CHAPTER XV
FEBRUARY-AUGUST 1820: HAMPSTEAD AND KENTISH TOWN: PUBLICATION OF LAMIA VOLUME.
Letters from the sick-bed—To Fanny Brawne—To James Rice—Barry Cornwall—Hopes of returning health—Haydon’s private view—Improvement not maintained—Summer at Kentish Town—Kindness of Leigh Hunt—Misery and jealousy—Severn and Mrs Gisborne—Invitation from Shelley—Keats on The Cenci—La Belle Dame published—A disfigured version—The Lamia volume published—Charles Lamb’s appreciation—The New Monthly—Other favourable reviews—Taylor and Blackwood—A skirmish—Impenitence—And impertinence—Jeffrey in the Edinburgh—Appreciation full though tardy—Fury of Byron—Shelley on Hyperion—And on Keats in general—Impressions of Crabb Robinson.
Such and so gloomy, although with no ignoble gloom, had been Keats’s deeper thoughts on poetry and life, and such the imagery under which he figured them, during the last weeks when the state of his health enabled his mind to work with anything approaching its natural power. From the night of his seizure on February 3rd 1820, which was three months after his twenty-fourth birthday, he never wrote verse again: unless indeed the lines found on the margin of his manuscript of The Cap and Bells were written from his sick-bed and in a moment of bitterness addressed in his mind to Fanny Brawne: but from a certain pitch and formality of style in them, I should take them rather to be meant for putting into the mouth of one of the characters in some such historical play as he had been meditating in the weeks before Christmas:—
For several days after the hæmorrhage he was kept to his room and his bed, and for nearly two months had to lead a strictly invalid life. At first he could bear no one in the room except the doctor and Brown. ‘While I waited on him day and night,’ testifies Brown, ‘his instinctive generosity, his acceptance of my offices, by a glance of his eye, a motion of his hand, made me regard my mechanical duty as absolutely nothing compared to his silent acknowledgment.’ (How often have these words come home to the heart of the present writer in days when he used to be busy about the mute sick-bed of another of these shining ones!) Severn, nursing Keats later under conditions even more trying and hopeless, bears similar testimony to his unabated charm and sweetness in suffering. Almost from the first he was able to write little letters to his sister Fanny, and is careful to give them a cheering and re-assuring turn. When after some days he is down on a sofa-bed made up for him in the front parlour he tells her what an improvement it is:—
Besides I see all that passes-for instance now, this morning—if I had been in my own room I should not have seen the coals brought in. On Sunday between the hours of twelve and one I descried a Pot boy. I conjectured it might be the one o’clock beer—Old women with bobbins and red cloaks and unpresuming bonnets I see creeping about the heath. Gipseys after hare skins and silver spoons. Then goes by a fellow with a wooden clock under his arm that strikes a hundred and more. Then comes the old French emigrant (who has been very well to do in France) with his hands joined behind on his hips, and his face full of political schemes. Then passes Mr David Lewis, a very good-natured, good-looking old gentleman who has been very kind to Tom and George and me. As for those fellows the Brick-makers they are always passing to and fro. I mustn’t forget the two old maiden Ladies in Well Walk who have a Lap dog between them that they are very anxious about. It is a corpulent Little beast whom it is necessary to coax along with an ivory-tipp’d cane. Carlo our Neighbour Mrs Brawne’s dog and it meet sometimes. Lappy thinks Carlo a devil of a fellow and so do his Mistresses.
Very soon his betrothed was allowed to pay him little visits from next door, and he was able to take pleasure in these and in a constant interchange of notes with her. He tells her of his thoughts and some of his words (which are not quite the same as Brown puts in his mouth) at the moment of his seizure:—