Chapter IV: Letter XI: , were in the habit of walking out together (1)

The tone of Letter I is unsuggestive of more than a few weeks’ engagement; but it is impossible, on this alone, to found safely any conclusion whatever. From the date of that letter, the 3rd of July, 1819, we have plainer sailing for awhile: Keats appears to have remained in the Isle of Wight till the 11th or 12th of August, when he and Brown crossed from Cowes to Southampton and proceeded to Winchester. At page 19 we read under the date “9 August,” “This day week we shall move to Winchester”; but in the letter bearing the postmark of the 16th (though dated the 17th) Keats says he has been in Winchester four days; so that the patience of the friends with Shanklin did not hold out for anything like a week.

At Winchester the poet remained till the 11th of September, when bad news from George Keats hurried him up to Town for a few days: he meant to have returned on the 15th, and was certainly there again by the 22nd, remaining until some day between the 1st and 10th of October, by which date he seems to have taken up his abode at lodgings in College Street, Westminster. Here he cannot have remained long; for on the 19th he was already proposing to return to Hampstead; and it must have been very soon after this that he accepted the invitation of Brown to “domesticate with” him again at Wentworth Place; and on the 19th of the next month he was writing from that place to his friend and publisher, Taylor.[10]

This brings us to the fatal winter of 1819-20, during which, until the date of Keats’s first bad illness, we should not expect any more letters to Miss Brawne, because, in the natural course of things, he would be seeing her daily.

The absence of any current record as to the exact date whereon he was struck down with that particular phase of his malady which he himself felt from the first to be fatal, must have seemed peculiarly regretworthy to Keats’s lovers; but it is not impossible to deduce from the various materials at command the day to which Lord Houghton’s account refers. This well-known passage leaves us in no doubt as to the place wherein the beginning of the end came upon the poet,—the house of Charles Brown; but the day we must seek for ourselves.

Passing over such premonitions of disease as that recorded in the letter to George Keats and his wife dated the 14th of February, 1819, and printed at page 257 of the first volume of the _Life_, namely that he had “kept in doors lately, resolved, if possible, to rid” himself of “sore throat,”—the first date important to bear in mind is Thursday, the 13th of January, 1820, which is given at the head of a somewhat remarkable version of a well-known letter addressed to Mrs. George Keats. This letter first appeared without date in the _Life_; but, on the 25th of June, 1877, it was printed in the New York _World_, with many striking variations from the previous text, and with several additions, including the date already quoted, the genuineness of which I can see no reason for doubting. The letter begins thus in the _Life, Letters, &c._—

“My dear Sister,

By the time you receive this your troubles will be over, and
George have returned to you.”

In _The World_ it opens thus—

“My dear Sis.: By the time that you receive this your troubles
will be over. I wish you knew that they were half over; I mean
that George is safe in England, and in good health.”

It is not my part to account here for the _verbal_ inconsistency between these two versions; but the inconsistency as regards _fact_, which has been charged against them, is surely not real. Both versions alike indicate that Keats was writing with the knowledge that his letter would not reach Mrs. George Keats till after the return of her husband from his sudden and short visit to England; and, assuming the genuineness of another document, this was certainly the case.

In _The Philobiblion_[11] for August, 1862, was printed a fragment purporting to be from a letter of Keats’s, which seems to me, on internal evidence alone, of indubitable authenticity; and, if it is Keats’s, it must belong to the particular letter now under consideration. It is headed _Friday 27th_, is written in higher spirits, if anything, than the rest of this brilliant letter, giving a ludicrous string of comparisons for Mrs. George Keats’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Henry Wylie, which, together with a final joke, were apparently deemed unripe for publication in 1848, being represented by asterisks in the _Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. 49). The fragment closes with the promise of “a close written sheet on the first of next month,” varying in phrase, just as the _World_ version of the whole letter varies, from Lord Houghton’s.[12]

Keats explains, under the inaccurate and unexplicit date _Friday 27th_, that he has been writing a letter for George to take back to his wife, has unfortunately forgotten to bring it to town, and will have to send it on to Liverpool, whither George has departed that morning “by the coach,” at six o’clock. The 27th of January, 1820, was a Thursday, not a Friday; and there can be hardly any doubt that George Keats left London on the 28th of January, 1820, because John, who professed to know nothing of the days of the month, seems generally to have known the days of the week; and this Friday cannot have been in any other month: it was after the 13th of January, and before the 16th of February, on which day Keats wrote to Rice, referring to his illness.[13] But whether the date at the head of the fragment should be _Thursday 27th_ or _Friday 28th_ is immaterial for our present purpose, because the Thursday after that date would be the same day in either case; and it was on the Thursday after George left London that Keats was taken ill. This appears from the following passage extracted by Sir Charles Dilke from a letter of George Keats’s to John, and communicated to _The Athenæum_ of the 4th of August, 1877:

“Louisville, June 18th, 1820.

My dear John,

Where will our miseries end? So soon as the Thursday after I
left London you were attacked with a dangerous illness, an hour
after I left this for England my little girl became so ill as
to approach the grave, dragging our dear George after her.
You are recovered (thank [_sic_] I hear the bad and good news
together), they are recovered, and yet....”

Thus, it was on Thursday, the 3rd of February, 1820, that Keats, as recounted by Lord Houghton (Vol. II, pp. 53-4), returned home at about eleven o’clock, “in a state of strange physical excitement,” and told Brown he had received a severe chill outside the stage-coach,—that he coughed up some blood on getting into bed, and read in its colour his death-warrant. Mr. Severn tells me that Keats left his bed-room within a week of his being taken ill: within a fortnight, as we have seen, he was so far better as to be writing (dismally enough, it is true) to Rice; but, that he was confined to the house for some months, is evident. The whole of the letters forming the second division of the series, Numbers X to XXXII, seem to me to have been written during this confinement; and I should doubt whether Keats did much better, if any, than realize his hope of getting out for a walk on the 1st of May.

At that time he was not sufficiently recovered to accompany Brown on his second tour in Scotland; and was yet well enough by the 7th to be at Gravesend with his friend for the final parting. I understand from the _Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. 60), that Keats then went at once to Kentish Town: Lord Houghton says “to lodge at Kentish Town, to be near his friend Leigh Hunt”; but Hunt says in his _Autobiography_ (1850), Vol. II, p. 207, “On Brown’s leaving home a second time, ... Keats, who was too ill to accompany him, came to reside with me, when his last and best volume of poems appeared....”[14] These accounts are not necessarily contradictory; for Keats may have tried lodgings _near_ Hunt first, and moved under the same roof with his friend when the lodgings became intolerable, as those in College Street had done before. He was reading the proofs of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ on the 11th of June, as shown by a letter to Taylor of that date;[15] and, on the 28th, appeared in _The Indicator_, beside the Sonnet

“As Hermes once took to his feathers light....”

the paper entitled “A Now,” at the composition of which Keats is said to have been not only present but assisting;[16] and, as Hunt wrote pretty much “from hand to mouth” for _The Indicator_, we may safely assume that Keats was with him, at all events till just the end of June. On a second attack of spitting of blood, he returned to Wentworth Place to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne; and he was writing from there to Taylor on the 14th of August.

Between these two attacks he would seem to have written the letters forming the third series, Numbers XXXIII to XXXVII. I suspect the desperate tone of Number XXXVII had some weight in bringing about the return to Wentworth Place; and that this was the last letter Keats ever wrote to Fanny Brawne; for Mr. Severn tells me that his friend was absolutely unable to write to her either on the voyage or in Italy.

There are certain passages in the letters, taking exception to Miss Brawne’s behaviour, particularly with Charles Armitage Brown, which should not, I think, be read without making good allowance for the extreme sensitiveness natural to Keats, and exaggerated to the last degree by terrible misfortunes. Keats was himself endowed with such an exquisite refinement of nature, and, without being in any degree a prophet or propagandist like Shelley, was so intensely in earnest both in art and in life, that anything that smacked of trifling with the sacred passion of love must have been to him more horrible and appalling than to most persons of refinement and culture. Add to this that, for the greater part of the time during which his good or evil hap cast him near the object of his affection, his robust spirit of endurance was disarmed by the advancing operations of disease, and his discomfiture in this behalf aggravated by material difficulties of the most galling kind; and we need not be surprised to find things that might otherwise have been deemed of small account making a violent impression upon him. In a memoir[17] of his friend Dilke, written by that gentleman’s grandson, there is an extract from some letter or journal, emanating from whom, and at what date, we are not told, but probably from Mr. or Mrs. Dilke, and which is significant enough: it is at page 11:

“It is quite a settled thing between Keats and Miss ——. God
help them. It’s a bad thing for them. The mother says she
cannot prevent it, and that her only hope is that it will go
off. He don’t like anyone to look at her or to speak to her.”

This indicates, at all events, a morbid susceptibility on the part of Keats as to the relations of his betrothed with the rest of the world, and must be taken into account in weighing his own words in this connexion. That things went uncomfortably enough to attract the attention of others is indicated again in an extract which Sir Charles Dilke has published on the same page with the foregoing, from a letter written to Mrs. Dilke by Miss Reynolds:

“I hear that Keats is going to Rome, which must please all his
friends on every account. I sincerely hope it will benefit his
health, poor fellow! His mind and spirits must be bettered
by it; and absence may probably weaken, if not break off, a
connexion that has been a most unhappy one for him.”

Unhappy, the connexion doubtless was, as the connexion of a doomed man with the whole world is likely to be; but it would be unfair to assume that the engagement to Miss Brawne took a more unfortunate turn than any engagement would probably take for a man circumstanced as Keats was,—a man without independent means, and debarred by ill-health from earning an independence. Above all, it would be both unsafe and extremely unfair to conclude that either Miss Brawne or Keats’s amiable and admirable true friend Charles Brown was guilty of any real levity.

That Keats’s passion was the cause of his death is an assumption which also should be looked at with reserve. Shelley’s immortal Elegy and Byron’s ribald stanzas have been yoked together to draw down the track of years the false notion that adverse criticism killed him; and now that that form of murder has been shewn not to have been committed, there seems to be a reluctance to admit that there was no killing in the matter. Sir Charles Dilke says, at page 7 of the Memoir already cited, that Keats “‘gave in’ to a passion which killed him as surely as ever any man was killed by love.” This may be perfectly true; for perhaps love never did kill any man; but surely it must be superfluous to assume any such dire agency in the decease of a man who had hereditary consumption. Coleridge’s often-quoted verdict, “There is death in that hand,” does not stand alone; and the careful reader of Keats’s Life and Letters will find ample evidence of a state of health likely to lead but to one result,—such as the passage already cited in regard to his staying at home determined to rid himself of sore throat, the account of his return, invalided, from the tour in Scotland, which his friends agreed he ought never to have undertaken, and his own statement to Mr. Dilke, printed in the _Life, Letters, &c._ (Vol. II, p. 7), that he “was not in very good health” when at Shanklin.

Lord Houghton’s fine perception of character and implied fact sufficed to prevent his giving any colour to the supposition that Keats was not sufficiently cherished and considered in his latter days: the reproaches that occur in some of the present letters do not lead me to alter the impression conveyed to me on this subject by his Lordship’s memoirs; nor do I doubt that others will make the necessary allowance for the fevered condition of the poet’s mind and the harassed state of body and spirit. Mr. Severn tells me that Mrs. and Miss Brawne felt the keenest regret that they had not followed him and Keats to Rome; and, indeed, I understand that there was some talk of a marriage taking place before the departure. Even twenty years after Keats’s death, when Mr. Severn returned to England, the bereaved lady was unable to receive him on account of the extreme painfulness of the associations connected with him.

In Sir Charles Dilke’s Memoir of his grandfather, there is a strange passage wherein he quotes from a letter of Miss Brawne’s written ten years after Keats’s death,—a passage which might lead to an inference very far from the truth:

“Keats died admired only by his personal friends, and by
Shelley; and even ten years after his death, when the first
memoir was proposed, the woman he had loved had so little
belief in his poetic reputation, that she wrote to Mr. Dilke,
‘The kindest act would be to let him rest for ever in the
obscurity to which circumstances have condemned him.’”

That Miss Brawne should have written thus at the end of ten years’ widowhood does not by any means imply weakness of belief in Keats’s fame. Obscurity of life is not identical with obscurity of works; and any one must surely perceive that an application made to her for material for a biography, or even any proposal to publish one, must have been intensely painful to her. She could not bear any discussion of him, and was, till her death in 1865, peculiarly reticent about him; but in her latter years, as a matron with grown-up children, when the world had decided that Keats was not to be left in that obscurity, she said more than once that the letters of the poet, which form the present volume, and about which she was otherwise most uncommunicative, should be carefully guarded, “as they would some day be considered of value.”

It would be irrelevant to the present purpose to recount the facts of this honoured lady’s life; but one or two personal traits may be recorded. She had the gift of independence or self-sufficingness in a high degree; and it was not easy to turn her from a settled purpose. This strength of character showed itself in a noticeable manner in the great crisis of her life, and in a manner, too, that has to some extent robbed her of the small credit of devotion to the man whose love she had accepted; for those who knew the truth would not have it discussed, and those who decried her did not know the truth.

On the news of Keats’s death, she cut her hair short and took to a widow’s cap and mourning. She wandered about solitary, day after day, on Hampstead Heath, frequently alarming the family by staying there far into the night, and having to be sought with lanterns. Before friends and acquaintance she affected a buoyancy of spirit which has tended to wrong her memory; but her sister carried into advanced life the recollection that, when the stress of keeping up appearances passed, Fanny spent such time as she remained at home in her own room,—into which the child would peer with awe, and see the unwedded widow poring in helpless despair over Keats’s letters.

Without being in general a systematic student she was a voluminous reader in widely varying branches of literature; and some out-of-the-way subjects she followed up with great perseverance. One of her strong points of learning was the history of costume, in which she was so well read as to be able to answer any question of detail at a moment’s notice. This was quite independent of individual adornment; though, _à propos_ of Keats’s remark, “she manages to make her hair look well,” it may be mentioned that some special pains were taken in this particular, the hair being worn in curls over the forehead, interlaced with ribands. She was an eager politician, with very strong convictions, fiery and animated in discussion; and this characteristic she preserved till the end.

The sonnet on Keats’s preference for blue eyes,

“Blue! ’tis the hue of heaven,” &c.,

written in reply to John Hamilton Reynolds’s sonnet[18] in which a preference is expressed for dark eyes,—

“Dark eyes are dearer far
Than orbs that mock the hyacinthine bell”—

has no immediate connexion with Miss Brawne; but it is of interest to note that the colour of her eyes was blue, so that the poet was faithful to his preference. No good portrait of her is extant, except the silhouette of which a reproduction is given opposite page 3: a miniature which is perhaps no longer extant is said by her family to have been almost worthless, while the silhouette is regarded as characteristic and accurate as far as such things can be. Mr. Severn, however, told me that the draped figure in Titian’s picture of Sacred and Profane Love, in the Borghese Palace at Rome, resembled her greatly, so much so that he used to visit it frequently, and copied it, on this account. Keats, it seems, never saw this noble picture containing the only satisfactory likeness of Fanny Brawne.

The portrait of Keats which forms the frontispiece to this volume has been etched by Mr. W. B. Scott from a drawing of Severn’s, to which the following words are attached:

“28th Jany. 3 o’clock mg. Drawn to keep me awake—a deadly sweat
was on him all this night.”

Keats’s old schoolfellow, the late Charles Cowden Clarke, assured me in 1876 that this drawing was “a marvellously correct likeness.”

_Postscript._—During the past ten years my work in connexion with the writings and doings of Keats has involved the discovery and examination of a great mass of documents of a more or less authoritative kind, both printed and manuscript; and many points which were matters of conjecture in 1877 are now no longer so.

Others also have busied themselves about Keats; and, since the foregoing remarks were first published in 1878, Mr. J. G. Speed, a grandson of George Keats, has identified himself with the contributor to the New York _World_, alluded to at pages xlviii and xlix, in reissuing in America Lord Houghton’s edition of Keats’s Poems, together with a collection of letters.[19] This work, though containing one new letter, unhappily threw no real light whatever either on the inconsistencies of text already referred to or on any other question connected with Keats. Later, Professor Sidney Colvin has issued, with a very different result, his volume on Keats[20] included in the “English Men of Letters” series; and I have not hesitated to use, without individual specification, such illustrative facts as have become available, whether from Mr. Colvin’s work or from my own edition of Keats’s whole writings,[21] which also appeared some time after the publication of the Letters to Fanny Brawne, though years before Mr. Colvin’s book.

Two letters, traced since the body of the present volume passed through the press are added at the close of the series; and I have now reason to think that the letter numbered XXVIII should precede that numbered XXV, the date being probably the 23rd or 25th of February, 1820, rather than the 4th of March as suggested in the foot-note at page 78.

The cousin of the Misses Reynolds whom Keats described as a Charmian was Miss Jane Cox,[22] at least so I was most positively assured by Miss Charlotte Reynolds in 1883.

It is now pretty clear that the intention to return to Winchester on the 14th of September, 1819, was not carried out quite literally, and that Keats really returned to that city on the 15th. In regard to the foot-note at page 33, it should now be stated that, in a letter post-marked the 16th of October, 1819, he speaks of having returned to Hampstead after lodging two or three days in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Dilke.

Having mentioned in the foot-note at page 101 that Keats had elsewhere recorded himself and Tom as firm believers in immortality, I must now state that the record cited was a garbled one. Lord Houghton, working from transcripts furnished to him by the late Mr. Jeffrey, the second husband of George Keats’s widow, printed the words “I have a firm belief in immortality, and so had Tom.” The corresponding sentence in the autograph letter is “I have scarce a doubt of an immortality of some kind or another, neither had Tom.”

Finally, it remains to supply an omission which I find it hard to account for. In Medwin’s Life of Shelley occur some important extracts about Keats, seeming to emanate from Fanny Brawne. In 1877 I learnt from the lady’s family that Medwin’s mysteriously introduced correspondent was no other than she. Indeed I had actually cut the relative portion of Medwin’s book out for use in this Introduction; but by some inexplicable oversight I omitted even to refer to it; and it remained for Professor Colvin to call attention to it. I now gladly follow his lead in citing words which have a direct bearing upon the vexed question of the appreciation of Keats by her whom he loved; and, in the appendix to the present edition, the passage in question will be found.

H. BUXTON FORMAN.

46 MARLBOROUGH HILL, ST. JOHN’S WOOD, _November, 1888_.

CORRECTIONS.

Page xxxi, line 6 from foot, for _does_ read _did_.

Page 16, end of foot-note 3, add _or perhaps a dog_.

Page 18, there should be a foot-note to the effect that _Meleager_ in line 6 is written _Maleager_ in the original.

Page 73, end of foot-note, strike out the words _of which period there are still indications in Letter XXVIII_.

Page 94, line 2 of note, for _in_ read _on_.

Page 95, line 2 of notes, for 1819 read 1820.

Page 96, line 3 of note, for 1819 read 1820.

LETTERS TO FANNY BRAWNE.

I TO IX.

SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER.

I-IX.

SHANKLIN, WINCHESTER, WESTMINSTER.

I.

Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Thursday.

[_Postmark_, Newport, 3 July, 1819.]

My dearest Lady,

I am glad I had not an opportunity of sending off a Letter
which I wrote for you on Tuesday night—’twas too much like
one out of Rousseau’s Heloise. I am more reasonable this
morning. The morning is the only proper time for me to write
to a beautiful Girl whom I love so much: for at night, when
the lonely day has closed, and the lonely, silent, unmusical
Chamber is waiting to receive me as into a Sepulchre, then
believe me my passion gets entirely the sway, then I would
not have you see those Rhapsodies which I once thought it
impossible I should ever give way to, and which I have often
laughed at in another, for fear you should [think me[23]]
either too unhappy or perhaps a little mad. I am now at a
very pleasant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly
country, with a glimpse of the sea; the morning is very fine.
I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I
might have in living here and breathing and wandering as free
as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remembrance of you
did not weigh so upon me. I have never known any unalloy’d
Happiness for many days together: the death or sickness of some
one[24] has always spoilt my hours—and now when none such
troubles oppress me, it is you must confess very hard that
another sort of pain should haunt me. Ask yourself my love
whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so
destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you
must write immediately and do all you can to console me in
it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write
the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch
my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to
express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word
than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were
butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days
with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years
could ever contain. But however selfish I may feel, I am sure I
could never act selfishly: as I told you a day or two before I
left Hampstead, I will never return to London if my Fate does
not turn up Pam[25] or at least a Court-card. Though I could
centre my Happiness in you, I cannot expect to engross your
heart so entirely—indeed if I thought you felt as much for me
as I do for you at this moment I do not think I could restrain
myself from seeing you again tomorrow for the delight of one
embrace. But no—I must live upon hope and Chance. In case of
the worst that can happen, I shall still love you—but what
hatred shall I have for another! Some lines I read the other
day are continually ringing a peal in my ears:

To see those eyes I prize above mine own
Dart favors on another—
And those sweet lips (yielding immortal nectar)
Be gently press’d by any but myself—
Think, think Francesca, what a cursed thing
It were beyond expression!

J.

Do write immediately. There is no Post from this Place, so
you must address Post Office, Newport, Isle of Wight. I know
before night I shall curse myself for having sent you so cold
a Letter; yet it is better to do it as much in my senses as
possible. Be as kind as the distance will permit to your

J. KEATS.

Present my Compliments to your mother, my love to Margaret[26]
and best remembrances to your Brother—if you please so.

II.

July 8th.

[_Postmark_, Newport, 10 July, 1819.]

My sweet Girl,

Your Letter gave me more delight than any thing in the world
but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any
absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses
which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive
your influence and a tenderer nature stealing upon me. All my
thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights, have I find not at all
cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am
miserable that you are not with me: or rather breathe in that
dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. I never knew
before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did
not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should
burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be
some fire, ’twill not be more than we can bear when moistened
and bedewed with Pleasures. You mention ‘horrid people’ and
ask me whether it depend upon them whether I see you again.
Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in
my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm
befalling you. I would never see any thing but Pleasure in
your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps. I
would wish to see you among those amusements suitable to your
inclinations and spirits; so that our loves might be a delight
in the midst of Pleasures agreeable enough, rather than a
resource from vexations and cares. But I doubt much, in case
of the worst, whether I shall be philosopher enough to follow
my own Lessons: if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could
not. Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I
could never have lov’d you?—I cannot conceive any beginning
of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort
of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the
highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the
richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love
after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to
my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try
elsewhere its Power. You say you are afraid I shall think you
do not love me—in saying this you make me ache the more to be
near you. I am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do
not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging
some rhymes; and here I must confess, that (since I am on that
subject) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked
me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women
whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to
be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, and only
wish it was a sign that poor Rice would get well whose illness
makes him rather a melancholy companion: and the more so as so
to conquer his feelings and hide them from me, with a forc’d
Pun. I kiss’d your writing over in the hope you had indulg’d me
by leaving a trace of honey. What was your dream? Tell it me
and I will tell you the interpretation thereof.

Ever yours, my love!

JOHN KEATS.

Do not accuse me of delay—we have not here an opportunity of
sending letters every day. Write speedily.

III.

Sunday Night.

[_Postmark_, 27 July, 1819.[27]]

My sweet Girl,

I hope you did not blame me much for not obeying your request
of a Letter on Saturday: we have had four in our small room
playing at cards night and morning leaving me no undisturb’d
opportunity to write. Now Rice and Martin are gone I am at
liberty. Brown to my sorrow confirms the account you give of
your ill health. You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you:
how I would die for one hour——for what is in the world? I say
you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with
such eyes upon me as I have upon you: it cannot be. Forgive
me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day
employ’d in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with
you—two things which must excuse me. I have, believe me, not
been an age in letting you take possession of me; the very
first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal; but burnt
the Letter as the very next time I saw you I thought you
manifested some dislike to me. If you should ever feel for Man
at the first sight what I did for you, I am lost. Yet I should
not quarrel with you, but hate myself if such a thing were to
happen—only I should burst if the thing were not as fine as
a Man as you are as a Woman. Perhaps I am too vehement, then
fancy me on my knees, especially when I mention a part of your
Letter which hurt me; you say speaking of Mr. Severn “but you
must be satisfied in knowing that I admired you much more
than your friend.” My dear love, I cannot believe there ever
was or ever could be any thing to admire in me especially as
far as sight goes—I cannot be admired, I am not a thing to be
admired. You are, I love you; all I can bring you is a swooning
admiration of your Beauty. I hold that place among Men which
snub-nos’d brunettes with meeting eyebrows do among women—they
are trash to me—unless I should find one among them with a
fire in her heart like the one that burns in mine. You absorb
me in spite of myself—you alone: for I look not forward with
any pleasure to what is call’d being settled in the world;
I tremble at domestic cares—yet for you I would meet them,
though if it would leave you the happier I would rather die
than do so. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks,
your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have
possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world:
it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I
could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it.
From no others would I take it. I am indeed astonish’d to find
myself so careless of all charms but yours—remembering as I do
the time when even a bit of ribband was a matter of interest
with me. What softer words can I find for you after this—what
it is I will not read. Nor will I say more here, but in a
Postscript answer any thing else you may have mentioned in your
Letter in so many words—for I am distracted with a thousand
thoughts. I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray
to your star like a Heathen.

Your’s ever, fair Star,

JOHN KEATS.

My seal is mark’d like a family table cloth with my Mother’s
initial F for Fanny:[28] put between my Father’s initials. You
will soon hear from me again. My respectful Compliments to your
Mother. Tell Margaret I’ll send her a reef of best rocks and
tell Sam[29] I will give him my light bay hunter if he will tie
the Bishop hand and foot and pack him in a hamper and send him
down for me to bathe him for his health with a Necklace of good
snubby stones about his Neck.[30]

IV.

Shanklin, Thursday Night.

[_Postmark,_ Newport, 9 August, 1819.]

My dear Girl,

You say you must not have any more such Letters as the last:
I’ll try that you shall not by running obstinate the other
way. Indeed I have not fair play—I am not idle enough for
proper downright love-letters—I leave this minute a scene in
our Tragedy[31] and see you (think it not blasphemy) through
the mist of Plots, speeches, counterplots and counterspeeches.
The Lover is madder than I am—I am nothing to him—he has a
figure like the Statue of Meleager and double distilled fire
in his heart. Thank God for my diligence! were it not for
that I should be miserable. I encourage it, and strive not to
think of you—but when I have succeeded in doing so all day and
as far as midnight, you return, as soon as this artificial
excitement goes off, more severely from the fever I am left
in. Upon my soul I cannot say what you could like me for. I
do not think myself a fright any more than I do Mr. A., Mr.
B., and Mr. C.—yet if I were a woman I should not like A. B.
C. But enough of this. So you intend to hold me to my promise
of seeing you in a short time. I shall keep it with as much
sorrow as gladness: for I am not one of the Paladins of old
who liv’d upon water grass and smiles for years together. What
though would I not give tonight for the gratification of my
eyes alone? This day week we shall move to Winchester; for I
feel the want of a Library.[32] Brown will leave me there to
pay a visit to Mr. Snook at Bedhampton: in his absence I will
flit to you and back. I will stay very little while, for as I
am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have
its course bad or good—in it I shall try my own strength and
the public pulse. At Winchester I shall get your Letters more
readily; and it being a cathedral City I shall have a pleasure
always a great one to me when near a Cathedral, of reading them
during the service up and down the Aisle.

_Friday Morning._—Just as I had written thus far last night,
Brown came down in his morning coat and nightcap, saying he
had been refresh’d by a good sleep and was very hungry. I left
him eating and went to bed, being too tired to enter into
any discussions. You would delight very greatly in the walks
about here; the Cliffs, woods, hills, sands, rocks &c. about
here. They are however not so fine but I shall give them a
hearty good bye to exchange them for my Cathedral.—Yet again
I am not so tired of Scenery as to hate Switzerland. We might
spend a pleasant year at Berne or Zurich—if it should please
Venus to hear my “Beseech thee to hear us O Goddess.” And
if she should hear, God forbid we should what people call,
_settle_—turn into a pond, a stagnant Lethe—a vile crescent,
row or buildings. Better be imprudent moveables than prudent
fixtures. Open my Mouth at the Street door like the Lion’s head
at Venice to receive hateful cards, letters, messages. Go out
and wither at tea parties; freeze at dinners; bake at dances;
simmer at routs. No my love, trust yourself to me and I will
find you nobler amusements, fortune favouring. I fear you will
not receive this till Sunday or Monday: as the Irishman would
write do not in the mean while hate me. I long to be off for
Winchester, for I begin to dislike the very door-posts here—the
names, the pebbles. You ask after my health, not telling me
whether you are better. I am quite well. You going out is no
proof that you are: how is it? Late hours will do you great
harm. What fairing is it? I was alone for a couple of days
while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient
knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man’s, yet
regretted his return—it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt.
I had got in a dream among my Books—really luxuriating in a
solitude and silence you alone should have disturb’d.

Your ever affectionate

JOHN KEATS.

V.

Winchester, August 17th.[33]

[_Postmark_, 16 August, 1819.]

My dear Girl—what shall I say for myself? I have been here
four days and not yet written you—’tis true I have had many
teasing letters of business to dismiss—and I have been in the
Claws, like a serpent in an Eagle’s, of the last act of our
Tragedy. This is no excuse; I know it; I do not presume to
offer it. I have no right either to ask a speedy answer to
let me know how lenient you are—I must remain some days in a
Mist—I see you through a Mist: as I daresay you do me by this
time. Believe in the first Letters I wrote you: I assure you I
felt as I wrote—I could not write so now. The thousand images I
have had pass through my brain—my uneasy spirits—my unguess’d
fate—all spread as a veil between me and you. Remember I have
had no idle leisure to brood over you—’tis well perhaps I
have not. I could not have endured the throng of jealousies
that used to haunt me before I had plunged so deeply into
imaginary interests. I would fain, as my sails are set, sail
on without an interruption for a Brace of Months longer—I am
in complete cue—in the fever; and shall in these four Months
do an immense deal. This Page as my eye skims over it I see is
excessively unloverlike and ungallant—I cannot help it—I am
no officer in yawning quarters; no Parson-Romeo. My Mind is
heap’d to the full; stuff’d like a cricket ball—if I strive to
fill it more it would burst. I know the generality of women
would hate me for this; that I should have so unsoften’d, so
hard a Mind as to forget them; forget the brightest realities
for the dull imaginations of my own Brain. But I conjure you
to give it a fair thinking; and ask yourself whether ’tis not
better to explain my feelings to you, than write artificial
Passion.—Besides, you would see through it. It would be vain
to strive to deceive you. ’Tis harsh, harsh, I know it. My
heart seems now made of iron—I could not write a proper answer
to an invitation to Idalia. You are my Judge: my forehead is
on the ground. You seem offended at a little simple innocent
childish playfulness in my last. I did not seriously mean to
say that you were endeavouring to make me keep my promise. I
beg your pardon for it. ’Tis but _just_ your Pride should
take the alarm—_seriously_. You say I may do as I please—I do
not think with any conscience I can; my cash resources are for
the present stopp’d; I fear for some time. I spend no money,
but it increases my debts. I have all my life thought very
little of these matters—they seem not to belong to me. It may
be a proud sentence; but by Heaven I am as entirely above all
matters of interest as the Sun is above the Earth—and though
of my own money I should be careless; of my Friends’ I must be
spare. You see how I go on—like so many strokes of a hammer.
I cannot help it—I am impell’d, driven to it. I am not happy
enough for silken Phrases, and silver sentences. I can no more
use soothing words to you than if I were at this moment engaged
in a charge of Cavalry. Then you will say I should not write at
all.—Should I not? This Winchester is a fine place: a beautiful
Cathedral and many other ancient buildings in the Environs.
The little coffin of a room at Shanklin is changed for a large
room, where I can promenade at my pleasure—looks out onto a
beautiful—blank side of a house. It is strange I should like it
better than the view of the sea from our window at Shanklin. I
began to hate the very posts there—the voice of the old Lady
over the way was getting a great Plague. The Fisherman’s face
never altered any more than our black teapot—the knob however
was knock’d off to my little relief. I am getting a great
dislike of the picturesque; and can only relish it over again
by seeing you enjoy it. One of the pleasantest things I have
seen lately was at Cowes. The Regent in his Yatch[34] (I think
they spell it) was anchored opposite—a beautiful vessel—and all
the Yatchs and boats on the coast were passing and repassing
it; and circuiting and tacking about it in every direction—I
never beheld anything so silent, light, and graceful.—As we
pass’d over to Southampton, there was nearly an accident.
There came by a Boat well mann’d, with two naval officers at
the stern. Our Bow-lines took the top of their little mast
and snapped it off close by the board. Had the mast been a
little stouter they would have been upset. In so trifling an
event I could not help admiring our seamen—neither officer nor
man in the whole Boat moved a muscle—they scarcely notic’d it
even with words. Forgive me for this flint-worded Letter, and
believe and see that I cannot think of you without some sort of
energy—though mal à propos. Even as I leave off it seems to me
that a few more moments’ thought of you would uncrystallize and
dissolve me. I must not give way to it—but turn to my writing
again—if I fail I shall die hard. O my love, your lips are
growing sweet again to my fancy—I must forget them. Ever your
affectionate

KEATS.

VI.

Fleet Street,[35] Monday Morn.

[_Postmark_, Lombard Street, 14 September, 1819.]

My dear Girl,

I have been hurried to town by a Letter from my brother George;
it is not of the brightest intelligence. Am I mad or not?
I came by the Friday night coach and have not yet been to
Hampstead. Upon my soul it is not my fault. I cannot resolve
to mix any pleasure with my days: they go one like another,
undistinguishable. If I were to see you today it would
destroy the half comfortable sullenness I enjoy at present
into downright perplexities. I love you too much to venture
to Hampstead, I feel it is not paying a visit, but venturing
into a fire. _Que feraije?_ as the French novel writers say
in fun, and I in earnest: really what can I do? Knowing well
that my life must be passed in fatigue and trouble, I have
been endeavouring to wean myself from you: for to myself alone
what can be much of a misery? As far as they regard myself
I can despise all events: but I cannot cease to love you.
This morning I scarcely know what I am doing. I am going to
Walthamstow. I shall return to Winchester tomorrow;[36] whence
you shall hear from me in a few days. I am a Coward, I cannot
bear the pain of being happy: ’tis out of the question: I must
admit no thought of it.

Yours ever affectionately

JOHN KEATS.

VII.

College Street.[37]

[_Postmark_, 11 October, 1819.]

My sweet Girl,

I am living today in yesterday: I was in a complete fascination
all day. I feel myself at your mercy. Write me ever so few
lines and tell me you will never for ever be less kind to
me than yesterday.—You dazzled me. There is nothing in the
world so bright and delicate. When Brown came out with that
seemingly true story against me last night, I felt it would
be death to me if you had ever believed it—though against any
one else I could muster up my obstinacy. Before I knew Brown
could disprove it I was for the moment miserable. When shall
we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which
with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the
thousand and first—’twould put me to the proof how great a
misery I could live through. If you should ever carry your
threat yesterday into execution—believe me ’tis not my pride,
my vanity or any petty passion would torment me—really ’twould
hurt my heart—I could not bear it. I have seen Mrs. Dilke this
morning; she says she will come with me any fine day.

Ever yours

JOHN KEATS.

Ah hertè mine!

VIII.

25 College Street.

[_Postmark_, 13 October, 1819.]

My dearest Girl,

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I
cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a
line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from
my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of
nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise
and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My
love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am
forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to
stop there—I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a
sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I
should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing
you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My
sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I
have no limit now to my love.... Your note came in just here. I
cannot be happier away from you. ’Tis richer than an Argosy of
Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shudder’d at it.
I shudder no more—I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is
my religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed
is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away
by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw
you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often
“to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no
more—the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot
breathe without you.

Yours for ever

JOHN KEATS.

IX.

Great Smith Street, Tuesday Morn.

[_Postmark_, College Street, 19 October, 1819.]

My sweet Fanny,

On awakening from my three days dream (“I cry to dream
again”) I find one and another astonish’d at my idleness and
thoughtlessness. I was miserable last night—the morning is
always restorative. I must be busy, or try to be so. I have
several things to speak to you of tomorrow morning. Mrs.
Dilke I should think will tell you that I purpose living at
Hampstead. I must impose chains upon myself. I shall be able to
do nothing. I should like to cast the die for Love or death. I
have no Patience with any thing else—if you ever intend to be
cruel to me as you say in jest now but perhaps may sometimes
be in earnest, be so now—and I will—my mind is in a tremble, I
cannot tell what I am writing.

Ever my love yours

JOHN KEATS.

X TO XXXII.

WENTWORTH PLACE.

X—XXXII.

WENTWORTH PLACE.

X.

Dearest Fanny, I shall send this the moment you return. They
say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The
consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of
the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
this evening, without fail—when you must not mind about my
speaking in a low tone for I am ordered to do so though I _can_
speak out.

Yours ever sweetest love.—

J. KEATS.

turn over

Perhaps your Mother is not at home and so you must wait till
she comes. You must see me tonight and let me hear you promise
to come tomorrow.

Brown told me you were all out. I have been looking for the
stage the whole afternoon. Had I known this I could not have
remain’d so silent all day.

XI.

My dearest Girl,