ADDITIONAL LETTERS.

I do not write this till the last,that no eye may catch it.[53]My dearest Girl,I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy—the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with youfor 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 unhappynow 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 Italyor nowhere, Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome—well, I should there see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all hours,——I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any—the world is too brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.God bless you.J. K.

I do not write this till the last,that no eye may catch it.[53]

My dearest Girl,

I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy—the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with youfor 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 unhappynow 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 Italyor nowhere, Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome—well, I should there see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all hours,——I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any—the world is too brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.

God bless you.

J. K.

ShanklinThursday Evening[15 July 1819?[54]]My love,I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as only to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To night I am greatly recovered only tofeel the languor I have felt after you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps might have made me better: you would then have made me worse: now you could quite effect a cure: What fee my sweet Physician would I not give you to do so. Do not call it folly, when I tell you I took your letter last night to bed with me. In the morning I found your name on the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the bad omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You must have found out by this time I am a little given to bode ill like the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; it has proceeded from the general tenor of the circumstances of my life, and rendered every event suspicious. However I will no more trouble either you or myself with sad prophecies; though so far I am pleased at it as it has given me opportunity to love your disinterestedness towards me.I can be a raven no more; you and pleasure take possession of me at the same moment. I am afraid you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be selfish enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive me this? I have been reading lately an oriental tale of a very beautiful color[55]—It is of a city of melancholy men, all made so by this circumstance. Through a series of adventures each one of them by turns reach some gardens of Paradise where they meetwith a most enchanting Lady; and just as they are going to embrace her, she bids them shut their eyes—they shut them—and on opening their eyes again find themselves descending to the earth in a magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy ever after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I palpitated at it; how the certainty that you were in the same world with myself, and though as beautiful, not so talismanic as that Lady; how I could not bear you should be so you must believe because I swear it by yourself. I cannot say when I shall get a volume ready. I have three or four stories half done, but as I cannot write for the mere sake of the press, I am obliged to let them progress or lie still as my fancy chooses. By Christmas perhaps they may appear,[56]but I amnot 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 haveto 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! andEver yoursJOHN KEATS.

Shanklin

Thursday Evening

[15 July 1819?[54]]

My love,

I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as only to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To night I am greatly recovered only tofeel the languor I have felt after you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps might have made me better: you would then have made me worse: now you could quite effect a cure: What fee my sweet Physician would I not give you to do so. Do not call it folly, when I tell you I took your letter last night to bed with me. In the morning I found your name on the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the bad omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You must have found out by this time I am a little given to bode ill like the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; it has proceeded from the general tenor of the circumstances of my life, and rendered every event suspicious. However I will no more trouble either you or myself with sad prophecies; though so far I am pleased at it as it has given me opportunity to love your disinterestedness towards me.I can be a raven no more; you and pleasure take possession of me at the same moment. I am afraid you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be selfish enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive me this? I have been reading lately an oriental tale of a very beautiful color[55]—It is of a city of melancholy men, all made so by this circumstance. Through a series of adventures each one of them by turns reach some gardens of Paradise where they meetwith a most enchanting Lady; and just as they are going to embrace her, she bids them shut their eyes—they shut them—and on opening their eyes again find themselves descending to the earth in a magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy ever after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I palpitated at it; how the certainty that you were in the same world with myself, and though as beautiful, not so talismanic as that Lady; how I could not bear you should be so you must believe because I swear it by yourself. I cannot say when I shall get a volume ready. I have three or four stories half done, but as I cannot write for the mere sake of the press, I am obliged to let them progress or lie still as my fancy chooses. By Christmas perhaps they may appear,[56]but I amnot 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 haveto take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the thought as I fall asleep, of seeing you tomorrow morning? or the next day, or the next—it takes on the appearance of impossibility and eternity—I will say a month—I will say I will see you in a month at most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour. I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually with you: after having once more kissed you Sweet I would rather be here alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat. Meantime you must write to me—as I will every week—for your letters keep me alive. My sweet Girl I cannot speak my love for you. Good night! and

Ever yours

JOHN KEATS.

Tuesday Morn.My dearest Girl,I wrote a letter[57]for you yesterday expecting to have seen your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you. Do not think of anything but me. Do not live as if I was not existing. Do not forget me—Buthave I any right to say you forget me? Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it if you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me—and for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I have been haunted with a sweet vision—I have seen you the whole time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been full of tears at it! I[n]deed I think a real love is enough to occupy the widest heart. Your going to town alone when I heard of it was a shock to me—yet I expected it—promise me you will not for some time till I get better. Promise me this and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you cannot do so with good will, do my love tell me—say what you think—confess if your heart is too muchfasten’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 younow—you never have nor ever will love me. I seelifein 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 liveas other men and women do—I cannot brook the wolfsbane of fashion and foppery and tattle—you must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say that I have more feeling than my fellows, but I wish you seriously to look over my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the person who wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create. My recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you are not mine when I am well. For God’s sake save me—or tell me my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless you.J. K.No—my sweet Fanny—I am wrong—I do not wish you to be unhappy—and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a Beauty—my loveliest, my darling! good bye! I kiss you—O the torments!

Tuesday Morn.

My dearest Girl,

I wrote a letter[57]for you yesterday expecting to have seen your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you. Do not think of anything but me. Do not live as if I was not existing. Do not forget me—Buthave I any right to say you forget me? Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it if you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me—and for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I have been haunted with a sweet vision—I have seen you the whole time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been full of tears at it! I[n]deed I think a real love is enough to occupy the widest heart. Your going to town alone when I heard of it was a shock to me—yet I expected it—promise me you will not for some time till I get better. Promise me this and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you cannot do so with good will, do my love tell me—say what you think—confess if your heart is too muchfasten’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 younow—you never have nor ever will love me. I seelifein 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 liveas other men and women do—I cannot brook the wolfsbane of fashion and foppery and tattle—you must be mine to die upon the rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say that I have more feeling than my fellows, but I wish you seriously to look over my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the person who wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create. My recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you are not mine when I am well. For God’s sake save me—or tell me my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless you.

J. K.

No—my sweet Fanny—I am wrong—I do not wish you to be unhappy—and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a Beauty—my loveliest, my darling! good bye! I kiss you—O the torments!

In discussing the effect which theQuarterly Reviewarticle had on Keats, Medwin[58]quotes the following passages from a communication addressed to him by Fanny Brawne after her marriage:—

“I did not know Keats at the time the review appeared. It was published, if I remember rightly, in June, 1818.[59]However great his mortification might have been, he was not, I should say, of a character likely to have displayed it in the manner mentioned in Mrs. Shelley’s Remains of her husband. Keats, soon after the appearance of the review in question, started on a walking expedition into the Highlands. From thence he was forced to return, in consequence of the illness of a brother, whose death a few months afterwards affected him strongly.“It was about this time that I became acquainted with Keats. We met frequently at the house of a mutual friend, (not Leigh Hunt’s), but neither then nor afterwards did I see anything in his manner to give the idea that he was brooding over any secretgrief or disappointment. His conversation was in the highest degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting at moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in January 1820,[60]began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold. In coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to consumption was aggravated by the excessive susceptibility of his temperament, for I never see those often quoted lines of Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:—The fiery soul, that working out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay.From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write a line of poetry,[61]and his failing health, joined to the uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into deep melancholy.“The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr. Finch, seems calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That his sensibility was most acute, is true, and his passions were very strong, but not violent, if by that term violence of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his anger seemed rather to turn on himself than on others, and in moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends. Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental and bodily, and I do not hesitate to say that he never could have addressed an unkind expression, much less a violentone, to any human being. During the last few months before leaving his native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for whatever in moments of grief or disappointment he might say or think, his most ardent desire was to live to redeem his name from the obloquy cast upon it;[62]nor was it till he knew his death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch’s letter goes on to say—‘Keats might be judged insane,’—I believe the fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s task a painful one.”

“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 secretgrief or disappointment. His conversation was in the highest degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting at moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in January 1820,[60]began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold. In coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to consumption was aggravated by the excessive susceptibility of his temperament, for I never see those often quoted lines of Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:—

The fiery soul, that working out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay.

The fiery soul, that working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay.

From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write a line of poetry,[61]and his failing health, joined to the uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into deep melancholy.

“The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr. Finch, seems calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That his sensibility was most acute, is true, and his passions were very strong, but not violent, if by that term violence of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his anger seemed rather to turn on himself than on others, and in moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends. Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental and bodily, and I do not hesitate to say that he never could have addressed an unkind expression, much less a violentone, to any human being. During the last few months before leaving his native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for whatever in moments of grief or disappointment he might say or think, his most ardent desire was to live to redeem his name from the obloquy cast upon it;[62]nor was it till he knew his death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch’s letter goes on to say—‘Keats might be judged insane,’—I believe the fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s task a painful one.”

The precise locality of Wentworth Place, Hampstead, has been a matter of uncertainty and dispute; and I found even the children of the lady to whom the foregoing letters were addressed without any exact knowledge on the subject. The houses which went to make up Wentworth Place were those inhabited respectively by the Dilke family, the Brawne family, and Charles Armitage Brown; but these were not three houses as might be supposed, the fact being that Mrs. Brawne rented first Brown’s house during his absence with Keats in the summer of 1818, and then Dilke’s when the latter removed to Westminster.

At page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’sNorthern Heights of London,[63]it is said of Keats:—

“From this time till 1820, when he left—in the last stage of consumption—for Italy, he resided principally at Hampstead. During most of this time, he lived with his very dear friend Mr. Charles Brown, a Russia merchant, at Wentworth Place, Downshire Hill, byPond Street, Hampstead. Previously, he and his brother Thomas had occupied apartments at the next house to Mr. Brown’s, at a Mrs. ——’s whose name his biographers have carefully omitted. With the daughter of this lady Keats was deeply in love—a passion which deepened to the last.”

No authority is given for the statement that John and Tom Keats lodged with the mother of the lady to whom John was attached; and I think it must have arisen from a misapprehension of something communicated to Mr. Howitt, perhaps in such ambiguous terms as every investigator has experienced in his time. At all events I must contradict the statement positively; nor is there any doubt where the brothers did lodge, namely in Well Walk, with the family of the local postman, Benjamin Bentley. Charles Cowden Clarke mentions in his Recollections that the lodging was “in the first or second house on the right hand, going up to the Heath”; and the rate books show that Bentley was rated from 1814 to 1824 for the house which, in 1838, was numbered 1, the house next to the public house formerly called the “Green Man,” but now known as the “Wells” Tavern. At page 102, Mr. Howitt says:—

“It is to be regretted that Wentworth Place, where Keats lodged, and wrote some of his finest poetry, either no longer exists or no longer bears that name. At the bottom of John Street, on the left hand in descending, is a villa called Wentworth House; but no Wentworth Place exists between Downshire Hill and Pond Street, the locality assigned to it. I made the most rigorous search in that quarter, inquiring of the tradesmen daily supplying the houses there, and of two residents of forty and fifty years. None of them hadany knowledge or recollection of a Wentworth Place. Possibly Keats’s friend, Mr. Brown, lived at Wentworth House, and that the three cottages standing in a line with it and facing South-End Road, but at a little distance from the road in a garden, might then bear the name of Wentworth Place. The end cottage would then, as stated in the lines of Keats, be next door to Mr. Brown’s. These cottages still have apartments to let, and in all other respects accord with the assigned locality.”

Mr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth Housewiththe cottages may possibly have borne the name of Wentworth Place; and he should have said that the house was on therighthand in descending John Street. But the fact of the case is correctly stated in Mr. Thorne’sHandbook to the Environs of London,[64]Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more explicit localization is given:

“The House in which he [Keats] lodged for the greater part of the time, then called Wentworth Place, is now called Lawn Bank, and is the end house but one on the rt. side of John Street, next Wentworth House.”

Mr. Thorne adduces no authority for the statement; and it must be assumed that it is based on some of the private communications which he acknowledges generally in his preface. He may possibly have been biassed by the plane-tree which Mr. Howitt, at page101 ofNorthern Heights, substitutes for the traditional plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s account of the composition of theOde to a Nightingale. Certainly there is a fine old plane-tree in front of the house at Lawn Bank; and there is a local tradition of a nightingale and a poet connected with that tree; but this dim tradition may be merely a misty repetition, from mouth to mouth, of Mr. Howitt’s extract from Lord Houghton’s volumes.Primâ facie, a plane-tree might seem to be a very much more likely shelter than a plum-tree for Keats to have chosen to place his chair beneath; and yet one would think that, had Mr. Howitt purposely substituted the plane-tree for the plum-tree, it would have been because he found it by the house which he supposed to be Brown’s. This however is not the case; and it should also be mentioned that at the western end of Lawn Bank, among some shrubs &c., there is an old and dilapidated plum-tree which grows so as to form a kind of leafy roof.

Eleven years ago, when I attempted to identify Wentworth Place beyond a doubt by local and other enquiries, the gardener at Wentworth House assured me very positively that, some fifteen or twenty years before, when Lawn Bank (then called Lawn Cottage) was in bad repair, and the rain had washed nearly all the colour off the front, he used to read the words “Wentworth Place,” painted in large letters beside the top window at the extreme left of the old part of the house as one faces it; and I have since had the pleasure of reading the words there myself; for the colour got washed thin enough again some time afterwards. After a great deal of enquiry among older inhabitants of Hampstead than this gardener, I founda musician, born there in 1801, and resident there ever since, a most intelligent and clear-headed man, who had been in the habit of playing at various houses in Hampstead from the year 1812 onwards. When asked, simply and without any “leading” remark, what he could tell about a group of houses formerly known as Wentworth Place, he replied without hesitation that Lawn Bank, when he was a youth, certainly bore that name, that it was two houses, with entrances at the sides, in one of which he played as early as 1824, and that subsequently the two houses were converted into one, at very great expense, to form a residence for Miss Chester,[65]who called the place Lawn Cottage. This informant did not remember the names of the persons occupying the two houses. A surgeon of repute, among the oldest inhabitants of Hampstead, told me, as an absolute certainty, that he was there as early as 1827, knew the Brawne family, and attended them professionally at Wentworth Place, in the house forming the western half of Lawn Bank. Of Charles Brown, however, this gentleman had no knowledge.

Not perfectly satisfied with the local evidence, I forwarded to Mr. Severn a sketch-plan of the immediate locality, in order that he might identify the houses in which he visited Keats and Brown and the Brawne family: he replied that it was in Lawn Bank that Brown and Mrs. Brawne had their respective residences; and he also mentioned side entrances; but Sir Charles Dilke says his grandfather’s househad the entrance in front, and only Brown’s had a side entrance. Two relatives of Mrs. Brawne’s who were still living in 1877, and were formerly residents in the house, also identified this block as that in which she resided, and so did the late Mr. William Dilke of Chichester, by whose instructions, during the absence of his brother, the name was first painted upon the house. It is hard to see what further evidence can be wanted on the subject. The recollection of one person may readily be distrusted; but where so many memories converge in one result, their evidence must be accepted; and I leave these details on record here, mainly on the ground that doubts may possibly arise again. At present it does not seem as if there could be any possible question that, in Lawn Bank, we have the immortalized Wentworth Place where Keats spent so much time, first as co-inmate with Brown in the eastern half of the block, and at last when he went to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne in the western half.

It should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. Thorne’s expression that Keatslodgedthere, 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 finale) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs.Brawne does not appear; but, as she rented the house in Wentworth Place of Mr. Dilke, it may perhaps be assumed that it was he who paid the rates.

It will perhaps be thought that the steps of the enquiry in this matter are somewhat “prolixly set forth”; and the only plea in mitigation to be offered is that, without evidence, those who really care to know the facts of the case could hardly be satisfied.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES[1]The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes. A new Edition.1863 (and other dates). See p. ix, Memoir.[2]Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Monckton Milnes(Two Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references, throughout, are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite it henceforth simply asLife, Letters, &c., specifying the volume and page.[3]The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and edited, with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge(Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir.[4]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, pp. 234-6.[5]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 240.[6]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, pp. 252-3.[7]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. 301. Should not the semicolon atpointchange places with the comma atknowledge?[8]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, p. 302.[9]This little book, now in my collection, is of great interest. It is marked throughout for Miss Brawne’s use,—according to Keats’s fashion of “marking the most beautiful passages” in his books for her. At one end is written the sonnet referred to in the text, apparently composed by Keats with the book before him, as there are two “false starts,” as well as erasures; and at the other end, in the handwriting of Miss Brawne, is copied Keats’s last sonnet,Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.The Spenser similarly marked, the subject ofLetter XXXIV, is missing.[10]SeeLife, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 35.[11]The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical Journal. Containing Critical Notices of, and Extracts from, Rare, Curious, and Valuable Old Books.(Two Volumes. Geo. P. Philes & Co., 51 Nassau Street, New York. 1862-3.) The Keats letter is at p. 196 of Vol. I, side by side with one purporting to be Shelley’s, a flagrant forgery which has been publicly animadverted on several times lately, having been reprinted as genuine.[12]The correspondent ofThe Worldwould seem (I only sayseem; 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 ofFriday 27thwas, on this supposition, in its place when the copies were made for Lord Houghton, because there is the close; but between that time and 1862 it must have been separated from the letter.[13]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 55.[14]It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following note of locality from theAutobiography(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 theIndicator; and he resided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, Kentish-town (No. 13), where I concluded it.”[15]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 61.[16]See Hunt’sAutobiography, Vol. II, p. 216. It may be noted in passing that theIndicatorversion of the Sonnet varies in some slight details from the Original in the volume of Dante referred to atpage xliv, and from Lord Houghton’s text. It is natural to suppose that Hunt’s copy was the latest of the three; and his text is certainly an improvement on the others where it varies from them.[17]The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the late Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his Grandson, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P., &c. In Two Volumes.(London. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.) See Vol. I, p. 11.[18]This sonnet occurs at page 128 ofThe Garden of Florence; and other Poems. By John Hamilton. (London: John Warren, Old Bond-street. 1821.)[19]The Letters and Poems of John Keats.In three volumes. (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). Vol. I is calledThe Letters of John Keats, edited by Jno. Gilmer Speed: Vol. II and III,The Poems of John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed.[20]Keats by Sidney Colvin.(Macmillan & Co., 1887). Mr. Colvin has also contributed toMacmillan’s Magazine(August, 1888) an ArticleOn Some Letters of Keats, which I have also duly consulted.[21]The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats, (Four volumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably earlier than Mr. Speed’s volumes appeared.)[22]Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name was Jane.[23]These two words are wanting in the original.[24]His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven months before the date of this letter.[25]Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—Pope’sRape of the Lock, iii, 61-4.[26]Fanny’s younger sister: seeIntroduction.[27]The wordNewportis not stamped on this letter, as on NumbersI,II, andIV; but it is pretty evident that Keats and his friend were still at Shanklin.[28]I am not aware of any other published record that this name belonged to Keats’s Mother, as well as his sister and his betrothed.[29]Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: seeIntroduction.[30]I am unable to obtain or suggest any explanation of the allusion made in this strange sentence. It is not, however, impossible that “the Bishop” was merely a nickname of some one in the Hampstead circle.[31]The Tragedy referred to is, of course,Otho the Great, which was composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage Brown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot, &c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly Keats’s. See Lord Houghton’sLife, Letters, &c.(1848), Vol. II, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of Keats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of the progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by Brown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by Sir Charles Dilke toThe Papers of a Critic, referred to in the Introduction to the present volume,p. lviii.[32]He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated Winchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the hopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this letter seeBenjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also Lord Houghton’sLife, Letters, &c.(1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and arranged.[33]The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that given in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement (Life, Letters, &c., 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the date: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never know....”[34]This word is of course left as found in the original letter: an editor who should spell ityachtwould be guilty of representing Keats as thinking what he did not think.[35]Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street.[36]Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know not; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all events, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing thence to Reynolds (Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 23).[37]It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke obtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in the letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p. 16, Vol. II, of theLife, Letters, &c.(1848). How long Keats remained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a day; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great Smith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living at Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place, Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of theLife, Letters, &c.[38]It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced this moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to is that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’sLife(Vol. II, pp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he “might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.”[39]This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from the 3rd of February, 1820.[40]This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence or presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful phase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See LettersXXI,XXIV,XXVI,XXXV, andXXXVII.[41]If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us to the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the day on which Keats broke a blood-vessel.[42]George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significantbutindicates 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 coldMy dear Fannywith which inLetter XXIthe condition was first expressly prescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a morbid sensibility in LettersXXXVandXXXVII. Probably a man in sound health would have found the cause trivial enough.[43]The MS. ofLamia, Isabella, &c.(the volume containingHyperion, and most of Keats’s finest work).[44]I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke.[45]This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the belief that this letter and the preceding one were written about the same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in theLife, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark, “Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend Brown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and he refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal food, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as inLetter XXVhe 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.” InLetter XXVhe 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 inLetter XXVIII.[46]The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate that this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in the letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date, already referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair of the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he “shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the weather changes for the warmer.”[47]MisspeltProctorin the original.[48]It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old Mr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father of Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious letter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not been mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut off,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture.[49]The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so small that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably given to an autograph-collector.[50]This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened, one would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was clearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend, which took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion there is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in attachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a week of this time had there been any opportunity.[51]This question may perhaps be fairly taken to indicate the lapse of a month from the time when Keats left the house at Hampstead next door to Miss Brawne’s, at which he probably knew her employments well enough from day to day. If so, the time would be about the first week in June, 1819.[52]He was seemingly in a different phase of belief from that in which the death of his brother Tom found him. At that time he recorded that he and Tom both firmly believed in immortality. SeeLife, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication of his having shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy may be found in the expression inLetter XXXV, “I appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in:”—not “webelieve in.”[53]This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to the end, and then filled in the wordsMy dearest Girl, left out lest any one coming near him should chance to see them. These words are written more heavily than the beginning of the letter, and indicate a state of pen corresponding with that shown by the wordsGod bless youat the end.[54]This letter appears to belong between those of the 8th and 25th of July, 1819; and of the two Thursdays between these dates it seems likelier that the 15th would be the one than that the letter should have been written so near the 25th as on the 22nd. The original having been mislaid, I have not been able to take the evidence of the postmark. It will be noticed that at the close he speaks of a weekly exchange of letters with Miss Brawne; and by placing this letter at the 15th this programme is pretty nearly realized so far as Keats’s letters from the Isle of Wight are concerned.[55]The story in question is one of the many derivatives from the Third Calender’s Story inThe Thousand and One Nightsand the somewhat similar tale of “The Man who laughed not,” included in the Notes to Lane’sArabian Nightsand 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 theNouveaux Contes Orientauxof the Comte de Caylus. Mr. Morris’s beautiful poem “The Man who never laughed again,” inThe Earthly Paradise, has familiarized to English readers one variant of the legend.[56]It will of course be remembered that no such collection appeared until the following summer, when theLamiavolume was published.[57]I do not find in the present series any letter which I can regard as the particular one referred to in the opening sentence. IfLetter XXXV (p. 93)were headedTuesdayand thisWednesday, that might well be the peccant document which appears to be missing.[58]The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In Two Volumes.London: 1847 (see Vol. II, pp. 86-93).[59]It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on page 1, but described on the wrapper as “published in September, 1818.”[60]See p. liii: it was the 3rd of February, 1820.[61]See Letter XIII, pp. 49-50.[62]See Letter XVII, pp. 57-8.[63]The Northern Heights of London or Historical Associations of Hampstead, Highgate, Muswell Hill, Hornsey, and Islington. By William Howitt, author of ‘Visits to Remarkable Places.’(London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1869.)[64]Handbook to the Environs of London, Alphabetically Arranged, containing an account of every town and village, and of all the places of interest, within a circle of twenty miles round London. By James Thorne, F.S.A. In Two Parts.(London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1876.)[65]She first appeared upon the London boards in 1822, and afterwards became “Private Reader” to George IV.

[1]The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes. A new Edition.1863 (and other dates). See p. ix, Memoir.

[2]Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Monckton Milnes(Two Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references, throughout, are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite it henceforth simply asLife, Letters, &c., specifying the volume and page.

[3]The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and edited, with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of Trin. Coll. Cambridge(Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir.

[4]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, pp. 234-6.

[5]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 240.

[6]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, pp. 252-3.

[7]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. 301. Should not the semicolon atpointchange places with the comma atknowledge?

[8]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, p. 302.

[9]This little book, now in my collection, is of great interest. It is marked throughout for Miss Brawne’s use,—according to Keats’s fashion of “marking the most beautiful passages” in his books for her. At one end is written the sonnet referred to in the text, apparently composed by Keats with the book before him, as there are two “false starts,” as well as erasures; and at the other end, in the handwriting of Miss Brawne, is copied Keats’s last sonnet,Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.The Spenser similarly marked, the subject ofLetter XXXIV, is missing.

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.

The Spenser similarly marked, the subject ofLetter XXXIV, is missing.

[10]SeeLife, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 35.

[11]The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical Journal. Containing Critical Notices of, and Extracts from, Rare, Curious, and Valuable Old Books.(Two Volumes. Geo. P. Philes & Co., 51 Nassau Street, New York. 1862-3.) The Keats letter is at p. 196 of Vol. I, side by side with one purporting to be Shelley’s, a flagrant forgery which has been publicly animadverted on several times lately, having been reprinted as genuine.

[12]The correspondent ofThe Worldwould seem (I only sayseem; 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 ofFriday 27thwas, on this supposition, in its place when the copies were made for Lord Houghton, because there is the close; but between that time and 1862 it must have been separated from the letter.

[13]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 55.

[14]It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following note of locality from theAutobiography(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 theIndicator; and he resided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, Kentish-town (No. 13), where I concluded it.”

[15]Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 61.

[16]See Hunt’sAutobiography, Vol. II, p. 216. It may be noted in passing that theIndicatorversion of the Sonnet varies in some slight details from the Original in the volume of Dante referred to atpage xliv, and from Lord Houghton’s text. It is natural to suppose that Hunt’s copy was the latest of the three; and his text is certainly an improvement on the others where it varies from them.

[17]The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the late Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his Grandson, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P., &c. In Two Volumes.(London. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.) See Vol. I, p. 11.

[18]This sonnet occurs at page 128 ofThe Garden of Florence; and other Poems. By John Hamilton. (London: John Warren, Old Bond-street. 1821.)

[19]The Letters and Poems of John Keats.In three volumes. (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). Vol. I is calledThe Letters of John Keats, edited by Jno. Gilmer Speed: Vol. II and III,The Poems of John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed.

[20]Keats by Sidney Colvin.(Macmillan & Co., 1887). Mr. Colvin has also contributed toMacmillan’s Magazine(August, 1888) an ArticleOn Some Letters of Keats, which I have also duly consulted.

[21]The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats, (Four volumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably earlier than Mr. Speed’s volumes appeared.)

[22]Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name was Jane.

[23]These two words are wanting in the original.

[24]His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven months before the date of this letter.

[25]Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—Pope’sRape of the Lock, iii, 61-4.

[25]

Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—Pope’sRape of the Lock, iii, 61-4.

Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,

And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,

Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,

Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—

Pope’sRape of the Lock, iii, 61-4.

[26]Fanny’s younger sister: seeIntroduction.

[27]The wordNewportis not stamped on this letter, as on NumbersI,II, andIV; but it is pretty evident that Keats and his friend were still at Shanklin.

[28]I am not aware of any other published record that this name belonged to Keats’s Mother, as well as his sister and his betrothed.

[29]Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: seeIntroduction.

[30]I am unable to obtain or suggest any explanation of the allusion made in this strange sentence. It is not, however, impossible that “the Bishop” was merely a nickname of some one in the Hampstead circle.

[31]The Tragedy referred to is, of course,Otho the Great, which was composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage Brown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot, &c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly Keats’s. See Lord Houghton’sLife, Letters, &c.(1848), Vol. II, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of Keats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of the progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by Brown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by Sir Charles Dilke toThe Papers of a Critic, referred to in the Introduction to the present volume,p. lviii.

[32]He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated Winchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the hopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this letter seeBenjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also Lord Houghton’sLife, Letters, &c.(1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and arranged.

[33]The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that given in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement (Life, Letters, &c., 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the date: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never know....”

[34]This word is of course left as found in the original letter: an editor who should spell ityachtwould be guilty of representing Keats as thinking what he did not think.

[35]Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street.

[36]Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know not; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all events, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing thence to Reynolds (Life, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 23).

[37]It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke obtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in the letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p. 16, Vol. II, of theLife, Letters, &c.(1848). How long Keats remained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a day; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great Smith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living at Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place, Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of theLife, Letters, &c.

[38]It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced this moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to is that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’sLife(Vol. II, pp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he “might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.”

[39]This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from the 3rd of February, 1820.

[40]This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence or presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful phase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See LettersXXI,XXIV,XXVI,XXXV, andXXXVII.

[41]If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us to the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the day on which Keats broke a blood-vessel.

[42]George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significantbutindicates 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 coldMy dear Fannywith which inLetter XXIthe condition was first expressly prescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a morbid sensibility in LettersXXXVandXXXVII. Probably a man in sound health would have found the cause trivial enough.

[43]The MS. ofLamia, Isabella, &c.(the volume containingHyperion, and most of Keats’s finest work).

[44]I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke.

[45]This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the belief that this letter and the preceding one were written about the same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in theLife, Letters, &c., Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark, “Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend Brown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and he refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal food, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as inLetter XXVhe 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.” InLetter XXVhe 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 inLetter XXVIII.

[46]The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate that this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in the letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date, already referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair of the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he “shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the weather changes for the warmer.”

[47]MisspeltProctorin the original.

[48]It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old Mr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father of Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious letter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not been mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut off,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture.

[49]The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so small that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably given to an autograph-collector.

[50]This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened, one would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was clearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend, which took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion there is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in attachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a week of this time had there been any opportunity.

[51]This question may perhaps be fairly taken to indicate the lapse of a month from the time when Keats left the house at Hampstead next door to Miss Brawne’s, at which he probably knew her employments well enough from day to day. If so, the time would be about the first week in June, 1819.

[52]He was seemingly in a different phase of belief from that in which the death of his brother Tom found him. At that time he recorded that he and Tom both firmly believed in immortality. SeeLife, Letters, &c., Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication of his having shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy may be found in the expression inLetter XXXV, “I appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in:”—not “webelieve in.”

[53]This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to the end, and then filled in the wordsMy dearest Girl, left out lest any one coming near him should chance to see them. These words are written more heavily than the beginning of the letter, and indicate a state of pen corresponding with that shown by the wordsGod bless youat the end.

[54]This letter appears to belong between those of the 8th and 25th of July, 1819; and of the two Thursdays between these dates it seems likelier that the 15th would be the one than that the letter should have been written so near the 25th as on the 22nd. The original having been mislaid, I have not been able to take the evidence of the postmark. It will be noticed that at the close he speaks of a weekly exchange of letters with Miss Brawne; and by placing this letter at the 15th this programme is pretty nearly realized so far as Keats’s letters from the Isle of Wight are concerned.

[55]The story in question is one of the many derivatives from the Third Calender’s Story inThe Thousand and One Nightsand the somewhat similar tale of “The Man who laughed not,” included in the Notes to Lane’sArabian Nightsand 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 theNouveaux Contes Orientauxof the Comte de Caylus. Mr. Morris’s beautiful poem “The Man who never laughed again,” inThe Earthly Paradise, has familiarized to English readers one variant of the legend.

[56]It will of course be remembered that no such collection appeared until the following summer, when theLamiavolume was published.

[57]I do not find in the present series any letter which I can regard as the particular one referred to in the opening sentence. IfLetter XXXV (p. 93)were headedTuesdayand thisWednesday, that might well be the peccant document which appears to be missing.

[58]The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In Two Volumes.London: 1847 (see Vol. II, pp. 86-93).

[59]It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on page 1, but described on the wrapper as “published in September, 1818.”

[60]See p. liii: it was the 3rd of February, 1820.

[61]See Letter XIII, pp. 49-50.

[62]See Letter XVII, pp. 57-8.

[63]The Northern Heights of London or Historical Associations of Hampstead, Highgate, Muswell Hill, Hornsey, and Islington. By William Howitt, author of ‘Visits to Remarkable Places.’(London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1869.)

[64]Handbook to the Environs of London, Alphabetically Arranged, containing an account of every town and village, and of all the places of interest, within a circle of twenty miles round London. By James Thorne, F.S.A. In Two Parts.(London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1876.)

[65]She first appeared upon the London boards in 1822, and afterwards became “Private Reader” to George IV.

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