Poor Jane Austen, the rally was but a momentary one, and an untimely death cut short her career just as she was developing to her best work. She is buried in the Cathedral, where, curiously, the flat stone slab over her body speaks eloquently of her benevolence of heart, sweetness of temper, and Christian patience and hope, but not one word of her literary skill or claims as an authoress—the only reference to these is in the indirect phrase “the extraordinary endowments of her mind.” So little was her right place in literature then realized, that some among her friends saw her appearance as a novelist rather with concern than with approval, and her literary ventures were even referred to apologetically. Posterity has amply atoned for this neglect: the Cathedral possesses two memorials of her—a brass and a stained-glass window; and she has long since been admitted to the high measure of appreciation to which her naturalness and sincerity justly entitle her. The Dr. Gabell referred to in the letter was, of course, the well-known Dr. Gabell, headmaster of the College, mentioned in the previous chapter, a characteristic figure famous in his day, a picture of whom, had she been spared, she might perhaps have left us, limned in her own nervous and inimitable manner; but, alas! it was not to be. Fortunately the house she occupied is known, and a commemorative tablet, placed over the door, records appropriately her sojourn there and her untimely death.
Following close upon Jane Austen came another, with a name ever to be honoured in song—a summer migrant merely, it is true, or rather an autumn one,—whose light was destined to be shortly afterwards suddenly extinguished also. John Keats, the poet, who came here in August 1819 from Shanklin, where “Keats’s Green” preserves his memory, for a visit of some two months’ duration—“the last good days of his life.” Several considerations dictated his visit to Winchester, among others, the desire to have access to a good library, a desire destined, quite unaccountably, to disappointment. His letters written from Winchester are full and charming literary productions: he describes the ‘maiden-ladylike gentility’ of her streets; the door-steps always ‘fresh from the flannel’—the knockers with a staid, serious, and almost awful quietness about them; the High Street as quiet as a lamb, the door-knockers ‘dieted to three raps per diem’;—in such happy, delicate phrases he hits off the Winchester of the day. Of the place itself he gives us interesting touches: the air on one of its downs is ‘worth sixpence a pint’; the beautiful streams full of trout delight him; the Cathedral, fourteen centuries old, enchants his imagination; while the foundation of St. Cross he finds to be greatly abused.
Where he lodged we know not, dearly as we should like to—we can only form such conclusions as the following clues[4] point to:
I take a walk every day for an hour before dinner, and this is generally my walk. I go out the back gate across one street into the Cathedral yard, which is always interesting; there I pass under the trees along a paved path, pass the beautiful front of the Cathedral, turn to the left under a stone doorway—then I am on the other side of the building, which leaving behind me, I pass on through two College-like squares, seemingly built for the dwelling-place of Deacons and Prebendaries, furnished with grass and shaded with trees; then I pass through one of the old city gates and then you are in one College Street, through which I pass, and at the end thereof crossing some meadows, and at last a country alley of gardens, I arrive at the foundation of St. Cross, which is a very interesting old place, both for its Gothic tower and Alms square and also for the appropriation of its rich rents to a relation of the Bishop of Winchester. Then I pass over St. Cross meadows till you come to the most beautifully clear river. Now this is only one mile of my walk.[5]
Another clue, which locates the house very close to the High Street, if not in it, is given by the following:
We heard distinctly a noise patting down the High Street as of a walking cane of the good old Dowager breed, and a little minute after we heard a less voice observe, “What a noise the ferril made—it must be loose.”[6]
Winchester streets are less staid and genteel now, and the High Street would hardly echo responsive to such repressed sounds to-day.
Two months only the visit lasted, months of tense compression and rich utterance of song. Hyperion (which he never finished), Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci—all these in one form or other came under his pen for completion or revision, while his Ode to Autumn, the most perfect of all his odes, was wholly a Winchester production inspired by his circumstances and surroundings. The German poet might almost have had Keats prophetically before him when he sang:
Singst du nicht dein ganzes Leben,
Sing doch in der Jugend Drang!
Nur im Blüthenmond erheben
Nachtigallen ihren Sang.
E’en though after years be silent,
Sing while youthful passions throng,
Only in the fervid spring-time
Nightingales pour forth their song.