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Some Remarks on Keats and His Friends

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Some Remarks on Keats and His Friends SOME REMARKS ON KEATS AND HIS FRIENDS By SIR ROBERT ARMSTRONG-JONES, C.B.E., M.D., D.L. LONDON, ENGLAND HE function of poetry is to of short stature, with a long and oval express and embody beautiful face, arresting features even to the and elevated ideas in language casual passer-by, every lineament that can stir the emotions and strongly cut and delicately alive. His Tit has an orderly, methodical wayhead of was well shaped, his eyes were presenting its creations, generally with dark, sensitive, large and glowing. His metrical and rhythmic periods. Ebe hair was golden brown, thick and curly. poet is a creator, who begins with the Severn said his eyes were like the hazel concrete and leads on to abstract eyes of a wild gipsy maid. Haydon said thought, so as to arouse pleasurable he had an eye that had an inward look sentiments in combination with a feel­ perfectly divine like a Delphic priestess ing of power, wonder, curiosity, respect, that had visions. affection, exaltation and love or some­ He was born on October 31, 1795, in times of envy and hatred. a posting-house, the Swan and Hoop, Probably no poet has ever kindled now 85 Moorgate, London; opposite a deeper feeling of pity and sympathy the entrance to Finsbury Circus, and for than Keats, mingled as this has been this accident he was taunted as the with a compelling admiration for his “cockney” poet as contrasted with the brilliant but short life’s work, shorter “Lakists.” His father, Thomas Keats, than that of any noted English poet. was thrown from his horse at the age He died from consumption before he of thirty-six (1804) and fatally injured, was twenty-six. Shelley was thirty, Byron opposite John Wesley's chapel in the and Robert Burns were thirty-six when City Road. His death was followed they died. Losing his father, through a year later by that of Keats’ grand­ an accident, when he was the age of father, John Jennings, who left his nine, and his mother, from consump­ widow (Fanny), Keats’ grandmother, tion, when he was fourteen, he was left the sum of £13,000, in those days a with two brothers (one died from con­ competent fortune. Within four months sumption), and a sister Frances Mary Keats’ mother remarried, but (as Mrs. (Fanny) who married a Spaniard, Rawlings) she soon separated and re­ Llanos. One other child died young; joined her family at Enfield, where to all of them Keats was devoted. The Keats was sent to an excellent private four survivors were placed in the charge school kept by John Clarke, father of an ungenerous and strict trustee of his friend Charles Cowden Clarke named Richard Abbey, a tea and cof­ (the Shakespeare scholar), where he fee merchant. was a prize-winner and medallist, with It may be desirable to preface these a leaning to the study of Latin, for remarks by a brief personal and family we find him later translating parts history. Keats was described as “a of the Aeneid of Virgil. The school­ mighty soul in a little body.” He was house stood on the site of the present railway station at Enfield, bnt the cen­ ercise its rights of practising as a doc­ tral part of the facade of the house, with tor; but, instead, he became a “truant” its rich ornaments in moulded brick, (to use the late Lord Moynihan’s ex­ has been preserved in the South Ken­ pression) and Keats never practiced. sington Museum. The house was origi­ It is often asked if Keats’ medical nally built for a West India merchant training was ever reflected in his writ­ in the finest style of early Georgian ings or sayings, but only a few examples classic architecture. can be quoted. Lord Houghton repeats At the age of fifteen Keats was taken the statement that after coughing up from school by his guardian and was blood Keats remarked: “I know the apprenticed for five years to the school color of that blood. It is arterial and it is doctor, Mr. Thomas Hammond, in my death warrant.” He wrote to his sis­ Church Street, Edmonton, two miles ter Fanny that he became a vegetarian from Enfield. Keats walked this distance “so my brains may never, henceforth, be daily and this probably started his love in a greater mist than is theirs by na­ of walking, which means combining ture.” In his financial difficulties he movement with pleasure. For some rea­ had the mind to become a surgeon on son he left before the end of his appren­ board an East Indiaman. He also makes ticeship, which lasted from the summer a few references to the pulse and heart. of i8ii to the autumn of 1814, and he In spite of his being a qualified doctor was then sent to “walk the Hospital” he devoted himself to the study of art at Guy’s on October 2, 1815, where he and literature. He contributed in the came under the influence of the dis­ domain of the fine arts—whose immedi­ tinguished surgeon, Sir Astley Paston ate end is pleasure, and poetry claims Cooper, who was the lecturer on anat­ to be one of the fine arts—to the beauty omy at St. Thomas’ Hospital, at that of form and to the expression of emo­ time situated close to Guy’s in the tional feelings; thus effectively afford­ Boro’, the two medical schools being ing pleasure of a pure, elevating and combined. His accurate knowledge of ennobling character to the great multi­ botany (to which he was devoted) was tude of those who have since cared to probably acquired when he was a medi­ read and study his poetry. It is said that cal student. Keats’ devotion to poetry first arose through reading Spenser’s “Faerie Some flowery spot, sequestered, wild, roman­ Queene,” which “fired his genius.” His tic schoolmaster (John Glarke) lent him That often must have seen a poet frantic. the book, and said that Keats knew It was not necessary before 1815 to whole passages by heart, and would talk pass any examination in order to prac­ of nothing but Spenser. tice medicine. It was sufficient to have “walked the Hospital” under the tui­ Spenser, a jealous honourer of thine tion of a member of the staff. It is re­ Did, last eve, ask my promise to refine Some English . but, corded, however, that Keats in 1816 did The flower must drink the nature of the soil pass an examination, then recently es­ Before it can put forth its blossoming. tablished, to become a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, a company It is also said that Mr. Clarke lent which relied much upon botanical Keats Chapman’s Homer. therapeutics, with the privilege to ex­ Of his early friends Charles Cowden Clarke (son of the headmaster) was his that perished in his pride’’ of youth, a schoolfellow and Henry Stephens was quarter of a century before Keats was his fellow-student at Guy’s. It is related born, by Stephens that one evening whilst he () Chatterton, how very sad thy fate himself was intent on his medical stud­ Dear child of sorrow—son of misery ies, Keats exclaimed that he had just From the Isle of Wight Keats went completed a new line, “A thing of to stay in Margate which he soon left beauty is a constant joy.” “What think as it was a “treeless place” and where you of that, Stephens?” He replied: “It he continued to write “Endymion” and has the true ring, but is wanting in some later spent some time at Canterbury, way.” After an interval of silence Keats then at Oxford (to his friend Bailey) read: “A thing of beauty is a joy for and to other places, e.g., to Burford ever.” Stephens added: “It will live for Bridge, where he completed the third ever,” which was true, for it forms the book of “Endymion,” before returning first line of “Endymion,” begun in to Hampstead after an absence of eight Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight, pub­ months. lished early in the year of Keats’ jour­ Of Keats’ most intimate friends, the ney to Scotland (1818) and inscribed earliest and closest were J. H. Leigh to the memory of Thomas Chatterton, Hunt and John Hamilton Reynolds. “the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul They alone among his contemporaries had complete faith in his poetic power. thoughts like the gods.” The feeling Reynolds was a year younger, and was pervading Keats’ mind, viz., the all­ himself a poet and the author of several potverful influence of beauty in art, was volumes of verse. It was Reynolds who shown in his attachment to and friend­ brought Keats and Benjamin Bailey ship with the famous historical painter, together. They became friends and read Benjamin Robert Haydon (introduced together for a time at Magdalen Col­ to him by Hunt) nine years his senior lege, Oxford, and after holding a curacy and to Haydon he also dedicated odes. in Carlisle (1817), Cumberland, Bailey Inspired by his love of the classics, initi­ later (1846) became the Archdeacon of ated in his schooldays and stimulated Colombo. Keats had planned a visit to by examining the Elgin marbles, Hay­ him on his tour in Scotland, but this don taught his art to Keats and bor­ was not to be. Keats wrote to him: “I rowed his money which he did not thought [the trip to Scotland] would repay! For borrowing from others and give me more experience, rub off more incurring special liabilities that he prejudice, use me to more hardship, could not meet, Haydon was later im­ identify finer scenes, load me with prisoned for debt and finally through grander mountains and strengthen more adversity ended his own life.
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