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LIFE OF JOHN KEATS.
BY
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT
24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW
1887
(_All rights reserved._)
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
Keats's grandfather Jennings; his father and mother; Keats
born in London, October 31, 1795; his brothers and sister;
goes to the school of John Clarke at Enfield, and is tutored
by Charles Cowden Clarke; death of his parents; is
apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond; leaves Hammond,
and studies surgery; reads Spenser, and takes to poetry;
his literary acquaintances--Leigh Hunt, Haydon, J.
Hamilton Reynolds, Dilke, &c.; Keats's first volume,
"Poems," 1817 11
CHAPTER II.
Keats begins "Endymion," May 1817; his health suffers in
Oxford; finishes "Endymion" in November; his friend,
Charles Armitage Brown; his brother George marries
and emigrates to America; Keats and Brown make a
walking tour in Scotland and Ireland; returns to Hampstead,
owing to a sore throat; death of his brother Tom;
his description of Miss Cox ("Charmian"), and of Miss
Brawne, with whom he falls in love; a difference with
Haydon; visits Winchester; George Keats returns for
a short while from America, but goes away again without
doing anything to relieve John Keats from straits in
money matters. 23
CHAPTER III.
Keats's consumptive illness begins, February 1820; he rallies,
but has a relapse in June; he stays with Leigh Hunt, and
leaves him suddenly; publication of his last volume,
"Lamia" &c.; returns to Hampstead before starting
for Italy; his love-letters to Miss Brawne--extracts;
Haydon's last sight of him; he sails for Italy with Joseph
Severn; letter to Brown; Naples and Rome; extracts from
Severn's letters; Keats dies in Rome, February 23, 1821. 40
CHAPTER IV.
Keats rhymes in infancy; his first writings, the "Imitation
of Spenser," and some sonnets; not precocious as a poet;
his sonnet on Chapman's Homer; contents of his first
volume, "Poems," 1817; Hunt's first sight of his poems
in MS.; "Sleep and Poetry," extract regarding poetry
of the Pope school, &c.; the publishers, Messrs. Ollier,
give up the volume as a failure. 64
CHAPTER V.
"Endymion"; Keats's classical predilections; extract (from
"I stood tiptoe" &c.) about Diana and Endymion; details
as to the composition of "Endymion," 1817; preface to
the poem; the critique in _The Quarterly Review_; attack
in _Blackwood's Magazine_; question whether Keats broke
down under hostile criticism; evidence on this subject in
his own letters, and by Shelley, Lord Houghton, Haydon,
Byron, Hunt, George Keats, Cowden Clarke, Severn;
conclusion. 73
CHAPTER VI.
Poems included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820; "Isabella";
"The Eve of St. Agnes"; "Hyperion"; "Lamia";
five odes; other poems--sonnet on "The Nile"; "The
Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great," "La Belle Dame
sans Merci," "The Cap and Bells," final sonnet, &c.;
prose writings. 107
CHAPTER VII.
Keats's grave in Rome; projects of Brown and others for
writing his Life; his brother George, and his sister, Mrs.
Llanos; Miss Brawne; discussion as to Hunt's friendship
to Keats; other friends--Bailey, Haydon, Shelley. 118
CHAPTER VIII.
Keats's appearance; portraits; difficulties in estimating his
character; his poetic ambition, and feeling on subjects of
historical or public interest; his intensity of thought;
moral tone; question as to his strength of character--Haydon's
opinion; demeanour among friends; studious
resolves; suspicious tendency; his feeling toward women--poem
quoted; love of flowers and music; politics;
irritation against Leigh Hunt; his letters; antagonism
to science; remarks on contemporary writers; axioms on
poetry; self-analysis as to his perceptions as a poet; feelings
as to painting; sense of humour, punning, &c.; indifference
in religious matters; his sentiments as to the
immortality of the soul; fondness for wine and game;
summary. 124
CHAPTER IX.
Influence of Spenser discussed; flimsiness of Keats's first
volume; early sonnets; "Endymion"; Shelley's criticisms
of this poem; detailed argument of the poem; estimate
of "Endymion" as to invention and execution;
estimate of "Isabella"; of "The Eve of St. Agnes"; of
"The Eve of St. Mark"; of "Hyperion"; of "Otho the
Great"; of "Lamia"; "La Belle Dame sans Merci"
quoted and estimated; Keats's five great odes--extracts;
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; imagination in verbal
form distinctive of Keats; discussion of the term "faultless"
applied to Keats; details of execution in the "Ode
to a Nightingale"; other odes, sonnets, and lyrics; treatment
of women in Keats's last volume; his references to
"swooning"; his sensuousness and its correlative sentiment;
superiority of Shelley to Keats; final remarks as to
the quality of Keats's poetry. 163
INDEX 211
NOTE.
In all important respects I leave this brief "Life of Keats" to speak
for itself. There is only one point which I feel it needful to dwell
upon. In the summer of 1886 I was invited to undertake a life of Keats
for the present series, and I assented. Some while afterwards it was
publicly announced that a life of Keats, which had been begun by Mr.
Sidney Colvin long before for a different series, would be published at
an early date. I read up my materials, began in March 1887 the writing
of my book, finished it on June 3rd, and handed it over to the editor.
On June 10th Mr. Colvin's volume was published. I at once read it, and
formed a high opinion of its merits, and I found in it some new details
which could not properly be ignored by any succeeding biographer of the
poet. I therefore got my MS. back, and inserted here and there such
items of fresh information as were really needful for the true
presentment of my subject-matter. In justice both to Mr. Colvin and to
myself I drew upon his pages for only a minimum, not a maximum, of the
facts which they embody; and in all matters of opinion and criticism I
left my MS. exactly as it stood. The reader will thus understand that
the present "Life of Keats" is, in planning, structure, execution, and
estimate, entirely independent of Mr. Colvin's; but that I have
ultimately had the advantage of consulting Mr. Colvin's book as one of
my various sources of information--the latest and within its own lines
the completest of all.
LIFE OF KEATS.
CHAPTER I.
A truism must do duty as my first sentence. There are long lives, and
there are eventful lives: there are also short lives, and uneventful
ones. Keats's life was both short and uneventful. To the differing
classes of lives different modes of treatment may properly be applied by
the biographer. In the case of a writer whose life was both long and
eventful, I might feel disposed to carry the whole narrative forward
_pari passu_, and to exhibit in one panorama the outward and the inward
career, the incidents and the product, the doings and environment, and
the writings, acting and re-acting upon one another. In the instance of
Keats this does not appear to me to be the most fitting method. It may
be more appropriate to apportion his Life into two sections: and to
treat firstly of his general course from the cradle to the grave, and
secondly of his performances in literature. The two things will
necessarily overlap to some extent, but I shall keep them apart so far
as may be convenient. When we have seen what he did and what he wrote,
we shall be prepared to enter upon some analysis of his character and
personality. This will form my third section; and in a fourth I shall
endeavour to estimate the quality and value of his writings, in
particular and in general. Thus I address myself in the first instance
to a narrative of the outer facts of his life.
* * * * *
John Keats came of undistinguished parentage. No biographer carries his
pedigree further than his maternal grandfather, or alleges that there
was any trace, however faint or remote, of ancestral eminence. The
maternal grandfather was a Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable,
called the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement, Moorfields, London, opposite
the entrance to Finsbury Circus. The principal stableman or assistant in
the business was named Thomas Keats, of Devonshire or Cornish parentage.
He was a well-conducted, sensible, good-looking little man, and won the
favour of Jennings's daughter, named Frances or Fanny: they married, and
this rather considerable rise in his fortunes left Keats unassuming and
manly as before. He appears to have been a natural gentleman. Jennings
was a prosperous tradesman, and might have died rich (his death took
place in 1805) but for easy-going good-nature tending to the gullible.
Mrs. Keats seems to have been in character less uniform and
single-minded than her husband. She is described as passionately fond of
amusement, prodigal, dotingly attached to her children, more especially
John, much beloved by them in return, sensible, and at the same time
saturnine in demeanour: a personable tall woman with a large oval face.
Her pleasure-seeking tendency probably led her into some imprudences,
for her first baby, John, was a seven months' child.
John Keats was born at the Moorfields place of business on the 31st of
October 1795. This date of birth is established by the register of
baptisms at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate: the date usually assigned, the
29th of October, appears to be inaccurate, though Keats himself, and
others of the family, believed in it. There were three other children of
the marriage--or four if we reckon a a son who died in infancy: George,
Thomas, and lastly Fanny, born in March 1803. An anecdote is told of
John when in the fifth year of his age, purporting to show forth the
depth of his childish affection for his mother. It is said that she then
lay seriously ill; and John stood sentinel at her chamber-door, holding
an old sword which he had picked up about the premises, and he remained
there for hours to prevent her being disturbed. One may fear, however,
that this anecdote has taken an ideal colouring through the lens of a
partial biographer. The painter Benjamin Robert Haydon--who, as we shall
see in the sequel, was extremely well acquainted with John Keats, and
who heard the story from his brother Thomas--records it thus: "He was,
when an infant, a most violent and ungovernable child. At five years of
age or thereabouts he once got hold of a naked sword, and, shutting the
door, swore nobody should go out. His mother wanted to do so; but he
threatened her so furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to wait
till somebody, through the window, saw her position, and came to her
rescue." It can scarcely be supposed that there were two different
occasions when the quinquennial John Keats superintended his mother and
her belongings with a naked sword--once in ardent and self-oblivious
affection, and once in petulant and froward excitement.
The parents would have liked to send John to Harrow school: but, this
being finally deemed too expensive, he was placed in the Rev. John
Clarke's school at Enfield, then in high repute, and his brothers
followed him thither. The Enfield schoolhouse was a fine red-brick
building of the early eighteenth century, said to have been erected by a
retired West India merchant; the materials "moulded into designs
decorating the front with garlands of flowers and pomegranates, together
with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building."
This central part of the facade was eventually purchased for the South
Kensington Museum, and figures there as a screen in the structural
division. The schoolroom was forty feet long; the playground was a
spacious courtyard between the schoolroom and the house itself; a
garden, a hundred yards in length, stretched beyond the playground,
succeeded by a sweep of greensward, with a "lake" or well-sized pond:
there was also a two-acre field with a couple of cows. In this
commodious seat of sound learning, well cared for and well instructed so
far as his school course extended, John Keats remained for some years.
He came under the particular observation of the headmaster's son, Mr.
Charles Cowden Clarke, not very many years his senior. He was born in
1787, fostered Keats's interest in literature, became himself an
industrious writer of some standing, and died in 1877. Keats at school
did not show any exceptional talent, but he was, according to Mr. Cowden
Clarke's phrase, "a very orderly scholar," and got easily through his
tasks. In the last eighteen months of his schooling he took a new lease
of assiduity: he read a vast deal, and would keep to his book even
during meals. For two or three successive half-years he obtained the
first prize for voluntary work; and was to be found early and late
attending to some translation from the Latin or the French, to which he
would, when allowed his own way, sacrifice his recreation-time. He was
particularly fond of Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," Tooke's
"Pantheon," and Spence's "Polymetis": a line of reading presageful of
his own afterwork in the region of Greek mythology. Of the Grecian
language, however, he learned nothing: in Latin he proceeded as far as
the AEneid, and of his own accord translated much of that epic in
writing. Two of his favourite books were "Robinson Crusoe" and
Marmontel's "Incas of Peru." He must also have made some acquaintance
with Shakespeare, as he told a younger schoolfellow that he thought no
one durst read "Macbeth" alone in the house at two in the morning. Not
indeed that these bookish leanings formed the whole of his personality
as a schoolboy. He was noticeable for beauty of face and expression,
active and energetic, intensely pugnacious, and even quarrelsome. He was
very apt to get into a fight with boys much bigger than himself. Nor was
his younger brother George exempted: John would fight fiercely with
George, and this (if we may trust George's testimony) was always owing
to John's own unmanageable temper. The two brothers were none the less
greatly attached, both at school and afterwards. The youngest brother,
Thomas (always called Tom in family records), is reported to have been
as pugilistic as John; whereas George, when allowed his own way, was
pacific, albeit resolute. The ideal of all the three boys was a maternal
uncle, a naval officer of very stalwart presence, who had been in
Admiral Duncan's ship in the famous action off Camperdown; where he had
distinguished himself not only by signal gallantry, but by not getting
shot, though his tall form was a continual mark for hostile guns.
While still a schoolboy at Enfield, John Keats lost both his parents.
The father died on the 16th of April 1804, in returning from a visit to
the school: a detail which serves to show us (for I do not find it
otherwise affirmed) that John could at the utmost have been only in the
ninth year of his age, possibly even younger, when his schooling began.
On leaving Enfield, the father dined at Southgate, and, going late
homewards, his horse fell in the City Road, and the rider's skull was
fractured. He was found about one o'clock in the morning speechless, and
expired towards eight, aged thirty-six. The mother suffered from
rheumatism, and later on from consumption; of which she died in February
1810. "John," so writes Haydon, "sat up whole nights with her in a great
chair, would suffer nobody to give her medicine or even cook her food
but himself, and read novels to her in her intervals of ease." She had
been an easily consoled widow, for, within a year from the decease of
her first husband, she married another, William Rawlings, who had
probably succeeded to the management of the business. She soon, however,
separated from Rawlings, and lived with her mother at Edmonton. After
her death Keats hid himself for some days in a nook under his master's
desk, passionately inconsolable. The four children, who inherited from
their grandparents (chiefly from their grandmother) a moderate fortune
of nearly L8,000 altogether, in which the daughter had the largest
share, were then left under the guardianship of Mr. Abbey, a city
merchant residing at Walthamstow. At the age of fifteen, or at some date
before the close of 1810, John quitted his school.
A little stave of doggrel which Keats wrote to his sister, probably in
July 1818, gives a glimpse of what he was like at the time when he and
his brothers were living with their grandmother.
"There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he:
He kept little fishes
In washing-tubs three,
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid,
Nor afraid
Of his granny good.
He often would
Hurly-burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook,
And bring home
Miller's-thumb,
Tittlebat,
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby's
Little fingers."
He was fond of "goldfinches, tomtits, minnows, mice,
ticklebacks, dace, cock-salmons, and all the whole tribe of the bushes
and the brooks."
A career in life was promptly marked out for the youth. While still aged
fifteen, he was apprenticed, with a premium of L210, to Mr. Hammond, a
surgeon of some repute at Edmonton. Mr. Cowden Clarke says that this
arrangement evidently gave Keats satisfaction: apparently he refers
rather to the convenient vicinity of Edmonton to Enfield than to the
surgical profession itself. The indenture was to have lasted five years;
but, for some reason which is not wholly apparent, Keats left Hammond
before the close of his apprenticeship.[1] If Haydon was rightly
informed (presumably by Keats himself), the reason was that the youth
resented surgery as the antagonist of a possible poetic vocation, and
"at last his master, weary of his disgust, gave him up his time." He
then took to walking St. Thomas's Hospital; and, after a short stay at
No. 8 Dean Street, Borough, and next in St. Thomas's Street, he resided
along with his two brothers--who were at the time clerks in Mr. Abbey's
office--in the Poultry, Cheapside, over the passage which led to the
Queen's Arms Tavern. Two of his surgical companions were Mr. Henry
Stephens, who afterwards introduced creosote into medical practice, and
Mr. George Wilson Mackereth. Keats attended the usual lectures, and made
careful annotations in a book still preserved. Mr. Stephens relates that
Keats was fond of scribbling rhyme of a sort among professional notes,
especially those of a fellow-student, and he sometimes showed graver
verses to his associates. Finally, in July 1815, he passed the
examination at Apothecaries' Hall with considerable credit--more than
his familiars had counted upon; and in March 1816 he was appointed a
dresser at Guy's under Mr. Lucas. Cowden Clarke once inquired how far
Keats liked his studies at the hospital. The youth replied that he did
not relish anatomy: "The other day, for instance, during the lecture,
there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of
creatures floating in the ray, and I was off with them to Oberon and
fairyland."
Readers of Keats's poetry will have no difficulty in believing that,
ever since his first introduction into a professional life, surgery and
literature had claimed a divided allegiance from him. When at Edmonton
with Mr. Hammond, he kept up his connection with the Clarke family,
especially with Charles Cowden Clarke. He was perpetually borrowing
books; and at last, about the beginning of 1812 he asked for Spenser's
"Faery Queen," rather to the surprise of the family, who had no idea
that that particular book could be at all in his line. The effect,
however, was very noticeable. Keats walked to Enfield at least once a
week, for the purpose of talking over Spenser with Cowden Clarke. "He
ramped through the scenes of the romance," said Clarke, "like a young
horse turned into a spring meadow." A fine touch of description or of
imagery, or energetic epithets such as "the sea-shouldering whale,"
would light up his face with ecstasy. His leisure had already been given
to reading and translation, including the completion of his rendering of
the AEneid. A literary craving was now at fever-heat, and he took to
writing verses as well as reading them. Soon surgery and letters were to
conflict no longer--the latter obtaining, contrary to the liking of Mr.
Abbey, the absolute and permanent mastery. Keats indeed always denied
that he abandoned surgery for the express purpose of taking to poetry:
he alleged that his motive had been the dread of doing some mischief in
his surgical operations. His last operation consisted in opening a
temporal artery; he was entirely successful in it, but the success
appeared to himself like a miracle, the recurrence of which was not to
be reckoned on.
While surgery was waning with Keats, and finally dying out--an upshot
for which the exact date is not assigned, nor perhaps assignable--he was
making, at first through his intimacy with Cowden Clarke, some good
literary acquaintances. The brothers John and Leigh Hunt were the centre
of the circle to which Keats was thus admitted. John was the publisher,
and Leigh the editor, of _The Examiner_. They had both been lately
fined, and imprisoned for two years, for a libel on the Prince Regent,
George IV.; it was perhaps legally a libel, and was certainly a
castigation laid on with no indulgent hand. Leigh Hunt (born in 1784,
and therefore Keats's senior by some eleven years) is known to us all as
a fresh and airy essayist, a fresh and airy poet, a liberal thinker in
the morals both of society and of politics (hardly a politician in the
stricter sense of the term), a charming companion, a too-constant
cracker of genial jocosities and of puns. He understood good literature
both instinctively and critically; but was too full of tricksy
mannerisms, and of petted byways in thought and style, to be an
altogether safe associate for a youthful literary aspirant, whether as
model or as Mentor. Leigh Hunt first saw Keats in the spring of 1816,
not at his residence in Hampstead as has generally been supposed, but at
No. 8 York Buildings, New Road.[2] The earliest meeting of Keats with
Haydon was in November 1816, at Hunt's house; Haydon born in 1786, the
zealous and impatient champion of high art, wide-minded and combative,
too much absorbed in his love for art to be without a considerable
measure of self-seeking for art's apostle, himself. He painted into his
large picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem the head of Keats, along
with those of Wordsworth and others. Another acquaintance was Mr.
Charles Ollier, the publisher, who wrote verse and prose of his own. The
Ollier firm in the early spring of 1817 became the publishers of Keats's
first volume of poems, of which more anon. Still earlier than the
Hunts, Haydon, and Ollier, Keats had known John Hamilton Reynolds, his
junior by a year, a poetical writer of some mark, now too nearly
forgotten, author of "The Garden of Florence," "The Fancy," and the
prose tale, "Miserrimus"; he was the son of the writing-master at Christ
Hospital, and Keats became intimate with the whole family, though not
invariably well pleased with them all. One of the sisters married Thomas
Hood. Through Reynolds Keats made acquaintance with Mr. Benjamin Bailey,
born towards 1794, then a student at Oxford reading for the Church,
afterwards Archdeacon of Colombo in Ceylon. Charles Wentworth Dilke,
born in 1789, the critic, and eventually editor of _The Athenaeum_, was
another intimate; and in course of time Keats knew Charles Wells, seven
years younger than himself, the author of the dramatic poem "Joseph and
his Brethren," and of the prose "Stories after Nature." Other friends
will receive mention as we progress. I have for the present said enough
to indicate what was the particular niche in the mansion of English
literary life in which Keats found himself housed at the opening of his
career.