between the dates of my letters. It is more than a fortnight since I left
Shanklin chiefly for the purpose of being near a tolerable Library, which
after all is not to be found in this place. However we like it very much:
it is the pleasantest Town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations
of any. There is a fine Cathedral which to me is always a source of
amusement, part of it built 1400 years ago; and the more modern by a
magnificent Man, you may have read of in our History, called William of
Wickham. The whole town is beautifully wooded. From the Hill at the
eastern extremity you see a prospect of Streets, and old Buildings mixed
up with Trees. Then there are the most beautiful streams about I ever
saw--full of Trout. There is the Foundation of St. Croix about half a mile
in the fields--a charity greatly abused. We have a Collegiate School, a
Roman catholic School; a chapel ditto and a Nunnery! And what improves it
all is, the fashionable inhabitants are all gone to Southampton. We are
quiet--except a fiddle that now and then goes like a gimlet through my
Ears--our Landlady's son not being quite a Proficient. I have still been
hard at work, having completed a Tragedy I think I spoke of to you. But
there I fear all my labour will be thrown away for the present, as I hear
Mr. Kean is going to America. For all I can guess I shall remain here till
the middle of October--when Mr. Brown will return to his house at
Hampstead; whither I shall return with him. I some time since sent the
Letter I told you I had received from George to Haslam with a request to
let you and Mrs. Wylie see it: he sent it back to me for very insufficient
reasons without doing so; and I was so irritated by it that I would not
send it travelling about by the post any more: besides the postage is very
expensive. I know Mrs. Wylie will think this a great neglect. I am sorry
to say my temper gets the better of me--I will not send it again. Some
correspondence I have had with Mr. Abbey about George's affairs--and I
must confess he has behaved very kindly to me as far as the wording of his
Letter went. Have you heard any further mention of his retiring from
Business? I am anxious to hear whether Hodgkinson, whose name I cannot
bear to write, will in any likelihood be thrown upon himself. The
delightful Weather we have had for two Months is the highest gratification
I could receive--no chill'd red noses--no shivering--but fair atmosphere
to think in--a clean towel mark'd with the mangle and a basin of clear
Water to drench one's face with ten times a day: no need of much
exercise--a Mile a day being quite sufficient. My greatest regret is that
I have not been well enough to bathe though I have been two Months by the
seaside and live now close to delicious bathing--Still I enjoy the
Weather--I adore fine Weather as the greatest blessing I can have. Give me
Books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of
doors, played by somebody I do not know--not pay the price of one's time
for a jig--but a little chance music: and I can pass a summer very quietly
without caring much about Fat Louis, fat Regent or the Duke of Wellington.
Why have you not written to me? Because you were in expectation of
George's Letter and so waited? Mr. Brown is copying out our Tragedy of
Otho the Great in a superb style--better than it deserves--there as I said
is labour in vain for the present. I had hoped to give Kean another
opportunity to shine. What can we do now? There is not another actor of
Tragedy in all London or Europe. The Covent Garden Company is execrable.
Young is the best among them and he is a ranting coxcombical tasteless
Actor--a Disgust, a Nausea--and yet the very best after Kean. What a set
of barren asses are actors! I should like now to promenade round your
Gardens--apple-tasting--pear-tasting--plum-judging--apricot-nibbling--
peach-scrunching--nectarine-sucking and Melon-carving. I have also a great
feeling for antiquated cherries full of sugar cracks--and a white currant
tree kept for company. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water lilied pond
to eat white currants and see gold-fish: and go to the Fair in the Evening
if I'm good. There is not hope for that--one is sure to get into some mess
before evening. Have these hot days I brag of so much been well or ill for
your health? Let me hear soon.
Your affectionate Brother
JOHN ----.
CXIV.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Winchester, September 1, 1819.
My dear Taylor--Brown and I have been employed for these 3 weeks past from
time to time in writing to our different friends--a dead silence is our
only answer--we wait morning after morning. Tuesday is the day for the
Examiner to arrive, this is the 2d Tuesday which has been barren even of a
newspaper--Men should be in imitation of spirits "responsive to each
other's note." Instead of that I pipe and no one hath danced. We have been
cursing like Mandeville and Lisle--With this I shall send by the same post
a 3d letter to a friend of mine, who though it is of consequence has
neither answered right or left. We have been much in want of news from the
Theatres, having heard that Kean is going to America--but no--not a word.
Why I should come on you with all these complaints I cannot explain to
myself, especially as I suspect you must be in the country. Do answer me
soon for I really must know something. I must steer myself by the rudder
of Information....
Ever yours sincerely
JOHN KEATS.
CXV.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Winchester, September 5 [1819].
My dear Taylor--This morning I received yours of the 2d, and with it a
letter from Hessey enclosing a Bank post Bill of L30, an ample sum I
assure you--more I had no thought of.--You should not have delayed so long
in Fleet St.--leading an inactive life as you did was breathing poison:
you will find the country air do more for you than you expect. But it must
be proper country air. You must choose a spot. What sort of a place is
Retford? You should have a dry, gravelly, barren, elevated country, open
to the currents of air, and such a place is generally furnished with the
finest springs--The neighbourhood of a rich enclosed fulsome manured
arable land, especially in a valley and almost as bad on a flat, would be
almost as bad as the smoke of Fleet St.--Such a place as this was
Shanklin, only open to the south-east, and surrounded by hills in every
other direction. From this south-east came the damps of the sea; which,
having no egress, the air would for days together take on an unhealthy
idiosyncrasy altogether enervating and weakening as a city smoke--I felt
it very much. Since I have been here at Winchester I have been improving
in health--it is not so confined--and there is on one side of the City a
dry chalky down, where the air is worth Sixpence a pint. So if you do not
get better at Retford, do not impute it to your own weakness before you
have well considered the Nature of the air and soil--especially as Autumn
is encroaching--for the Autumn fog over a rich land is like the steam from
cabbage water. What makes the great difference between valesmen,
flatlandmen and mountaineers? The cultivation of the earth in a great
measure--Our health temperament and disposition are taken more
(notwithstanding the contradiction of the history of Cain and Abel) from
the air we breathe, than is generally imagined. See the difference between
a Peasant and a Butcher.--I am convinced a great cause of it is the
difference of the air they breathe: the one takes _his_ mingled with the
fume of slaughter, the other from the dank exhalement from the glebe; the
teeming damp that comes up from the plough-furrow is of great effect in
taming the fierceness of a strong man--more than his labour--Let him be
mowing furze upon a mountain, and at the day's end his thoughts will run
upon a..axe[104] if he ever had handled one; let him leave the plough, and
he will think quietly of his supper. Agriculture is the tamer of men--the
steam from the earth is like drinking their Mother's milk--it enervates
their nature--this appears a great cause of the imbecility of the Chinese:
and if this sort of atmosphere is a mitigation to the energy of a strong
man, how much more must it injure a weak one unoccupied unexercised--For
what is the cause of so many men maintaining a good state in Cities, but
occupation--An idle man, a man who is not sensitively alive to
self-interest in a city cannot continue long in good health. This is
easily explained--If you were to walk leisurely through an unwholesome
path in the fens, with a little horror of them, you would be sure to have
your ague. But let Macbeth cross the same path, with the dagger in the air
leading him on, and he would never have an ague or anything like it--You
should give these things a serious consideration. Notts, I believe, is a
flat county--You should be on the slope of one of the dry barren hills in
Somersetshire. I am convinced there is as harmful air to be breathed in
the country as in town. I am greatly obliged to you for your letter.
Perhaps, if you had had strength and spirits enough, you would have felt
offended by my offering a note of hand, or rather expressed it. However, I
am sure you will give me credit for not in anywise mistrusting you: or
imagining that you would take advantage of any power I might give you over
me. No--It proceeded from my serious resolve not to be a gratuitous
borrower, from a great desire to be correct in money matters, to have in
my desk the Chronicles of them to refer to, and know my worldly
non-estate: besides in case of my death such documents would be but just,
if merely as memorials of the friendly turns I had done to me--Had I known
of your illness I should not have written in such fiery phrase in my first
letter. I hope that shortly you will be able to bear six times as much.
Brown likes the tragedy very much: But he is not a fit judge of it, as I
have only acted as midwife to his plot; and of course he will be fond of
his child. I do not think I can make you any extracts without spoiling the
effect of the whole when you come to read it--I hope you will then not
think my labour mis-spent. Since I finished it, I have finished Lamia, and
am now occupied in revising St. Agnes's Eve, and studying Italian.
Ariosto I find as diffuse, in parts, as Spenser--I understand completely
the difference between them. I will cross the letter with some lines from
Lamia. Brown's kindest remembrances to you--and I am ever your most
sincere friend
JOHN KEATS.
A haunting Music sole perhaps and lone
Supportress of the fairy roof made moan
Throughout as fearful the whole charm might fade.
Fresh Carved Cedar mimicking a glade
Of Palm and Plantain met from either side
In the high midst in honour of the Bride--
Two Palms, and then two plantains and so on
From either side their stems branch'd one to one
All down the aisled place--and beneath all
There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall.
So canopied lay an untasted feast
Teeming a perfume. Lamia regal drest
Silverly paced about and as she went
Mission'd her viewless servants to enrich
The splendid finish of each nook and niche--
Between the tree stems wainscoated at first
Came jasper panels--then anon there burst
Forth creeping imagery of slighter trees
And with the larger wove in small intricacies--
And so till she was sated--then came down
Soft lighting on her head a brilliant crown
Wreath'd turban-wise of tender wannish fire
And sprinkled o'er with stars like Ariadne's tiar,
Approving all--she faded at self will
And shut the Chamber up close hush'd and still;
Complete, and ready, for the revels rude
When dreadful Guests would come to spoil her solitude
The day came soon and all the gossip-rout--
O senseless Lycius[105] ...
* * * * *
This is a good sample of the story. Brown is gone to Chichester
a-visiting--I shall be alone here for 3 weeks, expecting accounts of your
health.
CXVI.--TO GEORGE AND GEORGIANA KEATS.
Winchester, September [17, 1819], Friday.
My dear George--I was closely employed in reading and composition in this
place, whither I had come from Shanklin for the convenience of a library,
when I received your last dated 24th July. You will have seen by the short
letter I wrote from Shanklin how matters stand between us and Mr.
Jennings. They had not at all moved, and I knew no way of overcoming the
inveterate obstinacy of our affairs. On receiving your last, I immediately
took a place in the same night's coach for London. Mr. Abbey behaved
extremely well to me, appointed Monday evening at seven to meet me, and
observed that he should drink tea at that hour. I gave him the enclosed
note and showed him the last leaf of yours to me. He really appeared
anxious about it, and promised he would forward your money as quickly as
possible. I think I mentioned that Walton was dead.... He will apply to
Mr. Gliddon the partner, endeavour to get rid of Mrs. Jennings' claim, and
be expeditious. He has received an answer from my letter to Fry. That is
something. We are certainly in a very low estate--I say we, for I am in
such a situation, that were it not for the assistance of Brown and Taylor,
I must be as badly off as a man can be. I could not raise any sum by the
promise of any poem, no, not by the mortgage of my intellect. We must wait
a little while. I really have hopes of success. I have finished a tragedy,
which if it succeeds will enable me to sell what I may have in manuscript
to a good advantage. I have passed my time in reading, writing, and
fretting--the last I intend to give up, and stick to the other two. They
are the only chances of benefit to us. Your wants will be a fresh spur to
me. I assure you you shall more than share what I can get whilst I am
still young. The time may come when age will make me more selfish. I have
not been well treated by the world, and yet I have, capitally well. I do
not know a person to whom so many purse-strings would fly open as to me,
if I could possibly take advantage of them, which I cannot do, for none of
the owners of these purses are rich. Your present situation I will not
suffer myself to dwell upon. When misfortunes are so real, we are glad
enough to escape them and the thought of them. I cannot help thinking Mr.
Audubon a dishonest man. Why did he make you believe that he was a man of
property? How is it that his circumstances have altered so suddenly? In
truth, I do not believe you fit to deal with the world, or at least the
American world. But, good God! who can avoid these chances? You have done
your best. Take matters as coolly as you can; and confidently expecting
help from England, act as if no help were nigh. Mine, I am sure, is a
tolerable tragedy; it would have been a bank to me, if just as I had
finished it, I had not heard of Kean's resolution to go to America. That
was the worst news I could have had. There is no actor can do the
principal character besides Kean. At Covent Garden there is a great chance
of its being damm'd. Were it to succeed even there it would lift me out of
the mire; I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising
against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a
weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess, and mess it
is as far as regards our pockets. But be not cast down any more than I am;
I feel that I can bear real ills better than imaginary ones. Whenever I
find myself growing vapourish, I rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean
shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoestrings neatly, and in fact
adonise as I were going out. Then, all clean and comfortable, I sit down
to write. This I find the greatest relief. Besides I am becoming
accustomed to the privations of the pleasures of sense. In the midst of
the world I live like a hermit. I have forgot how to lay plans for the
enjoyment of any pleasure. I feel I can bear anything,--any misery, even
imprisonment, so long as I have neither wife nor child. Perhaps you will
say yours are your only comfort; they must be. I returned to Winchester
the day before yesterday, and am now here alone, for Brown, some days
before I left, went to Bedhampton, and there he will be for the next
fortnight. The term of his house will be up in the middle of next month
when we shall return to Hampstead. On Sunday, I dined with your mother and
Hen and Charles in Henrietta Street. Mrs. and Miss Millar were in the
country. Charles had been but a few days returned from Paris. I daresay
you will have letters expressing the motives of his journey. Mrs. Wylie
and Miss Waldegrave seem as quiet as two mice there alone. I did not show
your last. I thought it better not, for better times will certainly come,
and why should they be unhappy in the meantime? On Monday morning I went
to Walthamstow. Fanny looked better than I had seen her for some time. She
complains of not hearing from you, appealing to me as if it were half my
fault. I had been so long in retirement that London appeared a very odd
place. I could not make out I had so many acquaintances, and it was a
whole day before I could feel among men. I had another strange sensation.
There was not one house I felt any pleasure to call at. Reynolds was in
the country, and, saving himself, I am prejudiced against all that family.
Dilke and his wife and child were in the country. Taylor was at
Nottingham. I was out, and everybody was out. I walked about the streets
as in a strange land. Rice was the only one at home. I passed some time
with him. I know him better since we have lived a month together in the
Isle of Wight. He is the most sensible and even wise man I know. He has a
few John Bull prejudices, but they improve him. His illness is at times
alarming. We are great friends, and there is no one I like to pass a day
with better. Martin called in to bid him good-bye before he set out for
Dublin. If you would like to hear one of his jokes, here is one which, at
the time, we laughed at a good deal: A Miss ----, with three young ladies,
one of them Martin's sister, had come a-gadding in the Isle of Wight and
took for a few days a cottage opposite ours. We dined with them one day,
and as I was saying they had fish. Miss ---- said she thought _they tasted
of the boat_. "No" says Martin, very seriously, "they haven't been kept
long enough." I saw Haslam. He is very much occupied with love and
business, being one of Mr. Saunders' executors and lover to a young woman.
He showed me her picture by Severn. I think she is, though not very
cunning, too cunning for him. Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense
of the ridiculous as love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorriest
figure in the world; queer, when I know a poor fool to be really in pain
about it, I could burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage
becomes irresistible. Not that I take Haslam as a pattern for lovers; he
is a very worthy man and a good friend. His love is very amusing.
Somewhere in the Spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party
of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to
scrape together a party of lovers--not to dinner, but to tea. There would
be no fighting as among knights of old.
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes,
Nibble their toast and cool their tea with sighs;
Or else forget the purpose of the night,
Forget their tea, forget their appetite.
See, with cross'd arms they sit--Ah! hapless crew,
The fire is going out and no one rings
For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.
A fly is in the milk-pot. Must he die
Circled by a humane society?
No, no; there, Mr. Werter takes his spoon,
Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon
The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark,
Across the tea-board draws a long wet mark.
Romeo! Arise take snuffers by the handle,
There's a large cauliflower in each candle.
A winding sheet--ah, me! I must away
To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay.
Alas, my friend, your coat sits very well;
Where may your Taylor live? I may not tell.
O pardon me. I'm absent now and then.
Where _might_ my Taylor live? I say again
I cannot tell. Let me no more be teased;
He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleased.
You see, I cannot get on without writing, as boys do at school, a few
nonsense verses. I begin them, and before I have written six the whim has
passed--if there is anything deserving so respectable a name in them. I
shall put in a bit of information anywhere, just as it strikes me. Mr.
Abbey is to write to me as soon as he can bring matters to bear, and then
I am to go to town and tell him the means of forwarding to you through
Capper and Hazlewood. I wonder I did not put this before. I shall go on
to-morrow; it is so fine now I must take a bit of a walk.
Saturday [September 18].
With my inconstant disposition it is no wonder that this morning, amid all
our bad times and misfortunes, I should feel so alert and well-spirited.
At this moment you are perhaps in a very different state of mind. It is
because my hopes are ever paramount to my despair. I have been reading
over a part of a short poem I have composed lately, called Lamia, and I am
certain there is that sort of fire in it that must take hold of people
some way. Give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation--what they
want is a sensation of some sort. I wish I could pitch the key of your
spirits as high as mine is; but your organ-loft is beyond the reach of my
voice.
I admire the exact admeasurement of my niece in your mother's letter--O!
the little span-long elf. I am not in the least a judge of the proper
weight and size of an infant. Never trouble yourselves about that. She is
sure to be a fine woman. Let her have only delicate nails both on hands
and feet, and both as small as a May-fly's, who will live you his life on
a 3 square inch of oak-leaf; and nails she must have, quite different from
the market-women here, who plough into butter and make a quarter pound
taste of it. I intend to write a letter to your wife, and there I may say
more on this little plump subject--I hope she's plump. Still harping on my
daughter. This Winchester is a place tolerably well suited to me. There is
a fine cathedral, a college, a Roman Catholic chapel, a Methodist do., and
Independent do.; and there is not one loom, or anything like manufacturing
beyond bread and butter, in the whole city. There are a number of rich
Catholics in the place. It is a respectable, ancient, aristocratic place,
and moreover it contains a nunnery. Our set are by no means so hail fellow
well met on literary subjects as we were wont to be. Reynolds has turn'd
to the law. By the bye, he brought out a little piece at the Lyceum call'd
One, Two, Three, Four: by Advertisement. It met with complete success. The
meaning of this odd title is explained when I tell you the principal actor
is a mimic, who takes off four of our best performers in the course of the
farce. Our stage is loaded with mimics. I did not see the piece, being out
of town the whole time it was in progress. Dilke is entirely swallowed up
in his boy. It is really lamentable to what a pitch he carries a sort of
parental mania. I had a letter from him at Shanklin. He went on, a word or
two about the Isle of Wight, which is a bit of hobby horse of his, but he
soon deviated to his boy. "I am sitting," says he, "at the window
expecting my boy from ----." I suppose I told you somewhere that he lives
in Westminster, and his boy goes to school there, where he gets beaten,
and every bruise he has, and I daresay deserves, is very bitter to Dilke.
The place I am speaking of puts me in mind of a circumstance which
occurred lately at Dilke's. I think it very rich and dramatic and quite
illustrative of the little quiet fun that he will enjoy sometimes. First I
must tell you that their house is at the corner of Great Smith Street, so
that some of the windows look into one street, and the back windows into
another round the corner. Dilke had some old people to dinner--I know not
who, but there were two old ladies among them. Brown was there--they had
known him from a child. Brown is very pleasant with old women, and on
that day it seems behaved himself so winningly that they became hand and
glove together, and a little complimentary. Brown was obliged to depart
early. He bid them good-bye and passed into the passage. No sooner was his
back turned than the old women began lauding him. When Brown had reached
the street door, and was just going, Dilke threw up the window and called:
"Brown! Brown! They say you look younger than ever you did!" Brown went
on, and had just turned the corner into the other street when Dilke
appeared at the back window, crying: "Brown! Brown! By God, they say
you're handsome!" You see what a many words it requires to give any
identity to a thing I could have told you in half a minute.
I have been reading lately Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and I think you
will be very much amused with a page I here copy for you. I call it a Feu
de Joie round the batteries of Fort St. Hyphen-de-Phrase on the birthday
of the Digamma. The whole alphabet was drawn up in a phalanx on the corner
of an old dictionary, band playing, "Amo, amas," etc.