A Day with Keats

by May Byron

But the inspiration does not well up to-day: its flow is frustrated, in view of the mountainous difficulties which hedge him in. Ill-health, stinted means, hopeless love, and continual lack of success—these are calculated to give the bravest pause. And presently Keats, snatching a few hurried mouthfuls of lunch, is off to the studio of his friend, the painter Haydon—the one man among all his acquaintance who is capable of really understanding him. He sits down morbid and silent in the painting room: for a while nothing will evoke a word from him, good or bad. But his keen interest in matters of art, and the entry of various friends one by one—Wentworth Dilke, Hamilton Reynolds, Bailey and Leigh Hunt—soon arouse him to animated conversation. Keats is shy and ill at ease in women's society: but a "delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry distinguishes his intercourse with men." He says fine things finely, jokes with ready humour, and at the mention of any oppression or wrong rises "into grave manliness at once, seeming like a tall man." No wonder that his society is much sought after, and himself greatly beloved by these congenial spirits; no wonder that here, at least, he meets with that appreciation of which elsewhere his genius has been starved. In this young fellow of twenty-three, who unites winning, affectionate ways, and habitual gentleness of manner, with the loftiest and most nobly-worded ideals, few would discover that imaginary "Johnny Keats, the apothecary's assistant," upon whom the Blackwood reviewer had lavished such vials of vituperation. He is here openly acknowledged as one of the "bards of passion and of mirth," and his poems are each accepted, as

Not a senseless, tranced thing,

But divine melodies of truth,

Philosophic numbers smooth,

Tales and golden histories

Of heaven and its mysteries….

"No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveliness." (Matthew Arnold). But only these few friends of his are able to recognise that perfection. Outside their charmed circle, lies an obstinately unappreciative world.

The afternoon wears on, and the friends disperse. Keats, returning to Wentworth Place flushed with hectic exhilaration, finds a veritable douche of cold water awaiting him, in the shape of a letter from his publishers. They refer to his unlucky first volume of poems, brought out in 1817. "By far the greater number of persons who have purchased it from us," they say, "have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back, rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has time after time been showered upon it. In fact, it was only on Sunday last that we were under the mortification of having our own opinion of its merits flatly contradicted by a gentleman who told us that he considered it 'no better than a take-in.'"

For a few minutes the pendulum swings back to despair. A man whose whole business in life is the creation of the best work, who "never wrote a line of poetry with the least shadow of public thought," who believes that after his death he will be among the English poets, and that if he only has time now, he will make himself remembered—that such a one should be merely the butt and laughing-stock of his readers! It is an unendurable position. Not that Keats attaches undue importance to popular applause. "Praise or blame," he says, "has but a momentary effect upon the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works…. In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure: for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."

But what will Fanny think of such a letter? He falls to miserable meditation over the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune, and the constant erection of new obstacles in the course of his luckless love. And of Fanny's love he always has had a smouldering doubt: yet he remains her vassal, from the first, as he has told her—irrevocably her slave. He conceives himself an outcast on the wintry hillside, exiled from all his heart's desires.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

Ah what can ail thee, wretched wight,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

The squirrel's granary is full,

And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheek a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery's child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,

And nothing else saw all day long;

And sideways would she lean, and sing

A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She look'd at me and she did love,

And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,

And honey wild, and manna dew;

And sure in language strange she said,

I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,

And there I shut her wild sad eyes—

So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,

And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,

The latest dream I ever dream'd

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

Who cried—"La belle Dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awoke, and found me here

On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing.

La Belle Dame sans merci.

And now he hears the voice of his Belle Dame ringing light across the garden; while he sits here, a prey to every distress, she is gaily gossiping with her next-door neighbour Brown. At once the unhappy Keats is tormented by a thousand jealous fears. Fanny is transferring her affection to Brown: of that he is quite certain. He rushes out: his black looks banish the much-amused Brown, and very nearly produce an immediate rupture between Fanny and himself. But after a few bitter words, he permits himself to be reassured—or is it cajoled?—and tells her, "I must confess that I love you the more, in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else." The poor boy, from a worldly point of view, has "nothing else" to offer.

The lovers' quarrel is over for the nonce. Visitors begin to drop in for the evening; there is music and singing in Brown's little drawing room. Keats is very fond of music, and can himself, though possessing hardly any voice, "produce a pleasing musical effect." He will sit and listen for hours to a sympathetic performer: but his ear, like all his faculties, is abnormally sensitive: and a wrong note will drive him into a frenzy. As the room grows fuller, he becomes restive. "The poetical character," he has observed, "is not itself—it has no character. When I am in a room with people, the identity of everyone in the room begins to press upon me so that I am in a little time annihilated."

In the light chit-chat of small talk and badinage he has no part: it bewilders and annoys him. Those about him—especially the women—seem to show up in their worst colours. Fanny herself appears, as he has described her at their first meeting, an absolute minx. And presently he contrives to slip stealthily away, and seats himself in some quiet chamber, alone with the darkness and the May-scents of leaf and blossom. "I hope I shall never marry," he groans once more; "the roaring wind is my wife, and the stars through the window-panes are my children: the mighty abstract idea of Beauty I have in all things, stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness. 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 round me, and serve my spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's Bodyguard."