CHAPTER IX SORROW AND READJUSTMENT At first, after the departure of his brothers, things seemed to go well with Tom. That he was extremely homesick, there can be no doubt. On the very day that the travellers started, Tom was minded to fulfil a commission with which John had entrusted him. This was to write to Taylor and ask him to give a copy of Endymion to Severn, who would call for it. Everyone knows that the first acts of a person left behind by someone who is going on a journey, someone whose going leaves an inevitable blank, are those which connect him with the departed. For Tom to sit down at once and write John's request to Taylor, is a proof of the extent of his homesickness. Another proof lies in the fact that on certain of John's letters to Tom from Scotland, Tom indorsed the date when the letter was received and the date on which it was answered. He probably did this on all the letters, but in many instances the indorsement has not come down to us. In those cases where it has, however, Tom answered the letter on the day that he received it. The day before he left for Scotland, Keats had written to Taylor, and, among other things, had asked a loan of books for Tom. How eagerly Tom longed for the books, and yet how much he feared that John's request for them had smacked of the importunate, can be seen by this wistful little postscript to his letter to Taylor: 1 "On consideration it strikes me that you will not be able to let me have books to read stock being as I should think mostly new and modern books." your But Taylor was a thoroughly good fellow, and he had Woodhouse at his elbow to egg him on. On Tuesday eve 1 From the original unpublished letter. Author's Collection. ning, June thirtieth, Tom wrote again1 thanking him for the parcel of books," and saying that he likes "Eustace's Tour' very much, and should be glad of the other books you have mentioned." On this day, he had just received John's first letter, and had sent it off on a round of inspection beginning with Reynolds. That Keats's friends did their best for the lonely Tom, we know; Haslam seems to have been particularly kind, and Wells, although his attentions took a mischievous and even cruel turn, was, very likely, merely trying to amuse his sick friend. I shall tell the story of his grievous "joke" presently. Sometime during the Summer, Tom Keats wrote the following note to Dilke. Since we have so little knowledge of the Hampstead side of the Summer, and since the note pictures Tom's condition so sharply - his alternate good and bad days, his constant intention toward cheerfulness — it should, I think, be given here. 2 "MY DEAR DILKE. I am really concerned that you should be so ill as Mrs. Bentley reports this morning. Could you and Mrs. Dilke come out again, you would be sure to find me out of bed sick people are supposed to have delicate stomachs, for my part I should like a slice of underdone surloin. I have sent you a trifle of fruit · the cherries are not so fine as I could wish. I hear London is full of the bowel complaint — has it not reached Hampstead? Yours truly, The letter is dated merely "Tuesday morning," so we have only the cherries to guide us as to the month, but by their evidence I think we may suppose the note to belong either to the very end of June or to the early part of July. From the tone of it, it seems as though John had been gone 1 Unpublished letter. Author's Collection. 2 Original unpublished letter in the possession of the Keats Memorial Association. Hampstead, England. From an engraving of a water-colour sketch by Joseph Severn, in the possession of Miss Fanny Speed Mac Donald, great grand-daughter of George Keats |