Keats Part 1

Keats.

by Sidney Colvin.

PREFACE.

With the name of Keats that of his first biographer, the late Lord Houghton, must always justly remain a.s.sociated. But while the sympathetic charm of Lord Houghton's work will keep it fresh, as a record of the poet's life it can no longer be said to be sufficient. Since the revised edition of the _Life and Letters_ appeared in 1867, other students and lovers of Keats have been busy, and much new information concerning him been brought to light, while of the old information some has been proved mistaken. No connected account of Keats's life and work, in accordance with the present state of knowledge, exists, and I have been asked to contribute such an account to the present series. I regret that lack of strength and leisure has so long delayed the execution of the task entrusted to me. The chief authorities and printed texts which I have consulted (besides the original editions of the Poems) are the following:--

1. Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries. By Leigh Hunt. London, 1828.

2. The Life of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley. By Thomas Medwin. London, 2 vols., 1847.

3. Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Monckton Milnes. 2 vols., London, 1848.

4. Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon. Edited and compiled by Tom Taylor.

Second edition. 3 vols., London, 1853.

5. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences of Friends and Contemporaries. 3 vols., London, 1850.

6. The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes. London, 1854.

7. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. [Revised edition, edited by Thornton Hunt.] London, 1860.

8. The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame: an article by Joseph Severn in the _Atlantic Monthly Magazine_ for 1863 (vol. xi. p. 401).

9. The Life and Letters of John Keats. By Lord Houghton. New edition, London, 1867.

10. Recollections of John Keats: an article by Charles Cowden Clarke in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1874 (N. S. vol. xii. p. 177). Afterwards reprinted with modifications in Recollections of Writers, by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. London, 1878.

11. The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the writings of the late Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a biographical notice by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P. 2 vols., London, 1875.

12. Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a memoir by Frederic Wordsworth Haydon. 2 vols., London, 1876.

13. The Poetical Works of John Keats, chronologically arranged and edited, with a memoir, by Lord Houghton [Aldine edition of the British Poets].

London, 1876.

14. Letters of John Keats to f.a.n.n.y Brawne, with Introduction and Notes by Harry Buxton Forman. London, 1878.

A biographer cannot ignore these letters now that they are published: but their publication must be regretted by all who hold that human respect and delicacy are due to the dead no less than to the living, and to genius no less than to obscurity.

15. The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats. Edited with notes and appendices by Harry Buxton Forman. 4 vols., London, 1883.

In this edition, besides the texts reprinted from the first editions, all the genuine letters and additional poems published in 3, 6, 9, 13, and 14 of the above are brought together, as well as most of the biographical notices contained in 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 12: also a series of previously unpublished letters of Keats to his sister: with a great amount of valuable ill.u.s.trative and critical material besides. Except for a few errors, which I shall have occasion to point out, Mr Forman's work might for the purpose of the student be final, and I have necessarily been indebted to it at every turn.

16. The Letters and Poems of John Keats. Edited by John Gilmer Speed. 3 vols., New York, 1883.

17. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by William T. Arnold. London, 1884.

The Introduction to this edition contains the only attempt with which I am acquainted at an a.n.a.lysis of the formal elements of Keats's style.

18. An aesculapian Poet--John Keats: an article by Dr B. W. Richardson in the _Asclepiad_ for 1884 (vol. i. p. 134).

19. Notices and correspondence concerning Keats which have appeared at intervals during a number of years in the _Athenaeum_.

In addition to printed materials I have made use of the following unprinted, viz.:--

I. HOUGHTON MSS. Under this t.i.tle I refer to the contents of an alb.u.m from the library at Fryston Hall, in which the late Lord Houghton bound up a quant.i.ty of the materials he had used in the preparation of the _Life and Letters_, as well as of correspondence concerning Keats addressed to him both before and after the publication of his book. The chief contents are the ma.n.u.script memoir of Keats by Charles Brown, which was offered by the writer in vain to _Galignani_, and I believe other publishers; transcripts by the same hand of a few of Keats's poems; reminiscences or brief memoirs of the poet by his friends Charles Cowden Clarke (the first draft of the paper above cited as no. 10), Henry Stephens, George Felton Mathew, Joseph Severn, and Benjamin Bailey; together with letters from all the above, from John Hamilton Reynolds, and several others. For the use of this collection, without which my work must have been attempted to little purpose, I am indebted to the kindness of its owner, the present Lord Houghton.

II. WOODHOUSE MSS. A. A common-place book in which Richard Woodhouse, the friend of Keats and of his publishers Messrs Taylor and Hessey, transcribed--as would appear from internal evidence, about midsummer 1819--the chief part of Keats's poems at that date unpublished. The transcripts are in many cases made from early drafts of the poems: some contain gaps which Woodhouse has filled up in pencil from later drafts: to others are added corrections, or suggestions for corrections, some made in the hand of Mr Taylor and some in that of Keats himself.

III. WOODHOUSE MSS. B. A note-book in which the same Woodhouse has copied--evidently for Mr Taylor, at the time when that gentleman was meditating a biography of the poet--a number of letters addressed by Keats to Mr Taylor himself, to the transcriber, to Reynolds and his sisters, to Rice, and Bailey. Three or four of these letters, as well as portions of a few others, are unpublished.

Both the volumes last named were formerly the property of Mrs Taylor, a niece by marriage of the publisher, and are now my own. A third note-book by Woodhouse, containing personal notices and recollections of Keats, was unluckily destroyed in the fire at Messrs Kegan Paul and Co's. premises in 1883. A copy of _Endymion_, annotated by the same hand, has been used by Mr Forman in his edition (above, no. 15).

IV. SEVERN MSS. The papers and correspondence left by the late Joseph Severn, containing materials for what should be a valuable biography, have been put into the hands of Mr William Sharp, to be edited and published at his discretion. In the meantime Mr Sharp has been so kind as to let me have access to such parts of them as relate to Keats. The most important single piece, an essay on 'The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame,' has been printed already in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (above, no. 8), but in the remainder I have found many interesting details, particularly concerning Keats's voyage to Italy and life at Rome.

V. _Rawlings v. Jennings._ When Keats's maternal grandfather, Mr John Jennings, died in 1805, leaving property exceeding the amount of the specific bequests under his will, it was thought necessary that his estate should be administered by the Court of Chancery, and with that intent a friendly suit was brought in the names of his daughter and her second husband (Frances Jennings, _m._ 1st Thomas Keats, and 2nd William Rawlings) against her mother and brother, who were the executors. The proceedings in this suit are referred to under the above t.i.tle. They are complicated and voluminous, extending over a period of twenty years, and my best thanks are due to Mr Ralph Thomas, of 27 Chancery Lane, for his friendly pains in searching through and making abstracts of them.

For help and information, besides what has been above acknowledged, I am indebted first and foremost to my friend and colleague, Mr Richard Garnett; and next to the poet's surviving sister, Mrs Llanos; to Sir Charles Dilke, who lent me the chief part of his valuable collection of Keats's books and papers (already well turned to account by Mr Forman); to Dr B. W. Richardson, and the Rev. R. H. Hadden. Other incidental obligations will be found acknowledged in the footnotes.

Among essays on and reviews of Keats's work I need only refer in particular to that by the late Mrs F. M. Owen (Keats: a Study, London, 1876). In its main outlines, though not in details, I accept and have followed this lady's interpretation of _Endymion_. For the rest, every critic of modern English poetry is of necessity a critic of Keats. The earliest, Leigh Hunt, was one of the best; and to name only a few among the living--where Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr Swinburne, Mr Lowell, Mr Palgrave, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. B. Scott, Mr Roden Noel, Mr Theodore Watts, have gone before, for one who follows to be both original and just is not easy.

In the following pages I have not attempted to avoid saying over again much that in substance has been said already, and doubtless better, by others: by Mr Matthew Arnold and Mr Palgrave especially. I doubt not but they will forgive me: and at the same time I hope to have contributed something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats's art and life.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital Student in London. [1795-1817.]

Science may one day ascertain the laws of distribution and descent which govern the births of genius; but in the meantime a birth like that of Keats presents to the ordinary mind a striking instance of nature's inscrutability. If we consider the other chief poets of the time, we can commonly recognize either some strain of power in their blood, or some strong inspiring influence in the scenery and traditions of their home.

Thus we see Scott prepared alike by his origin, a.s.sociations, and circ.u.mstances to be the 'minstrel of his clan' and poet of the romance of the border wilds; while the spirit of the c.u.mbrian hills, and the temper of the generations bred among them, speak naturally through the lips of Wordsworth. Byron seems inspired in literature by demons of the same froward brood that had urged others of his lineage through lives of adventure or of crime. But Keats, with instincts and faculties more purely poetical than any of these, was paradoxically born in a dull and middling walk of English city life; and 'if by traduction came his mind,'--to quote Dryden with a difference,--it was through channels too obscure for us to trace. His father, Thomas Keats, was a west-country lad who came young to London, and while still under twenty held the place of head ostler in a livery-stable kept by a Mr John Jennings in Finsbury. Presently he married his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings; and Mr Jennings, who was a man of substance, retiring about the same time to live in the country, at Ponder's End, left the management of the business in the hands of his son-in-law. The young couple lived at the stable, at the sign of the Swan-and-Hoop, Finsbury Pavement, facing the then open s.p.a.ce of Lower Moorfields. Here their eldest child, the poet JOHN KEATS, was born prematurely on either the 29th or 31st of October, 1795. A second son, named George, followed on February 28, 1797; a third, Tom, on November 18, 1799; a fourth, Edward, who died in infancy, on April 28, 1801; and on the 3rd of June, 1803, a daughter, Frances Mary. In the meantime the family had moved from the stable to a house in Craven Street, City Road, half a mile farther north[1].

In the gifts and temperament of Keats we shall find much that seems characteristic of the Celtic rather than the English nature. Whether he really had any of that blood in his veins we cannot tell. His father was a native either of Devon or of Cornwall[2]; and his mother's name, Jennings, is common in but not peculiar to Wales. There our evidence ends, and all that we know further of his parents is that they were certainly not quite ordinary people. Thomas Keats was noticed in his life-time as a man of intelligence and conduct--"of so remarkably fine a common sense and native respectability," writes Cowden Clarke, in whose father's school the poet and his brothers were brought up, "that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanour used to be canva.s.sed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys." It is added that he resembled his ill.u.s.trious son in person and feature, being of small stature and lively energetic countenance, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Of his wife, the poet's mother, we learn more vaguely that she was "tall, of good figure, with large oval face, and sensible deportment": and again that she was a lively, clever, impulsive woman, pa.s.sionately fond of amus.e.m.e.nt, and supposed to have hastened the birth of her eldest child by some imprudence. Her second son, George, wrote in after life of her and of her family as follows:--"my grandfather [Mr Jennings] was very well off, as his will shows, and but that he was extremely generous and gullible would have been affluent. I have heard my grandmother speak with enthusiasm of his excellencies, and Mr Abbey used to say that he never saw a woman of the talents and sense of my grandmother, except my mother." And elsewhere:--"my mother I distinctly remember, she resembled John very much in the face, was extremely fond of him, and humoured him in every whim, of which he had not a few, she was a most excellent and affectionate parent, and as I thought a woman of uncommon talents."

The mother's pa.s.sion for her firstborn son was devotedly returned by him.

Once as a young child, when she was ordered to be left quiet during an illness, he is said to have insisted on keeping watch at her door with an old sword, and allowing no one to go in. Haydon, an artist who loved to lay his colours thick, gives this anecdote of the sword a different turn:--"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 n.o.body 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 the rescue." Another trait of the poet's childhood, mentioned also by Haydon, on the authority of a gammer who had known him from his birth, is that when he was first learning to speak, instead of answering sensibly, he had a trick of making a rhyme to the last word people said and then laughing.

The parents were ambitious for their boys, and would have liked to send them to Harrow, but thinking this beyond their means, chose the school kept by the Rev. John Clarke at Enfield. The brothers of Mrs Keats had been educated here, and the school was one of good repute, and of exceptionally pleasant aspect and surroundings. Traces of its ancient forest character lingered long, and indeed linger yet, about the neighbourhood of the picturesque small suburban town of Enfield, and the district was one especially affected by City men of fortune for their homes. The school-house occupied by Mr Clarke had been originally built for a rich West-India merchant, in the finest style of early Georgian cla.s.sic architecture, and stood in a pleasant and s.p.a.cious garden at the lower end of the town. When years afterwards the site was used for a railway station, the old house was for some time allowed to stand: but later it was taken down, and the facade, with its fine proportions and rich ornaments in moulded brick, was transported to the South Kensington Museum as a choice example of the style.

Not long after Keats had been put to school he lost his father, who was killed by a fall from his horse as he rode home at night from Southgate.

This was on the 16th of April, 1804. Within twelve months his mother had put off her weeds, and taken a second husband--one William Rawlings, described as 'of Moorgate in the city of London, stable-keeper,'

presumably therefore the successor of her first husband in the management of her father's business. This marriage turned out unhappily. It was soon followed by a separation, and Mrs Rawlings went with her children to live at Edmonton, in the house of her mother, Mrs Jennings, who was just about this time left a widow[3]. In the correspondence of the Keats brothers after they were grown up, no mention is ever made of their step-father, of whom after the separation the family seem to have lost all knowledge. The household in Church Street, Edmonton, was well enough provided for, Mr Jennings having left a fortune of over 13,000, of which, in addition to other legacies, he bequeathed a capital yielding 200 a year to his widow absolutely; one yielding 50 a year to his daughter Frances Rawlings, with reversion to her Keats children after her death; and 1000 to be separately held in trust for the said children and divided among them on their coming of age[4]. Between this home, then, and the neighbouring Enfield school, where he was in due time joined by his younger brothers, the next four or five years of Keats's boyhood (1806-1810) were pa.s.sed in sufficient comfort and pleasantness. He did not live to attain the years, or the success, of men who write their reminiscences; and almost the only recollections he has left of his own early days refer to holiday times in his grandmother's house at Edmonton. They are conveyed in some rhymes which he wrote years afterwards by way of foolishness to amuse his young sister, and testify to a partiality, common also to little boys not of genius, for dabbling by the brookside--

"In spite Of the might Of the Maid, Nor afraid Of his granny-good"--