320

DEATH OF TOM KEATS

there is a sublimity to welcome me home. The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the windowpane are my Children. The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happinessan amiable wife and sweet Children I contemplate as a part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart. I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body-guardthen 'Tragedy with sceptered pall comes sweeping by.' According to my state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily. Or I throw my whole being into Troilus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost Soul upon the Stygian Banks staying for waftage,' I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone. These things, combined with the opinion I have of the generality of women-who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar Plum than my time, form a barrier against Matrimony which I rejoice in.

Throughout November Keats was so fully absorbed in attendance on his dying brother as to be unfit for poetry or correspondence. On the night of December 1 the end came. Early the next morning,' writes Brown, 'I was awakened in bed by a pressure on my hand. It was Keats, who came to tell me that his brother was no more. I said nothing, and we both remained silent for a while, my hand fast locked in his. At length, my thoughts returning from the dead to the living, I said, "Have nothing more to do with those lodgings,—and alone too! Had you not better live with me?" He paused, pressed my hand warmly, and replied, "I think it would be better." From that moment he was my inmate.'

CHAPTER XI

DECEMBER 1818-JUNE 1819: KEATS AND BROWN HOUSEMATES: FANNY BRAWNE: WORK AND IDLENESS

Removal to Wentworth Place-Work on Hyperion-The insatiable Haydon -The Misses Porter-A mingled yarn-Charles Lamb and punningHunt and his satellites-Fanny Brawne-A sudden enslavementSevern's impressions-Visit to Hampshire-The Eve of St. Agnes— Return and engagement-Ode to Fanny-Love and jealousy-Haydon again-Letters to Fanny Keats-Two months' idleness-Praise of claret-Bailey's love-affairs-Fit of languor-Fight with a butcher-boy -Sonnet-confessions-Reflections ethical and cosmic-Meeting with Coleridge The same according to the sage-A tactful review-Sonnets on fame-La Belle Dame Sans Merci-The right version quoted-The five Odes-Their date and order-A fruitful May-Indecision and anxiety-A confidential letter-Departure for Shanklin.

DILKE and Brown, as has been said already, had built for themselves a joint block of two houses in a garden near the bottom of John Street, Hampstead, and had called the property Wentworth Place, after a name hereditary in the Dilke family. Dilke and his wife occupied the larger of the two houses forming the block, and Brown, who was a bachelor, the smaller house, standing to the west. The accommodation in Brown's quarters included a front and back sitting-room

1 Later occupants re-named the place Lawn Bank and threw the two semi-detached houses into one, making alterations and additions the exact nature of which were pointed out to me in 1885 by Mr William Dilke, the then surviving brother of Keats's friend. This gentleman also showed me a house across the road which he himself had built in early life, occupied for a while, and then let on a sixty years' lease: 'which lease,' he added, as though to outlive a sixty years' agreement contracted at thirty were the most ordinary occurrence in the world, 'fell in a year or two ago.' He died shortly afterwards, age 93. He and Mrs Proctor, the widow of

322

REMOVAL TO WENTWORTH PLACE

on the ground floor, with a front and back bedroom over them, and a small spare bedroom or 'crib' where a bachelor guest could be put up for the night. The arrangement with Keats was that he should share household expenses, occupying the front sitting-room for the sake of quiet at his work. His move to his new quarters does not seem to have been quite so immediate as Brown represents it. Beginning a new journalletter to his brother and sister-in-law a week or two after Tom's death, Keats writes, 'With Dilke and Brown I am quite thick-with Brown indeed I am going to domesticate, that is, we shall keep house together. I shall have the front parlour and he the back one, by which I shall be able to avoid the noise of Bentley's Children-and be better able to go on with my studies-which have been greatly interrupted lately, so that I have not a shadow of an idea for books in my head, and my pen seems to have grown gouty for verse.'

This phase of poetical stagnation, which had naturally set in as his cares for his dying brother grew more engrossing towards the end, passed away quickly. By about the middle of December Keats was settled at Wentworth Place, whither his ex-landlord, Bentley the postman, we are told, carried down his little library of some hundred and fifty books in a clothes-basket from Well Walk. In spite of the noisy children Keats parted not without regret from the Bentleys, and speaks feelingly of Mrs Bentley's kindness and attention during his late trouble. As soon, relates Brown, as the consolations of nature and friendship had in some measure softened his grief, he plunged once more into poetry, his special task being Hyperion, at which he had already begun to work before his brother died. But he never got into a quite happy or uninterrupted flow of work on it. Once and again we find him moved to lay it

Barry Cornwall the poet-staunchest, wittiest, and youngest-hearted defier of Time that she was—were the only two persons I have known and spoken to who had known and spoken to Keats.

WORK ON HYPERION

323

aside for a bout of brotherly gossip with George and Georgiana in America. 'Just now I took out my poem to go on with it--but the thought of my writing so little to you came upon me and I could not get on-so I have begun at random and I have not a word to say-and yet my thoughts are so full of you that I can do nothing else.' And again: 'I have no thought pervading me so constantly and frequently as that of you-my Poem cannot frequently drive it away-you will retard it much more than you could by taking up my time if you were in England. I never forget you except after seeing now and then some beautiful woman—but that is a fever the thought of you both is a passion with me, but for the most part a calm one.'

This letter, covering some three weeks from midDecember to January 4, enables us, like others to the same correspondents, to lay our finger on almost every strand in the 'mingled yarn' of Keats's life and doings. Of one tiresome interruption which befell him about Christmas he tells nothing, doubtless in order to spare his brother anxiety. This was a request for money from the insatiable Haydon. The correspondence on the matter cannot be read without anger against the elder man and admiring affection for the generous ladyet not foolishly or recklessly generous-on whom he sponged. Haydon's only excuses are a recent eye-trouble which had hindered his work, and his inflated belief, which had so far successfully imposed both upon himself and his friends, in his own huge importance to art and to his country. Keats writes, showing incidentally how last year's critical rebuffs had changed, more or less permanently, his attitude in regard to the public and public recognition:

Believe me Haydon I have that sort of fire in my heart that would sacrifice everything I have to your service-I speak without any reserve-I know you would do so for me I open my heart to you in a few words. I will do this sooner than you shall be distressed: but let me be the last stay-Ask the rich lovers of Art first-I'll tell you why-I have a little money

324

THE INSATIABLE HAYDON

which may enable me to study, and to travel for three or four years. I never expect to get anything by my Books: and moreover I wish to avoid publishing-I admire Human Nature but I do not like Men. I should like to compose things honourable to Man-but not fingerable over by Men. So I am anxious to exist without troubling the printer's devil or drawing upon Men's or Women's admiration-in which great solitude I hope God will give me strength to rejoice. Try the long purses -but do not sell your drawings or I shall consider it a breach of friendship.

Haydon answers in a gush of grandiloquent gratitude, promising to try every corner first, but intimating pretty clearly that he knew his wealthier habitual helpers were for the present tired out with him. One of his phrases is a treasure. 'Ah Keats, this is sad work for one of my soul and Ambition. The truest thing you ever said of mortal was that I had a touch of Alexander in me! I have, I know it, and the World shall know it, but this is a purgative drug I must first take.' 'This' means his own perpetual need and habit of living on other people. In the next letter Haydon of course accepts Keats's offer, and in the Christmas weeks, when he should have been wholly engrossed in Hyperion, Keats had much and for some time fruitless ado with bankers, lawyers, and guardian in endeavouring to fulfil his promise. To his brother he only says he has been dining with Haydon and otherwise seeing much of him; mentions the painter's eye-trouble; and quotes him as describing vividly at second hand the sufferings of Captain (afterwards Sir John) Ross and his party on their voyage in search of the North-West passage.

From Ross in Baffin's Bay the same letter rambles to Ritchie in the deserts of Morocco, and thence to gossip about the best way of keeping his own and George's brotherly intimacy unbroken across the ocean; about the 'sickening stuff' printed in Hunt's new Literary Pocket Book (it was when he was seeing most of Haydon that Keats was always most inclined to harsh criticism of Hunt); about Mrs Dilke's cats, and about Godwin's novels and Hazlitt's opinion of them, and the rare