The complaint about the barbarity of Rome and of Italian law was due to a warning Severn had received that on the death of his friend every stick and shred of furniture in the house would have to be burnt. Within a few days the last thread of hope was snapped by fresh returns of hæmorrhage and utter prostration, with renewed feverish agitations of the tortured spirit. Writing to Haslam on January the 15th, Severn shows himself almost broken down by the imminence of money difficulties about to add themselves to his other cares:—
Poor Keats has just fallen asleep—I have watched him and read to him—to his very last wink—he has been saying to me ‘Severn I can see under your quiet look—immense twisting and contending—you don’t know what you are reading—you are enduring for me more than I’d have you—O that my last hour was come—what is it puzzles you now—what is it happens—‘I tell him that ‘nothing happens—nothing worries me beyond his seeing—that it has been the dull day.’ Getting from myself to his recovery—and then my painting—and then England—and then—but they are all lies—my heart almost leaps to deny them—for I have the veriest load of care—that ever came upon these shoulders of mine. For Keats is sinking daily—perhaps another three weeks may lose me him for ever—this alone would break down the most gallant spirit—I had made sure of his recovery when I set out. I was selfish and thought of his value to me—and made a point of my future success depend on his candor to me—this is not all—I have prepared myself to bear this now—now that I must and should have seen it before—but Torlonias the bankers have refused any more money—the bill is returned unaccepted—‘no effects’ and I tomorrow must—aye must—pay the last solitary crown for this cursed lodging place—yet more should our unfortunate friend die—all the furniture will be burnt—bed sheets—curtains and even the walls must be scraped—and these devils will come upon me for £100 or £150—the making good—but above all this noble fellow lying on the bed is dying in horror—no kind hope smoothing down his suffering—no philosophy—no religion to support him—yet with all the most gnawing desire for it—yet without the possibility of receiving it....
Now Haslam what do you think of my situation—for I know not what may come with tomorrow—I am hedg’d in every way that you look at me—if I could leave Keats for a while every day I could soon raise money by my face painting—but he will not let me out of his sight—he cannot bear the face of a stranger—he has made me go out twice and leave him solus. I’d rather cut my tongue out than tell him that money I must get—that would kill him at a word—I will not do anything that may add to his misery—for I have tried on every point to leave for a few hours in the day but he wont unless he is left alone—this won’t do—nor shall not for another minute whilst he is John Keats.
Yet will I not bend down under these—I will not give myself a jot of credit unless I stand firm—and will too—you’d be rejoiced to see how I am kept up—not a flinch yet—I read, cook, make the beds—and do all the menial offices—for no soul comes near Keats except the doctor and myself—yet I do all this with a cheerful heart—for I thank God my little but honest religion stays me up all through these trials. I’ll pray to God tonight that He may look down with mercy on my poor friend and myself. I feel no dread of what more I am to bear but look to it with confidence.
In religion Keats had been neither a believer nor by any means (except in the earliest days of his enthusiasm for Leigh Hunt) a scoffer; respecting Christianity without calling himself a Christian, and by turns clinging to and drifting from the doctrine of human immortality. Now, on his death-bed, says Severn, among the most haunting and embittering of his distresses was the thought that not for him were those ready consolations of orthodoxy which were within the reach of every knave and fool. After a time, contrasting the steadfast behaviour of the believer Severn with his own, he acknowledged anew the power of the Christian teaching and example, and bidding Severn read to him from Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Dying and Holy Living, strove to pass the remainder of his days in a temper of more peace and constancy.
The danger of money trouble must have been due to a pure misunderstanding, as the credit at Torlonia’s was in fact not exhausted, and a fresh communication from Mr Taylor removed all anxiety on that score. One day Keats was seized with a desire for books and was able for a time to take pleasure in reading those which Severn procured for him. Another and continual pleasure was Severn’s playing on the piano, and especially his playing of Haydn’s sonatas. ‘With all his suffering and consciousness of approaching death,’ wrote Severn in after years, ‘he never quite lost the play of his cheerful and elastic mind, yet these happier moments were but slight snatches from his misery, like the flickering rays of the sun in a smothering storm. Real rays of sunshine they were, all the same, such as would have done honour to the brightest health and the happiest mind: yet the storm of sickness and death was always going on, and I have often thought that these bursts of wit and cheerfulness were called up of set purpose—were, in fact, a great effort on my account.’
Neither patient nor watcher thought any more of recovery. For a few days Severn had the help of an English nurse. It was doubtless then that Keats made his friend go and see the place chosen for his burial. ‘He expressed pleasure at my description of the locality of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, about the grass and the many flowers, particularly the innumerable violets—also about a flock of goats and sheep and a young shepherd—all these intensely interested him. Violets were his favourite flowers, and he joyed to hear how they overspread the graves. He assured me that he seemed already to feel the flowers growing over him’: and it seems to have been gently and without bitterness that he gave for his epitaph the words, partly taken from a phrase in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster,[4]—‘here lies one whose name was writ in water.’ Ever since his first attack at Wentworth Place he had been used to speak of himself as living a posthumous life, and now his habitual question to the doctor when he came in was, ‘Doctor, when will this posthumous life of mine come to an end?’. As he turned to ask it neither physician nor friend could bear the pathetic expression of his eyes, at all times of extraordinary power, and now burning with a sad and piercing unearthly brightness in his wasted cheeks. Once or twice he was torn again by too sharp a reminder of vanished joys and hopes. Severn handed him a letter which he supposed to be from Mrs Brawne, but which was really from her daughter. ‘The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The effects were on him for many days—he did not read it—he could not, but requested me to place it in his coffin together with a purse and a letter (unopened) of his sister’s—since which time he has requested me not to place that letter, but only his sister’s purse and letter with some hair.’ Loveable and considerate to the last, ‘his generous concern for me,’ reiterates Severn, ‘in my isolated position at Rome was one of his greatest cares.’ His response to kindness was irresistibly winning, and the spirit of poetry and pleasantness was with him to the end. Severn tells how in watching Keats he used sometimes to fall asleep, and awakening, find they were in the dark. ‘To remedy this one night I tried the experiment of fixing a thread from the bottom of a lighted candle to the wick of an unlighted one, that the flame might be conducted, all which I did without telling Keats. When he awoke and found the first candle nearly out, he was reluctant to wake me and while doubting suddenly cried out, “Severn, Severn, here’s a little fairy lamp-lighter actually lit up the other candle.”’ And again: ‘Poor Keats has me ever by him, and shadows out the form of one solitary friend: he opens his eyes in great doubt and horror, but when they fall on me they close gently, open quietly and close again, till he sinks to sleep.’
Life held out for six weeks after the second relapse, but from the first days of February the end was visibly drawing near. On one of his nights of vigil Severn occupied himself in making that infinitely touching death-bed drawing in black and white of his friend with which all readers are familiar. Between the 14th and 22nd of February Severn wrote letters to Brown, to Mrs Brawne, and to Haslam to prepare them for the worst and to tell them of the reconciled and tranquil state into which the dying man had fallen. Death came very peacefully at last. On the 23rd of that month, writes Severn, ‘about four, the approaches of death came on. ‘Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don’t be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.’ I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sank into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept.’ Three days later his body was carried, attended by several of the English in Rome who had heard his story, to its grave in that retired and verdant cemetery which for his sake and Shelley’s has become a place of pilgrimage to the English-speaking world for ever.
[1] A long-popular song from Arne’s opera Artaxerxes.