[6] Clare is John Clare, the distressed peasant poet, in whom many kindly people fancied they had discovered an English Burns, and on whose behalf, at the same time as on Keats’s, Taylor was exerting himself to raise a fund. ‘Peter Corcoran’ refers to a brilliant medley called The Fancy lately published anonymously by John Hamilton Reynolds, and purporting to tell the fortunes and sample the poetical remains of an ill-starred youth so-named, lured away from fair prospects in love and literature by a passion for the prize ring. The gaps and queries in this letter, the MS. of which is in America, indicate places which its friendly transcriber found illegible.
[7] Morgan MSS. Some words at the end have baffled the transcriber.
[8] Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Ingpen, vol. ii, p. 839.
CHAPTER XVI
AUGUST 1820-FEBRUARY 1821: VOYAGE TO ITALY: LAST DAYS AND DEATH AT ROME
Resolve to winter in Italy—Severn as companion—The ‘Maria Crowther’—Fellow passengers—Storm in the Channel—Held up in the Solent—Landing near Lulworth—The ‘Bright Star’ sonnets—The voyage resumed—A meditated poem—Incidents at sea—Quarantine at Naples—Letters from Keats and Haslam—Lady passengers described—A cry of agony—Neapolitan impressions—On the road to Rome—Life at Rome—Apparent improvement—Relapse and despair—Severn’s ministrations—His letters from the sickroom—The same continued—Tranquil last days—Choice of epitaph—Spirit of charm and pleasantness—The end.
In telling of the critical reception of Keats’s Lamia volume I have anticipated by three or four months the course of time. Returning to his personal condition and doings, we find that by or before the date of his move from Kentish Town to be under the care of the Brawne ladies at Wentworth Place, that is by mid-August, he had accepted the verdict of the doctors that a winter in Italy would be the only thing to give him a chance of recovery. He determined accordingly, not without sore gain-giving and agitation of mind, to make the attempt. In his letter to Shelley acknowledging receipt of The Cenci and answering Shelley’s invitation to Pisa, he writes:—‘there is no doubt that an English winter would put an end to me, and do so in a lingering, hateful, manner. Therefore, I must either voyage or journey to Italy, as a soldier marches up to a battery’. And again, using the same phrase, he writes to Taylor on August 14th:—‘This journey to Italy wakes me at daylight every morning, and haunts me horribly. I shall endeavour to go, though it will be with the sensation of marching against a battery. The first step towards it is to know the expense of a journey and a year’s residence, which if you will ascertain for me, and let me know early, you will greatly serve me.’ The next day he sends Taylor a note of his wish that in case of his death his books should be divided among his friends and that any assets arising or to arise from the sale of his poems should be devoted to paying his debts—those to Brown and to Taylor himself ranking first. The good publisher promptly bestirred himself to enquire about sailings and make provision for ways and means. For the latter purpose he bought the copyright of Endymion for £100, furnished Keats at starting with a bill on London for £120, and procured promises of eventual help to the extent of £100 more by subscription among persons interested in the poet’s fate; James Rice and the painters Hilton and De Wint being among guarantors of £10 each and Lord Fitzwilliam closing the list with a promise of £50.
The vessel chosen for the voyage was a merchant brigantine, the ‘Maria Crowther,’ having berth accommodation for a few passengers and due to sail from London about the middle of September. The four intervening weeks were spent by the invalid in comparative respite from suffering and distress under the eye and tendance of his beloved. By his desire Haydon came one day to see him, and has told, with a painter’s touch, how he found him ‘lying in a white bed, with white quilt, and white sheets, the only colour visible was the hectic flush of his cheeks.’ Haydon’s vehement, self-confident and self-righteous manner of admonition to friends in trouble seems to have had an effect the reverse of consolatory, and elsewhere he amplifies this account of his last sight of Keats, saying, ‘He seemed to be going out of life with a contempt for this world and no hopes of the other. I told him to be calm, but he muttered that if he did not soon get better he would destroy himself. I tried to reason against such violence, but it was no use; he grew angry, and I went away deeply affected.’ Writing about the same time to his young sister, Keats shows himself, as ever, thoughtful and wise on her behalf and does his best to be re-assuring on his own:—