From this point forwards nothing but misery remains to be recorded of
John Keats. The narrative becomes depressing to write and depressing to
read. The sensation is like that of being confined in a dark vault at
noonday. One knows, indeed, that the sun of the poet's genius is blazing
outside, and that, on emerging from the vault, we shall be restored to
light and warmth; but the atmosphere within is not the less dark and
laden, nor the shades the less murky. In tedious wretchedness, racked
and dogged with the pang of body and soul, exasperated and protesting,
raging now, and now ground down into patience and acceptance, Keats
gropes through the valley of the shadow of death.
Before detailing the facts, we must glance for a minute at the position.
Keats had a passionate ambition and a passionate love--the ambition to
be a poet, the love of Fanny Brawne. At the beginning of 1820, he was
conscious of his authentic vocation as a poet, and conscious also that
this vocation, though recognized in a small and to some extent an
influential circle, was publicly denied and ridiculed; his portion was
the hiss of the viper and the gander, the hooting of the impostor and
the owl. His forthcoming volume was certain to share the same fate; he
knew its claims would be perversely resisted and cruelly repudiated. If
he could make no serious impression as a poet, not only was his leading
ambition thwarted, but he would also be impeded in getting any other and
more paying literary work to do--regular profession or employment he had
none. He was at best a poor man, and, for the while, almost bereft of
any command of funds. So long as this state of things, or anything like
it, continued, he would be unable to marry the woman of his heart. While
sickness kept him a prisoner, he was torn by ideas of her volatility and
fickleness. Disease was sapping his vitals, pain wrung him, Death
beckoned him with finger more and more imperative. Poetic fame became
the vision of Tantalus, and love the clasp of Ixion.
Such was the life, or such the incipient death, of Keats, in the last
twelvemonth of his brief existence.
For half a year prior to February 1820 he had been unrestful and
cheerless. "Either that gloom overspread me," so he wrote to James Rice,
"or I was suffering under some passionate feeling, or, if I turned to
versify, that exacerbated the poison of either sensation." He began
taking laudanum at times, but was induced by Brown, towards the end of
1819, to promise to give up this insidious practice. Then came the
crash: it was at Hampstead, on the night of the 3rd of February.
"One night, about eleven o'clock," I quote the words of Lord
Houghton, which have become classical, "Keats returned home[6]
in a state of strange physical excitement; it might have
appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce
intoxication. He told his friend [Brown] he had been outside the
stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered;
but added: 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go
to bed; and, as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head
was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and said: 'That is blood
from my mouth. Bring me the candle: let me see this blood.' He
gazed steadfastly some moments at the ruddy stain, and then,
looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden
calmness never to be forgotten, said: '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.'"
A surgeon arrived shortly, bled Keats, and pronounced the rupture to be
unimportant, but the patient was not satisfied. He wrote to Miss Brawne
some few days afterwards, "So violent a rush of blood came to my lungs
that I felt nearly suffocated." By the 6th of the month, however, he was
already better, and he then said in a letter to his sister: "From
imprudently leaving off my great-coat in the thaw, I caught cold, which
flew to my lungs." Later on he suffered from palpitation of the heart;
but was so far recovered by the 25th of March as to be able to go to
town to the exhibition of Haydon's picture, Christ's Entry into
Jerusalem, and early in April he could take a walk of five miles. In
March he had written that he was then picking up flesh, and, if he could
avoid inflammation for six weeks, might yet do well; in April his doctor
assured him that his only malady was nervous irritability and general
weakness, caused by anxiety and by the excitement of poetry. At an
untoward time for his health, about the first week in May, Keats was
obliged to quit his residence in Hampstead; as Brown was then leaving
for Scotland, and, according to his wont, let the house. Keats
accordingly went to live in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town. A letter which
he wrote just before his departure speaks of his uncertain outlook; he
might be off to South America, or, more likely, embarking as surgeon on
a vessel trading to the East Indies. This latter idea had been in his
mind for about a year past, off and on. What he could have contemplated
doing in South America is by no means apparent. On the 7th of May Keats
parted at Gravesend from Brown, and they never met again. The hand with
which he grasped Brown's, and which he had of old "clenched against
Hammond's," was now, according to his own words, "that of a man of
fifty."
Things had thus gone on pretty well with Keats's health, since he first
began to rally from the blood-spitting attack of the 3rd of February;
but this was not to continue. On the 22nd of June he again broke a
blood-vessel, and vomited blood morning and evening. Leigh Hunt thought
it high time to intervene, and removed the patient to his house, No. 13
Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town. By the 7th of July--just about the time
when Keats's last volume was published, the one containing "Lamia,"
"Hyperion," and all his best works--the physician had told him that he
must not remain in England, but go to Italy. On the 12th, Mrs. Gisborne,
the friend of Godwin and of Shelley, saw him at Hunt's house, looking
emaciated, and "under sentence of death from Dr. Lamb." Three days
afterwards he wrote to Haydon "I am afraid I shall pop off just when my
mind is able to run alone." The stay at Leigh Hunt's house came to an
end in a way which speaks volumes for the shattered nerves, and
consequent morbid susceptibility, of Keats. On the 10th of August a note
for him written by Miss Brawne, which "contained not a word of the least
consequence," arrived at the house. Keats was then resting in his own
room, and Mrs. Hunt, who was occupied, desired a female servant to give
it to him. The servant quitted the household on the following day; and,
in leaving, she handed the letter to Thornton Hunt, then a mere child,
asking him to reconsign it to his mother. When Thornton did this on the
12th, the letter was open; opened (one assumes) either by the servant
through idle curiosity, or by Thornton through simple childishness.
"Poor Keats was affected by this inconceivable circumstance beyond what
can be imagined. He wept for several hours, and resolved,
notwithstanding Hunt's entreaties, to leave the house. He went to
Hampstead that same evening." In Hampstead he had at least the solace of
being received into the dwelling occupied by the Brawne family, being
the same dwelling (next door to that of Brown and Keats) which had been
recently tenanted by the Dilkes; yet the excitement of feeling,
consequent on the continual presence of Miss Brawne, was perhaps harmful
to him. Here he remained until the time for journeying to Italy arrived.
He was still, it seems, left in some uncertainty as to the precise
nature and gravity of his disease, for on the 14th of August he wrote to
his sister: "'Tis not yet consumption, I believe; but it would be, were
I to remain in this climate all the winter." Anyhow, his expectations of
recovery, or of marked benefit from the Italian sojourn, were but faint.
Something may here be said of the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne.
They begin (as already stated) on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some
date between his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting
Hunt's house in August. We may assume the 10th July 1820, or
thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot say that the
character of Keats gains to my eyes from the perusal of this
correspondence. Love-letters are not expected to be models of
self-regulation and "the philosophic mind"; they would be bad
love-letters, or letters of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so.
Still, one wants a man to show himself, _qua_ lover, at his highest in
letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his noblest self, his
steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, in one direction. Keats seems
to me, throughout his love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he
exhibits great fervour of temperament, and abundant caressingness,
without the inner depth of tenderness and regard. He lives in his
mistress, for himself. As the letters pass further and further into the
harsh black shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and
lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should have been
disloyal to him, as the motive for his being disloyal to them. To make
allowance for all this is possible, and even necessary; but to treat it
as not needing that any allowance should be made would seem to me
futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to note a few
points of biographic interest. He says that he believes Miss Brawne
liked him for himself, not for his writings, and he loves her the more
for it; that, on first falling in love with her, he had written to
declare himself, but he burned the letter, fancying that she had shown
some dislike to him; that he had all his life been indifferent to money
matters, but must be chary of the resources of his friends; that he was
afraid of her "being a little inclined to the Cressid"--one of the
various passages which show that he chafed at her girlish liking for
general society and diversions. On the 10th of October 1819 he had had
"a thousand kisses" from her, and was resolved not to dispense with the
thousand and first. Early in June 1820 he speaks of her having "been in
the habit of flirting with Brown," who "did not know he was doing me to
death by inches."--It may be well to give three of the letters as
specimens:--
(I.)
"25 College Street.
"[Postmark] _13 October 1819._
"My dearest Girl,--This moment I have set myself to copy some
verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I
must write you a line or two, and see if that will assist in
dismissing you from my mind for ever so short a time. Upon my
soul I can think of nothing else. The time is past when I had
power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of
my life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you;
I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again; my life seems
to stop there--I see no further. You have absorbed me; I have a
sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving. I
should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing
you; I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet
Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no
limit now to my love.
"Your note came in just here. I cannot be 'happier' away from
you; 'tis richer than an argosy of pearls. Do not threat me, even
in jest. I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for
religion--I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more; I could be
martyred for _my_ religion. Love is my religion--I could die for
that; I could die for you. My creed is love, and you are its only
tenet. You have ravished me away by a power I cannot resist; and
yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you
I have endeavoured often 'to reason against the reasons of my
love.' I can do that no more, the pain would be too great. My
love is selfish; I cannot breathe without you."
(II.)
[Date uncertain--say towards June 15, 1820.]
"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 everything 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 ill-treating you in word, thought, and
deed.[7] 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 anybody'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-blessed me from you
for ever, who were plying me with discouragements with respect to
you eternally! People are revengeful: 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--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 lasts 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 slighted 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 slight 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."
(III.)
(This is the last letter of the series. Its date is uncertain; but may,
as already intimated, be towards July 10, 1820. It follows next after
our No. 2.)
"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; everything 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[8] 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 glooms 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
expressed 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.[9] 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 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 I 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 thunderbolt would strike me.--God bless you.
"J. K."
It is seldom one reads a letter (not to speak of a love-letter) more
steeped than this in wretchedness and acrimony; wretchedness for which
the cause was but too real and manifest; acrimony for which no ground
has been shown or is to be surmised. What Mr. Dilke had done, or could
be supposed to have done, to merit the invalid's ire, is unapparent. Mr.
Brown may be inferred, from the verses of Keats already quoted, to have
had the general character and bearing of a _bon vivant_ or "jolly dog";
sufficiently versed in the good things of this world, whether fish,
flesh, or womankind; jocose, or on occasion slangy. But Keats himself,
in the nearly contemporary letter in which he arraigned Miss Brawne for
"flirting with Brown," had said: "I know his love and friendship for
me--at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his
assistance;" and we refuse to think that any contingency could be likely
to arise in which his "indecencies" would put Miss Brawne to the blush.
Be it enough for us to know that Keats, in the drear prospect of
expatriation and death, wrote in this strain, and to wish it were
otherwise.
The time had now arrived when Keats was to go to Italy. It was on the
18th of September 1820 that he embarked on the _Maria Crowther_ from
London. Haydon gives us a painful glimpse of the poet shortly before his
departure: "The last time I saw him was at Hampstead, lying on his back
in a white bed, helpless, irritable, and hectic. He had a book, and,
enraged at his own feebleness, seemed as if he were going out of the
world, with a contempt of this, and no hopes of a better. He muttered as
I stood by him that, if he did not recover, he would 'cut his throat.' I
tried to calm him, but to no purpose. I left him, in great depression of
spirit to see him in such a state." Another attached friend, of whom I
have not yet made mention, accompanied him; and in the annals of
watchful and self-oblivious friendship there are few records more
touching than the one which links with the name of John Keats that of
Joseph Severn. Severn, two years older than Keats, had known him as far
back as 1813, being introduced by Mr. William Haslam. Keats was then
studying at Guy's Hospital, but none the less gave Severn "the complete
idea of a poet." The acquaintance does not seem to have proceeded far at
that date; but, through the intervention of Mr. Edward Holmes (author of
a "Life of Mozart," and "A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany") was
renewed whilst the poet was composing "Endymion"; and Severn may
probably have co-operated in some minor degree with Haydon in training
Keats to a perception of the great things in plastic art. In 1820
Severn, a student-painter at the Royal Academy, had won the gold medal
by his picture of The Cave of Despair, from Spenser, entitling him to
the expenses of a three years' stay in Italy, for advancement in his
art. He had an elegant gift in music, as well as in painting; and it is
a satisfaction to learn that at this period he had "great animal
spirits," for without these what he went through during the ensuing five
months would have been but too likely to break him down. I must make
room here for another letter from Keats, one addressed to his good
friend Brown, deeply pathetic, and serving to assuage whatever may have
been like "brass upon our palate" in the last-quoted letter to Fanny
Brawne.
"_Saturday, September 28._
"_Maria Crowther_, off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.
"My dear Brown,--The time has not yet come for a _pleasant_
letter from me. I have delayed writing to you from time to time,
because I felt how impossible it was to enliven you with one
heartening hope of my recovery. This morning in bed the matter
struck me in a different manner. I thought I would write 'while I
was in some liking,' or I might become too ill to write at all,
and then, if the desire to have written should become strong, it
would be a great affliction to me. I have many more letters to
write, and I bless my stars that I have begun, for time seems to
press--this may be my best opportunity.
"We are in a calm, and I am easy enough this morning. If my
spirits seem too low you may in some degree impute it to our
having been at sea a fortnight without making any way. I was very
disappointed at not meeting you at Bedhampton, and am very
provoked at the thought of you being at Chichester to-day.[10] I
should have delighted in setting off for London for the sensation
merely--for what should I do there? I could not leave my lungs or
stomach or other worse things behind me.
"I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There
is one I must mention, and have done with it. Even if my body
would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing
which I want to live most for will be a great occasion of my
death. I cannot help it--who can help it? Were I in health, it
would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I daresay
you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping: you know
what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at
your house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me
from these pains; and then I wish death away, for death would
destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and
sea, weakness and decline, are great separators; but death is the
great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed
through my mind, I may say the bitterness of death is past. I
often wish for you, that you might flatter me with the best.
"I think, without my mentioning it, for my sake you would be a
friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You think she has many
faults: but for my sake think she has not one. If there is
anything you can do for her by word or deed, I know you will do
it. I am in a state at present in which woman, merely as woman,
can have no more power over me than stocks and stones; and yet
the difference of my sensations with respect to Miss Brawne and
my sister is amazing. The one seems to absorb the other to a
degree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister in
America. The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see
her figure eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in
the habit of using during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring
in my ears. Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all
this a dream? There must be--we cannot be created for this sort
of suffering. The receiving this letter is to be one of yours.
"I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather yours to me,
more than that, as you deserve to escape, you will never be so
unhappy as I am. I should think of--you[11] in my last moments. I
shall endeavour to write to Miss Brawne if possible to-day.[12] A
sudden stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters
would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever
awhile.
"Though fatigued with a letter longer than any I have written for
a long while, it would be better to go on for ever than awake to
a sense of contrary winds. We expect to put into Portland Roads
to-night. The captain, the crew, and the passengers are all
ill-tempered and weary. I shall write to Dilke. I feel as if I
was closing my last letter to you."
The ship at last proceeded on her voyage, and in the Bay of Biscay
encountered a severe squall. Keats soon afterwards read the storm-scene
in Byron's "Don Juan": he threw the book away in indignation, denouncing
the author's perversity of mind which could "make solemn things gay, and
gay things solemn." Late in October he reached the harbour of Naples,
and had to perform a tedious quarantine of ten days. After landing on
the 31st,[13] he received a second letter from Shelley, then at Pisa,
urging him to come to that city. The first letter on this subject,
dated in July, had invited Keats to the hospitality of Shelley's own
house; but in November this project had been given up, as "we are not
rich enough for that sort of thing"--although Shelley still intended (so
he wrote to Leigh Hunt) "to be the physician both of his body and his
soul,--to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish."
Keats, however, had brought with him a letter of introduction to Dr.
(afterwards Sir James) Clark, in Rome,--or indeed he may have met him
before leaving England--and he decided to proceed to Rome rather than
Pisa. Dr. Clark engaged for him a lodging opposite his own: it was in
the first house on the right as you ascend the steps of the Trinita del
Monte. The precise date when Keats reached Rome, his last place of
torture and of rest, does not appear to be recorded: it was towards the
middle of November. He was at first able to walk out a little, and
occasionally to ride. Dr. Clark attended his sick bed with the most
exemplary assiduity and kindness. He pronounced (so Keats wrote to Brown
in a letter of November 30th, which is perhaps the last he ever penned)
that the lungs were not much amiss, but the stomach in a very bad
condition: perhaps this was a kindly equivocation, for by this time--as
was ascertained after his death--Keats can have had scarcely any lungs
at all. The patient was under no illusion as to his prospects, and he
more than once asked the physician "When will this posthumous life of
mine come to an end?"
The only words in which the last days of Keats can be adequately
recorded are those of Severn: our best choice would be between extract
and silence. There were oscillations from time to time, from bad to less
bad, but generally the tendency of the disease was steadily downwards.
The poet's feelings regarding Fanny Brawne were so acute and harrowing
that he never mentioned her to his friend. I give a few particulars from
Severn's contemporary letters--the person addressed being not always
known.
"_December 14._ His suffering is so great, so continued, and his
fortitude so completely gone, that any further change must make
him delirious.
"_December 17._ Not a moment can I be from him. I sit by his bed
and read all day, and at night I humour him in all his
wanderings.... He rushed out of bed and said 'This day shall be
my last,' and but for me most certainly it would. The blood broke
forth in similar quantity the next morning, and he was bled
again. I was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him into a little
calmness, and he soon became quite patient. Now the blood has
come up in coughing five times. Not a single thing will he
digest, yet he keeps on craving for food. Every day he raves he
will die from hunger, and I've been obliged to give him more than
was allowed.... Dr. Clark will not say much.... All that can be
done he does most kindly; while his lady, like himself in refined
feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for--in this
wilderness of a place for an invalid--there was no alternative.
[To Mrs. Brawne.] "_January 11._ He has now given up all
thoughts, hopes, or even wish, for recovery. His mind is in a
state of peace, from the final leave he has taken of this world,
and all its future hopes.... I light the fire, make his
breakfast, and sometimes am obliged to cook; make his bed, and
even sweep the room.... Oh I would my unfortunate friend had
never left your Wentworth Place for the hopeless advantages of
this comfortless Italy! He has many many times talked over 'the
few happy days at your house, the only time when his mind was at
ease'.... Poor Keats cannot see any letters--at least he will
not; they affect him so much, and increase his danger. The two
last I repented giving: he made me put them into his box, unread.
"_January 15._ Torlonia the banker has refused us any more money.
The bill is returned unaccepted, and to-morrow I must pay my last
crown for this cursed lodging-place: and what is more, if he
dies, all the beds and furniture will be burnt, and the walls
scraped, and they will come on me for a hundred pounds or
more.... You see my hopes of being kept by the Royal Academy will
be cut off unless I send a picture in the spring. I have written
to Sir T. Lawrence.
"_February 12._ At times I have hoped he would recover; but the
doctor shook his head, and Keats would not hear that he was
better; the thought of recovery is beyond everything dreadful to
him.
[To Mrs. Brawne.] "_February 14._ His mind is growing to great
quietness and peace. I find this change has its rise from the
increasing weakness of his body; but it seems like a delightful
sleep to me, I have been beating about in the tempest of his mind
so long. To-night he has talked very much to me, but so easily
that he at last fell into a pleasant sleep. He seems to have
comfortable dreams without nightmare. This will bring on some
change: it cannot be worse--it may be better. Among the many
things he has requested of me to-night, this is the
principal--that on his grave shall be this, 'Here lies one whose
name was writ in water.'... Such a letter has come! I gave it to
Keats, supposing it to be one of yours; but it proved sadly
otherwise. The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The
effects were on him for many days. He did not read it--he could
not; but requested me to place it in his coffin, together with a
purse and letter (unopened) of his sister's: since which time he
has requested me not to place _that_ letter in his coffin, but
only his sister's purse and letter, with some hair. Then he found
many causes of his illness in the exciting and thwarting of his
passions; but I persuaded him to feel otherwise on this delicate
point.... I have got an English nurse to come two hours every
other day.... He has taken half a pint of fresh milk: the milk
here is beautiful to all the senses--it is delicious. For three
weeks he has lived on it, sometimes taking a pint and a half in a
day.
"_February 22._ This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in
him frightened me: he has sunk in the last three days to a most
ghastly look.... He opens his eyes in great doubt and horror;
but, when they fall upon me, they close gently, open quietly, and
close again, till he sinks to sleep.
"_February 27._ He is gone. He died with the most perfect
ease--he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, about four, the
approaches of death came on. 'Severn--I--lift me up. I am
dying--I shall die easy. Don't be frightened: be firm, and thank
God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed
boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he
gradually sank into death, so quiet that I still thought he
slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four nights'
watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days
since the body was opened: the lungs were completely gone. The
doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I
followed his dear body to the grave on Monday [February 26th],
with many English.... The letters I placed in the coffin with my
own hand."
No words of mine shall be added here to tarnish upon the mirror of
memory this image of a sacred death and a sacred friendship.