p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <cite>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.’</cite> (London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1869.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <cite>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.</cite> (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1876.)</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> She first appeared upon the London boards in 1822, and -afterwards became “Private Reader” to George IV.</p> - -</div> - -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -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-h.htm or 60433-h.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. 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