attack, and this morning I am the same as when you saw me. I
have been turning over two volumes of Letters written between
Rousseau and two Ladies in the perplexed strain of mingled
finesse and sentiment in which the Ladies and gentlemen of
those days were so clever, and which is still prevalent among
Ladies of this Country who live in a state of reasoning
romance. The likeness however only extends to the mannerism,
not to the dexterity. What would Rousseau have said at seeing
our little correspondence! What would his Ladies have said!
I don’t care much—I would sooner have Shakspeare’s opinion
about the matter. The common gossiping of washerwomen must be
less disgusting than the continual and eternal fence and attack
of Rousseau and these sublime Petticoats. One calls herself
Clara and her friend Julia, two of Rousseau’s heroines—they all
[_sic_, but qy. _at_] the same time christen poor Jean Jacques
St. Preux—who is the pure cavalier of his famous novel. Thank
God I am born in England with our own great Men before my eyes.
Thank God that you are fair and can love me without being
Letter-written and sentimentaliz’d into it.—Mr. Barry Cornwall
has sent me another Book, his first, with a polite note.[46] I
must do what I can to make him sensible of the esteem I have
for his kindness. If this north east would take a turn it would
be so much the better for me. Good bye, my love, my dear love,
my beauty—
love me for ever.
J. K.
XXIX.
My dearest Fanny,
Though I shall see you in so short a time I cannot forbear
sending you a few lines. You say I did not give you yesterday a
minute account of my health. Today I have left off the Medicine
which I took to keep the pulse down and I find I can do very
well without it, which is a very favourable sign, as it shows
there is no inflammation remaining. You think I may be wearied
at night you say: it is my best time; I am at my best about
eight o’Clock. I received a Note from Mr. Procter[47] today.
He says he cannot pay me a visit this weather as he is fearful
of an inflammation in the Chest. What a horrid climate this
is? or what careless inhabitants it has? You are one of them.
My dear girl do not make a joke of it: do not expose yourself
to the cold. There’s the Thrush again—I can’t afford it—he’ll
run me up a pretty Bill for Music—besides he ought to know I
deal at Clementi’s. How can you bear so long an imprisonment at
Hampstead? I shall always remember it with all the gusto that a
monopolizing carle should. I could build an Altar to you for it.
Your affectionate
J. K.
XXX.
My dearest Girl,
As, from the last part of my note you must see how gratified I
have been by your remaining at home, you might perhaps conceive
that I was equally bias’d the other way by your going to Town,
I cannot be easy tonight without telling you you would be
wrong to suppose so. Though I am pleased with the one, I am
not displeased with the other. How do I dare to write in this
manner about my pleasures and displeasures? I will tho’ whilst
I am an invalid, in spite of you. Good night, Love!
J. K.
XXXI.
My dearest Girl,
In consequence of our company I suppose I shall not see you
before tomorrow. I am much better today—indeed all I have to
complain of is want of strength and a little tightness in the
Chest. I envied Sam’s walk with you today; which I will not do
again as I may get very tired of envying. I imagine you now
sitting in your new black dress which I like so much and if
I were a little less selfish and more enthusiastic I should
run round and surprise you with a knock at the door. I fear
I am too prudent for a dying kind of Lover. Yet, there is a
great difference between going off in warm blood like Romeo,
and making one’s exit like a frog in a frost. I had nothing
particular to say today, but not intending that there shall be
any interruption to our correspondence (which at some future
time I propose offering to Murray) I write something. God bless
you my sweet Love! Illness is a long lane, but I see you at the
end of it, and shall mend my pace as well as possible.
J. K.
XXXII.
Dear Girl,
Yesterday you must have thought me worse than I really was. I
assure you there was nothing but regret at being obliged to
forego an embrace which has so many times been the highest
gust of my Life. I would not care for health without it. Sam
would not come in—I wanted merely to ask him how you were
this morning. When one is not quite well we turn for relief
to those we love: this is no weakness of spirit in me: you
know when in health I thought of nothing but you; when I shall
again be so it will be the same. Brown has been mentioning
to me that some hint from Sam, last night, occasions him
some uneasiness. He whispered something to you concerning
Brown and old Mr. Dilke[48] which had the complexion of being
something derogatory to the former. It was connected with
an anxiety about Mr. D. Sr’s death and an anxiety to set
out for Chichester. These sort of hints point out their own
solution: one cannot pretend to a delicate ignorance on the
subject: you understand the whole matter. If any one, my sweet
Love, has misrepresented, to you, to your Mother or Sam, any
circumstances which are at all likely, at a tenth remove, to
create suspicions among people who from their own interested
notions slander others, pray tell me: for I feel the least
attaint on the disinterested character of Brown very deeply.
Perhaps Reynolds or some other of my friends may come towards
evening, therefore you may choose whether you will come to see
me early today before or after dinner as you may think fit.
Remember me to your Mother and tell her to drag you to me if
you show the least reluctance—
...
XXXIII to XXXVII.
KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.
XXXIII-XXXVII.
KENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.
XXXIII.
My dearest Girl,
I endeavour to make myself as patient as possible. Hunt amuses
me very kindly—besides I have your ring on my finger and your
flowers on the table. I shall not expect to see you yet because
it would be so much pain to part with you again. When the
Books you want come you shall have them. I am very well this
afternoon. My dearest ...
[Signature cut off.[49]]
XXXIV.
Tuesday Afternoon.
My dearest Fanny,
For this Week past I have been employed in marking the most
beautiful passages in Spenser, intending it for you, and
comforting myself in being somehow occupied to give you however
small a pleasure. It has lightened my time very much. I am much
better. God bless you.
Your affectionate
J. KEATS.
XXXV.
Wednesday Morning.
My dearest Fanny,
I have been a walk this morning with a book in my hand, but as
usual I have been occupied with nothing but you: I wish I could
say in an agreeable manner. I am tormented day and night. They
talk of my going to Italy. ’Tis certain I shall never recover
if I am to be so long separate from you: yet with all this
devotion to you I cannot persuade myself into any confidence
of you. Past experience connected with the fact of my long
separation from you gives me agonies which are scarcely to be
talked of. When your mother comes I shall be very sudden and
expert in asking her whether you have been to Mrs. Dilke’s, for
she might say no to make me easy. I am literally worn to death,
which seems my only recourse. I cannot forget what has pass’d.
What? nothing with a man of the world, but to me deathful. I
will get rid of this as much as possible. When you were in the
habit of flirting with Brown you would have left off, could
your own heart have felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown
is a good sort of Man—he did not know he was doing me to death
by inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in
my side now; and for that cause, though he has done me many
services, though I know his love and friendship for me, though
at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his
assistance, I will never see or speak to him[50] until we are
both old men, if we are to be. I _will_ resent my heart having
been made a football. You will call this madness. I have heard
you say that it was not unpleasant to wait a few years—you have
amusements—your mind is away—you have not brooded over one
idea as I have, and how should you? You are to me an object
intensely desirable—the air I breathe in a room empty of you is
unhealthy. I am not the same to you—no—you can wait—you have a
thousand activities—you can be happy without me. Any party, any
thing to fill up the day has been enough. How have you pass’d
this month?[51] Who have you smil’d with? All this may seem
savage in me. You do not feel as I do—you do not know what it
is to love—one day you may—your time is not come. Ask yourself
how many unhappy hours Keats has caused you in Loneliness. For
myself I have been a Martyr the whole time, and for this reason
I speak; the confession is forc’d from me by the torture. I
appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in: Do
not write to me if you have done anything this month which it
would have pained me to have seen. You may have altered—if
you have not—if you still behave in dancing rooms and other
societies as I have seen you—I do not want to live—if you have
done so I wish this coming night may be my last. I cannot live
without you, and not only you but _chaste you_; _virtuous you_.
The Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and you follow the bent
of your inclination to a certain extent—you have no conception
of the quantity of miserable feeling that passes through me in
a day.—Be serious! Love is not a plaything—and again do not
write unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. I would
sooner die for want of you than——
Yours for ever
J. KEATS.
XXXVI.
My dearest Fanny,
My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce know what I
shall say though I am full of a hundred things. ’Tis certain I
would rather be writing to you this morning, notwithstanding
the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than enjoy any other
pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with you. Upon my
soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you could know the
Tenderness with which I continually brood over your different
aspects of countenance, action and dress. I see you come down
in the morning: I see you meet me at the Window—I see every
thing over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I get
on the pleasant clue I live in a sort of happy misery, if
on the unpleasant ’tis miserable misery. You complain of my
illtreating you in word, thought and deed—I am sorry,—at times
I feel bitterly sorry that I ever made you unhappy—my excuse
is that those words have been wrung from me by the sharpness
of my feelings. At all events and in any case I have been
wrong; could I believe that I did it without any cause, I
should be the most sincere of Penitents. I could give way to
my repentant feelings now, I could recant all my suspicions,
I could mingle with you heart and Soul though absent, were
it not for some parts of your Letters. Do you suppose it
possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think of
myself and what of you. You know that I should feel how much
it was my loss and how little yours. My friends laugh at you!
I know some of them—when I know them all I shall never think
of them again as friends or even acquaintance. My friends
have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and there
they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct:
spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with any
body’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care
not to see any of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be
the Friend of idle Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our
Loves should be so put into the microscope of a Coterie. Their
laughs should not affect you (I may perhaps give you reasons
some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate
me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have pretended a
great friendship for me) when in competition with one, who if
he never should see you again would make you the Saint of his
memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for
your Beauty, who would have God-bless’d me from you for ever:
who were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you
eternally. People are revengful—do not mind them—do nothing
but love me—if I knew that for certain life and health will in
such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less painful.
I long to believe in immortality. I shall never be able to
bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with
you here—how short is the longest Life. I wish to believe in
immortality[52]—I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let
my name ever pass between you and those laughers; if I have no
other merit than the great Love for you, that were sufficient
to keep me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have
been cruel and unjust I swear my love has ever been greater
than my cruelty which last [_sic_] but a minute whereas my Love
come what will shall last for ever. If concession to me has
hurt your Pride God knows I have had little pride in my heart
when thinking of you. Your name never passes my Lips—do not let
mine pass yours. Those People do not like me. After reading
my Letter you even then wish to see me. I am strong enough to
walk over—but I dare not. I shall feel so much pain in parting
with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to see you; I am
strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever
round you again, and if so shall I be obliged to leave you
again? My sweet Love! I am happy whilst I believe your first
Letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul,
and I could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If
you think me cruel—if you think I have sleighted you—do muse it
over again and see into my heart. My love to you is “true as
truth’s simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth” as I
think I once said before. How could I sleight you? How threaten
to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you—no—but in
the spirit of Wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious,
my angel Fanny! do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will
be as patient in illness and as believing in Love as I am able.
Yours for ever my dearest
JOHN KEATS.
XXXVII.
I do not write this till the last,
that no eye may catch it.[53]
My dearest Girl,
I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy
without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in
you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it
almost impossible to go to Italy—the fact is I cannot leave
you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it
pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will
not go on at this rate. A person in health as you are can have
no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine
go through. What Island do your friends propose retiring to?
I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company
I should object to it; the backbitings and jealousies of
new colonists who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is
unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a
very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able
any more to endure the society of any of those who used to meet
at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste
like brass upon my Palate. If I cannot live with you I will
live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I
am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you—I
cannot bear flashes of light and return into my gloom again.
I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you
yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility! it
requires a luckier Star than mine! it will never be. I enclose
a passage from one of your letters which I want you to alter
a little—I want (if you will have it so) the matter express’d
less coldly to me. If my health would bear it, I could write
a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation
for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one
in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you
do. Shakespeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign
manner. Hamlet’s heart was full of such Misery as mine is when
he said to Ophelia “Go to a Nunnery, go, go!” Indeed I should
like to give up the matter at once—I should like to die. I
am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I
hate men, and women more. I see nothing but thorns for the
future—wherever I may be next winter, in Italy or nowhere,
Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no
prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome—well, I should there
see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all
hours,——I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human
nature into my heart. I cannot muster any—the world is too
brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am
sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate
I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown
or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full
of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
God bless you.
J. K.
ADDITIONAL LETTERS.
ADDITIONAL LETTERS.
II _bis_.
Shanklin
Thursday Evening
[15 July 1819?[54]]
My love,
I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or
three last days, that I did not think I should be able to
write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as only
to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To night I am
greatly recovered only to feel the languor I have felt after
you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps might have made
me better: you would then have made me worse: now you could
quite effect a cure: What fee my sweet Physician would I not
give you to do so. Do not call it folly, when I tell you I took
your letter last night to bed with me. In the morning I found
your name on the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the
bad omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my
dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You must have
found out by this time I am a little given to bode ill like
the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; it has proceeded
from the general tenor of the circumstances of my life, and
rendered every event suspicious. However I will no more trouble
either you or myself with sad prophecies; though so far I am
pleased at it as it has given me opportunity to love your
disinterestedness towards me. I can be a raven no more; you
and pleasure take possession of me at the same moment. I am
afraid you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched
you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be selfish
enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive me this? I
have been reading lately an oriental tale of a very beautiful
color[55]—It is of a city of melancholy men, all made so by
this circumstance. Through a series of adventures each one of
them by turns reach some gardens of Paradise where they meet
with a most enchanting Lady; and just as they are going to
embrace her, she bids them shut their eyes—they shut them—and
on opening their eyes again find themselves descending to the
earth in a magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their
delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy ever
after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I palpitated
at it; how the certainty that you were in the same world with
myself, and though as beautiful, not so talismanic as that
Lady; how I could not bear you should be so you must believe
because I swear it by yourself. I cannot say when I shall get
a volume ready. I have three or four stories half done, but as
I cannot write for the mere sake of the press, I am obliged
to let them progress or lie still as my fancy chooses. By
Christmas perhaps they may appear,[56] but I am not yet sure
they ever will. ’Twill be no matter, for Poems are as common
as newspapers and I do not see why it is a greater crime in
me than in another to let the verses of an half-fledged brain
tumble into the reading-rooms and drawing-room windows. Rice
has been better lately than usual: he is not suffering from
any neglect of his parents who have for some years been able
to appreciate him better than they did in his first youth, and
are now devoted to his comfort. Tomorrow I shall, if my health
continues to improve during the night, take a look fa[r]ther
about the country, and spy at the parties about here who come
hunting after the picturesque like beagles. It is astonishing
how they raven down scenery like children do sweetmeats. The
wondrous Chine here is a very great Lion: I wish I had as many
guineas as there have been spy-glasses in it. I have been,
I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What
reason? When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely
room, without the thought as I fall asleep, of seeing you
tomorrow morning? or the next day, or the next—it takes on the
appearance of impossibility and eternity—I will say a month—I
will say I will see you in a month at most, though no one but
yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour. I should not
like to be so near you as London without being continually with
you: after having once more kissed you Sweet I would rather be
here alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary
chitchat. Meantime you must write to me—as I will every
week—for your letters keep me alive. My sweet Girl I cannot
speak my love for you. Good night! and
Ever yours
JOHN KEATS.
XXXIV _bis_.
Tuesday Morn.
My dearest Girl,
I wrote a letter[57] for you yesterday expecting to have seen
your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know
it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how
unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can
to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole
existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid
but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you. Do not think
of anything but me. Do not live as if I was not existing. Do
not forget me—But have I any right to say you forget me?
Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you
to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it if
you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me—and
for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but
me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I
have been haunted with a sweet vision—I have seen you the whole
time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at
it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been
full of tears at it! I[n]deed I think a real love is enough
to occupy the widest heart. Your going to town alone when I
heard of it was a shock to me—yet I expected it—_promise me
you will not for some time till I get better_. Promise me this
and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you
cannot do so with good will, do my love tell me—say what you
think—confess if your heart is too much fasten’d on the world.
Perhaps then I may see you at a greater distance, I may not be
able to appropriate you so closely to myself. Were you to loose
a favourite bird from the cage, how would your eyes ache after
it as long as it was in sight; when out of sight you would
recover a little. Perhaps if you would, if so it is, confess to
me how many things are necessary to you besides me, I might be
happier; by being less tantaliz’d. Well may you exclaim, how
selfish, how cruel not to let me enjoy my youth! to wish me to
be unhappy. You must be so if you love me. Upon my soul I can
be contented with nothing else. If you would really what is
call’d enjoy yourself at a Party—if you can smile in people’s
faces, and wish them to admire you _now_—you never have nor
ever will love me. I see _life_ in nothing but the certainty of
your Love—convince me of it my sweetest. If I am not somehow
convinced I shall die of agony. If we love we must not live
as other men and women do—I cannot brook the wolfsbane of
fashion and foppery and tattle—you must be mine to die upon the
rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say that I have more
feeling than my fellows, but I wish you seriously to look over
my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the person who
wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and
uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create. My
recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you
are not mine when I am well. For God’s sake save me—or tell me
my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless
you.
J. K.
No—my sweet Fanny—I am wrong—I do not wish you to be
unhappy—and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a
Beauty—my loveliest, my darling! good bye! I kiss you—O the
torments!
APPENDIX.
I.
FANNY BRAWNE’S ESTIMATE OF KEATS.
In discussing the effect which the _Quarterly Review_ article had on
Keats, Medwin[58] quotes the following passages from a communication
addressed to him by Fanny Brawne after her marriage:—