published, if I remember rightly, in June, 1818.[59] However
great his mortification might have been, he was not, I should
say, of a character likely to have displayed it in the manner
mentioned in Mrs. Shelley’s Remains of her husband. Keats,
soon after the appearance of the review in question, started
on a walking expedition into the Highlands. From thence he was
forced to return, in consequence of the illness of a brother,
whose death a few months afterwards affected him strongly.
“It was about this time that I became acquainted with Keats.
We met frequently at the house of a mutual friend, (not Leigh
Hunt’s), but neither then nor afterwards did I see anything
in his manner to give the idea that he was brooding over any
secret grief or disappointment. His conversation was in the
highest degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting
at moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health
dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in January
1820,[60] began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold. In
coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to
consumption was aggravated by the excessive susceptibility of
his temperament, for I never see those often quoted lines of
Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:—
The fiery soul, that working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.
From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write
a line of poetry,[61] and his failing health, joined to the
uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into deep
melancholy.
“The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr. Finch,
seems calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That
his sensibility was most acute, is true, and his passions
were very strong, but not violent, if by that term violence
of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his
anger seemed rather to turn on himself than on others, and in
moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage
despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends.
Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his
nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I
saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental
and bodily, and I do not hesitate to say that he never could
have addressed an unkind expression, much less a violent one,
to any human being. During the last few months before leaving
his native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for
whatever in moments of grief or disappointment he might say or
think, his most ardent desire was to live to redeem his name
from the obloquy cast upon it;[62] nor was it till he knew his
death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch’s
letter goes on to say—‘Keats might be judged insane,’—I believe
the fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary
species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s task a
painful one.”
II.
THE LOCALITY OF WENTWORTH PLACE.
The precise locality of Wentworth Place, Hampstead, has been a matter of
uncertainty and dispute; and I found even the children of the lady to
whom the foregoing letters were addressed without any exact knowledge
on the subject. The houses which went to make up Wentworth Place were
those inhabited respectively by the Dilke family, the Brawne family,
and Charles Armitage Brown; but these were not three houses as might be
supposed, the fact being that Mrs. Brawne rented first Brown’s house
during his absence with Keats in the summer of 1818, and then Dilke’s
when the latter removed to Westminster.
At page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’s _Northern Heights of London_,[63] it
is said of Keats:—
“From this time till 1820, when he left—in the last stage of
consumption—for Italy, he resided principally at Hampstead.
During most of this time, he lived with his very dear friend
Mr. Charles Brown, a Russia merchant, at Wentworth Place,
Downshire Hill, by Pond Street, Hampstead. Previously, he and
his brother Thomas had occupied apartments at the next house
to Mr. Brown’s, at a Mrs. ——’s whose name his biographers have
carefully omitted. With the daughter of this lady Keats was
deeply in love—a passion which deepened to the last.”
No authority is given for the statement that John and Tom Keats lodged
with the mother of the lady to whom John was attached; and I think it
must have arisen from a misapprehension of something communicated to
Mr. Howitt, perhaps in such ambiguous terms as every investigator has
experienced in his time. At all events I must contradict the statement
positively; nor is there any doubt where the brothers did lodge, namely
in Well Walk, with the family of the local postman, Benjamin Bentley.
Charles Cowden Clarke mentions in his Recollections that the lodging was
“in the first or second house on the right hand, going up to the Heath”;
and the rate books show that Bentley was rated from 1814 to 1824 for the
house which, in 1838, was numbered 1, the house next to the public house
formerly called the “Green Man,” but now known as the “Wells” Tavern. At
page 102, Mr. Howitt says:—
“It is to be regretted that Wentworth Place, where Keats
lodged, and wrote some of his finest poetry, either no longer
exists or no longer bears that name. At the bottom of John
Street, on the left hand in descending, is a villa called
Wentworth House; but no Wentworth Place exists between
Downshire Hill and Pond Street, the locality assigned to it.
I made the most rigorous search in that quarter, inquiring
of the tradesmen daily supplying the houses there, and of
two residents of forty and fifty years. None of them had
any knowledge or recollection of a Wentworth Place. Possibly
Keats’s friend, Mr. Brown, lived at Wentworth House, and that
the three cottages standing in a line with it and facing
South-End Road, but at a little distance from the road in a
garden, might then bear the name of Wentworth Place. The end
cottage would then, as stated in the lines of Keats, be next
door to Mr. Brown’s. These cottages still have apartments
to let, and in all other respects accord with the assigned
locality.”
Mr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth House _with_ the cottages
may possibly have borne the name of Wentworth Place; and he should have
said that the house was on the _right_ hand in descending John Street.
But the fact of the case is correctly stated in Mr. Thorne’s _Handbook to
the Environs of London_,[64] Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more
explicit localization is given:
“The House in which he [Keats] lodged for the greater part of
the time, then called Wentworth Place, is now called Lawn Bank,
and is the end house but one on the rt. side of John Street,
next Wentworth House.”
Mr. Thorne adduces no authority for the statement; and it must be
assumed that it is based on some of the private communications which he
acknowledges generally in his preface. He may possibly have been biassed
by the plane-tree which Mr. Howitt, at page 101 of _Northern Heights_,
substitutes for the traditional plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s
account of the composition of the _Ode to a Nightingale_. Certainly there
is a fine old plane-tree in front of the house at Lawn Bank; and there
is a local tradition of a nightingale and a poet connected with that
tree; but this dim tradition may be merely a misty repetition, from mouth
to mouth, of Mr. Howitt’s extract from Lord Houghton’s volumes. _Primâ
facie_, a plane-tree might seem to be a very much more likely shelter
than a plum-tree for Keats to have chosen to place his chair beneath;
and yet one would think that, had Mr. Howitt purposely substituted the
plane-tree for the plum-tree, it would have been because he found it by
the house which he supposed to be Brown’s. This however is not the case;
and it should also be mentioned that at the western end of Lawn Bank,
among some shrubs &c., there is an old and dilapidated plum-tree which
grows so as to form a kind of leafy roof.
Eleven years ago, when I attempted to identify Wentworth Place beyond
a doubt by local and other enquiries, the gardener at Wentworth House
assured me very positively that, some fifteen or twenty years before,
when Lawn Bank (then called Lawn Cottage) was in bad repair, and the
rain had washed nearly all the colour off the front, he used to read the
words “Wentworth Place,” painted in large letters beside the top window
at the extreme left of the old part of the house as one faces it; and I
have since had the pleasure of reading the words there myself; for the
colour got washed thin enough again some time afterwards. After a great
deal of enquiry among older inhabitants of Hampstead than this gardener,
I found a musician, born there in 1801, and resident there ever since,
a most intelligent and clear-headed man, who had been in the habit of
playing at various houses in Hampstead from the year 1812 onwards. When
asked, simply and without any “leading” remark, what he could tell about
a group of houses formerly known as Wentworth Place, he replied without
hesitation that Lawn Bank, when he was a youth, certainly bore that name,
that it was two houses, with entrances at the sides, in one of which
he played as early as 1824, and that subsequently the two houses were
converted into one, at very great expense, to form a residence for Miss
Chester,[65] who called the place Lawn Cottage. This informant did not
remember the names of the persons occupying the two houses. A surgeon
of repute, among the oldest inhabitants of Hampstead, told me, as an
absolute certainty, that he was there as early as 1827, knew the Brawne
family, and attended them professionally at Wentworth Place, in the house
forming the western half of Lawn Bank. Of Charles Brown, however, this
gentleman had no knowledge.
Not perfectly satisfied with the local evidence, I forwarded to Mr.
Severn a sketch-plan of the immediate locality, in order that he might
identify the houses in which he visited Keats and Brown and the Brawne
family: he replied that it was in Lawn Bank that Brown and Mrs. Brawne
had their respective residences; and he also mentioned side entrances;
but Sir Charles Dilke says his grandfather’s house had the entrance
in front, and only Brown’s had a side entrance. Two relatives of Mrs.
Brawne’s who were still living in 1877, and were formerly residents in
the house, also identified this block as that in which she resided, and
so did the late Mr. William Dilke of Chichester, by whose instructions,
during the absence of his brother, the name was first painted upon the
house. It is hard to see what further evidence can be wanted on the
subject. The recollection of one person may readily be distrusted; but
where so many memories converge in one result, their evidence must be
accepted; and I leave these details on record here, mainly on the ground
that doubts may possibly arise again. At present it does not seem as if
there could be any possible question that, in Lawn Bank, we have the
immortalized Wentworth Place where Keats spent so much time, first as
co-inmate with Brown in the eastern half of the block, and at last when
he went to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne in the western half.
It should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. Thorne’s expression
that Keats _lodged_ there, that this was not a case of lodging in the
ordinary sense: he was a sharing inmate; and his share of the expenses
was duly acquitted, as recorded by Mr. Dilke. In the hope of identifying
the houses by some documentary evidence, I had the parish rate-books
searched; in these there is no mention of John Street; but that part of
Hampstead is described as the Lower Heath Quarter: no names of houses are
given; and the only evidence to the purpose is that, among the ratepayers
of the Lower Heath Quarter, very few in number, were Charles Wentworth
Dilk (without the final _e_) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs. Brawne
does not appear; but, as she rented the house in Wentworth Place of Mr.
Dilke, it may perhaps be assumed that it was he who paid the rates.
It will perhaps be thought that the steps of the enquiry in this matter
are somewhat “prolixly set forth”; and the only plea in mitigation to
be offered is that, without evidence, those who really care to know the
facts of the case could hardly be satisfied.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard
Monckton Milnes. A new Edition._ 1863 (and other dates). See p. ix,
Memoir.
[2] _Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by
Richard Monckton Milnes_ (Two Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references,
throughout, are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite
it henceforth simply as _Life, Letters, &c._, specifying the volume
and page.
[3] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and
edited, with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of
Trin. Coll. Cambridge_ (Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir.
[4] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 234-6.
[5] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 240.
[6] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 252-3.
[7] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. 301.
Should not the semicolon at _point_ change places with the comma at
_knowledge_?
[8] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, p. 302.
[9] This little book, now in my collection, is of great interest.
It is marked throughout for Miss Brawne’s use,—according to Keats’s
fashion of “marking the most beautiful passages” in his books for
her. At one end is written the sonnet referred to in the text,
apparently composed by Keats with the book before him, as there are
two “false starts,” as well as erasures; and at the other end, in
the handwriting of Miss Brawne, is copied Keats’s last sonnet,
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.
The Spenser similarly marked, the subject of Letter XXXIV, is
missing.
[10] See _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 35.
[11] _The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical Journal.
Containing Critical Notices of, and Extracts from, Rare, Curious,
and Valuable Old Books._ (Two Volumes. Geo. P. Philes & Co., 51
Nassau Street, New York. 1862-3.) The Keats letter is at p. 196
of Vol. I, side by side with one purporting to be Shelley’s, a
flagrant forgery which has been publicly animadverted on several
times lately, having been reprinted as genuine.
[12] The correspondent of _The World_ would seem (I only say
_seem_; for the matter is obscure) to have used Lord Houghton’s
pages for “copy” where a cursory examination indicated that they
gave the same matter as the original letter,—transcribing what
presented itself as new matter from the original. The fragment
of _Friday 27th_ was, on this supposition, in its place when the
copies were made for Lord Houghton, because there is the close; but
between that time and 1862 it must have been separated from the
letter.
[13] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 55.
[14] It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following note
of locality from the _Autobiography_ (Vol. II, p. 230): “It was not
at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York-buildings, in
the New-road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the _Indicator_; and he
resided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, Kentish-town (No. 13),
where I concluded it.”
[15] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 61.
[16] See Hunt’s _Autobiography_, Vol. II, p. 216. It may be noted
in passing that the _Indicator_ version of the Sonnet varies in
some slight details from the Original in the volume of Dante
referred to at page xliv, and from Lord Houghton’s text. It is
natural to suppose that Hunt’s copy was the latest of the three;
and his text is certainly an improvement on the others where it
varies from them.
[17] _The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the
late Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his
Grandson, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P., &c. In Two
Volumes._ (London. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.) See Vol.
I, p. 11.
[18] This sonnet occurs at page 128 of _The Garden of Florence;
and other Poems. By John Hamilton_. (London: John Warren, Old
Bond-street. 1821.)
[19] _The Letters and Poems of John Keats._ In three volumes.
(Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). Vol. I is called _The Letters
of John Keats, edited by Jno. Gilmer Speed_: Vol. II and III, _The
Poems of John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a
Memoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed_.
[20] _Keats by Sidney Colvin._ (Macmillan & Co., 1887). Mr. Colvin
has also contributed to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (August, 1888)
an Article _On Some Letters of Keats_, which I have also duly
consulted.
[21] _The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats_, (Four
volumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably earlier than Mr.
Speed’s volumes appeared.)
[22] Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name was Jane.
[23] These two words are wanting in the original.
[24] His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven months before
the date of this letter.
[25]
Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,
And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,
Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,
Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—
Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_, iii, 61-4.
[26] Fanny’s younger sister: see Introduction.
[27] The word _Newport_ is not stamped on this letter, as on
Numbers I, II, and IV; but it is pretty evident that Keats and his
friend were still at Shanklin.
[28] I am not aware of any other published record that this name
belonged to Keats’s Mother, as well as his sister and his betrothed.
[29] Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: see Introduction.
[30] I am unable to obtain or suggest any explanation of the
allusion made in this strange sentence. It is not, however,
impossible that “the Bishop” was merely a nickname of some one in
the Hampstead circle.
[31] The Tragedy referred to is, of course, _Otho the Great_, which
was composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage
Brown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot,
&c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly
Keats’s. See Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol.
II, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of
Keats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of
the progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by
Brown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by
Sir Charles Dilke to _The Papers of a Critic_, referred to in the
Introduction to the present volume, p. lviii.
[32] He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated
Winchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the
hopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this
letter see _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk_
(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also
Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where
there is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and
arranged.
[33] The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that
given in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement
(_Life, Letters, &c._, 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the
date: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never
know....”
[34] This word is of course left as found in the original
letter: an editor who should spell it _yacht_ would be guilty of
representing Keats as thinking what he did not think.
[35] Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and
publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street.
[36] Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know
not; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all
events, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing
thence to Reynolds (_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 23).
[37] It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke
obtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in
the letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p.
16, Vol. II, of the _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848). How long Keats
remained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a
day; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great
Smith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living
at Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place,
Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of the _Life,
Letters, &c._
[38] It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced
this moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to
is that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’s _Life_ (Vol. II,
pp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he
“might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the
colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in
that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.”
[39] This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from
the 3rd of February, 1820.
[40] This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence
or presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful
phase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See Letters
XXI, XXIV, XXVI, XXXV, and XXXVII.
[41] If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us
to the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the
day on which Keats broke a blood-vessel.
[42] George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significant _but_ indicates
that the absence of Brown was still, as was natural, more or less a
condition of the presence of Miss Brawne. That Keats had, however,
or thought he had, some reason for this condition, beyond the
mere delicacy of lovers, is dimly shadowed by the cold _My dear
Fanny_ with which in Letter XXI the condition was first expressly
prescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a
morbid sensibility in Letters XXXV and XXXVII. Probably a man in
sound health would have found the cause trivial enough.
[43] The MS. of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ (the volume containing
_Hyperion_, and most of Keats’s finest work).
[44] I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke.
[45] This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the
belief that this letter and the preceding one were written about
the same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in the
_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark,
“Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend
Brown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and
he refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal
food, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as in Letter XXV he speaks
to Miss Brawne of his “feeding upon sham victuals.” In the letter
to Dilke he says: “If I can keep off inflammation for the next six
weeks, I trust I shall do very well.” In Letter XXV he expresses
to Miss Brawne the hope that he may go out for a walk with her on
the 1st of May. If these correspondences may be trusted, we are now
dealing with letters of the first week in March, of which period
there are still indications in Letter XXVIII.
[46] The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate
that this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in
the letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date,
already referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair
of the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he
“shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the
weather changes for the warmer.”
[47] Misspelt _Proctor_ in the original.
[48] It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old
Mr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father
of Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious
letter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not
been mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut
off,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture.
[49] The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so
small that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably
given to an autograph-collector.
[50] This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened,
one would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was
clearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend,
which took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion
there is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in
attachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a
week of this time had there been any opportunity.