Romantic Poets in Profile: John Keats (1795-1821)
The first generation of English language Romantic poets stemmed from the late 18th century and is most associated with the names of Blake, Coleridge & Wordsworth. The second generation that followed was born at the tale end of the 18th century and overlapped with the first to varying degrees. This second generation is usually most associated with another trio: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley & John Keats.
While all six of these men are known for their poetic output they are also known for their lives and how they in turned informed their poetry. In the second generation only Lord Byron was a commercial & critical success in his lifetime to a wider audience. Arguably, the celebrity & personality surrounding Byron and the many complex events of his life, notably many scandals are just as well known as the poetry itself. Meanwhile, Shelley’s political and philosophical ideals were much more explicit and in some ways regarded as too ahead of their time and out of place in the era of the Regency in which he wrote. His sometimes scandalous life and indeed the literary acclaim of his wife, author Mary Shelley and her work Frankenstein perhaps also clouded out the reception to his poetry both in his lifetime and later to an extent too. Though both Byron and Shelley’s poetry has gone on to remain influential and highly regarded in subsequent generations, undoubtedly so too did the events of their lives and their political & philosophical ideals. John Keats is perhaps the only one of this trio who’s poetical output was not also obscured by the details of his life. Other than like Byron & Shelley, Keats did see his share of tragedy in life and indeed lived a short life. However, it can probably be contended that Keats unlike his contemporaries is less known for his personality and life and more solely for his poetry and to a degree his ideas on poetry. Yet, it would be a mistake to not say that his life and experiences did not influence his writing…
-John Keats was born on October 31, 1795 to Thomas & Frances Keats, he was the first of four children. His siblings in order included George, Thomas & Fanny.
-He was born in the Moorgate area of London where his father managed an called the Swan & Hoop, where he previously worked in the horse stables next door. Keats was born into a working class humble origin unlike Byron & Shelley who both had aristocratic backgrounds and were heirs to fortunes and titles of nobility.
-John’s parents had hoped to send him to Eton or Harrow like Byron & Shelley but could not afford the cost. Instead he was sent to the boarding school Enfield where he nevertheless was giving a thorough and modern education. Early on he developed an interest like many of contemporaries in the classics such as Greek & Latin & history.
-John was physically quite short in stature at only roughly over 5 feet in height and slender in build but he was said to be physically strong despite his stature and made up for it with a tough demeanor willing to fight any bullies to himself or his brothers. He was also described as having curly reddish-brown hair.
-He was very interested in literature and was almost always seen reading and by age 13 he was quite focused academically. Winning an academic prize in 1809.
-At age 8 (1804) the first of many family tragedies took place when his father fell from his horse after a visit to Enfield wherein Mr. Keats died of a fracture to the skull, depriving the family of a steady source of income.
-Frances Keats remarried shortly there after but left her new spouse and sent her children to live with her parents instead.
-Frances herself died of tuberculosis in 1810 when John was only 14 years old. Leaving all four Keats in the legal guardianship of their maternal grandmother, who likewise appointed two legal guardians in the event of her own passing.
-Keats had decided to enter the medical profession, which in the early 19th century did not just follow a strict course of years of medical school and residency at a hospital with strict licensing. Instead, many future doctors started out at apprentices to others, who served as either traveling or local surgeons & apothecaries. In the autumn of 1810, Keats entered his apprenticeship with Thomas Hammond, the local family doctor. Living with Hammond & his family in the attic above the surgeon’s practice for the next 3-4 years.
-In 1814, Keats (aged 19) tried some of his early efforts at poetry having never let go of his interest in poetry & literature during his apprenticeship. His early efforts were regarded as imitation and derivative, even in title of his earliest surviving poem “An Imitation of Spenser” named after the poet-author Edmund Spenser.
-1815 saw John admitted to Guy’s Hospital as a medical student, he became a dresser or assistant to surgeons. This sense of dedication and responsibility seemed to be leave the impression to all that he was destined to a life as a doctor which would have likely brought him financial security, something he never really had.
-Finances were always a sensitive issue for Keats who was stubborn in his independence and determined to make his own way in life. His mother had left him £800 for his 21st birthday and had left £8,000 to be divided between her four children upon their reaching the age of maturity (Keats 21st). However, he was never informed by his legal guardian/attorneys about the £800 bequeathment, possibly due to their own lack of information.
-Despite his heavy involvement in medicine, he was increasingly devoted to poetry and writing, which began to conflict with his studies. Nevertheless in 1816 he did receive his apothecaries license, essentially making him a licensed practitioner of medicine to serve as pharmacist, surgeon and physician. By year’s end taking inspiration from other well known poets, namely Lord Byron & Leigh Hunt, John decided instead to devote his life and earnings to poetry rather than medicine.
-In 1816, Keats got his sonnet “O Solitude” published in the Examiner, a liberal leaning weekly paper-magazine publication that was well known throughout Britain for its radical politics and featured modern artists including poets, it was published by Leigh Hunt, himself a poet and radical intellectual. Also a friend of both Lord Byron & Percy Shelley.
-October 1816 through a mutual friend, Hunt met Keats for the first time. Under Leigh’s influence Keats met with radical artists and intellectuals of the day, though Keats wasn’t especially political in his writing. Within month of meeting Hunt, his first volume of poems, called simply “Poems” was released to no commercial success and little critical notice aside from a favorable review in the publication, The Champion.
-Keats managed to switch his original publishers to a new set of publishers who’s past clients included Samuel Coleridge. His new publishers were very enthusiastic about his poems and paid him an advance for a second volume.
-Meanwhile, Leigh Hunt published an article on Keats & Shelley to derive attention to their poetry while also publishing “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” The sonnet which marvels at Chapman’s translations of the Greek author and bard Homer, struck a chord with many in the literary world and while he wasn’t a commercial success, many new literary friends and acquaintances came into Keats’ social circle. They were impressed with his talents and felt in time he had more untapped potential.
-1817 saw Keats leave London having faced too many ailments in the cramped quarters near the medical school as he had at one point intended to return to medicine and join the Royal College of Surgeons but nevertheless his poetic ambitions won him over.
-John moved in with his brothers to the nearby village of Hampstead where his brother Tom had now like their mother started to suffer tuberculosis. John & George tried their best to help their brother but in the days before antibiotics and vaccines were known and developed, tuberculosis was essentially a death sentence, sometimes fast acting or as in Tom’s case long and drawn out. Which combined with his poor finances depressed Keats (who was prone to depression his entire life).
-Hampstead nevertheless allowed Keats to be in a more rural setting more congenial to his writing and close his friends like Leigh Hunt and others in their literary circle. Also Samuel Coleridge, the first generation Romantic poet who on at least one occasion walked with Keats through the woods talking by Keats’ own account on everything from poetry to metaphysics.
A Walking Tour of the British Isles:
-In June 1818, the Keats brothers went their separate ways, Tom remained infirm due to his illness and in the care of others at Hampstead. While John & George departed themselves. John travelled with his friend Charles Armitage Brown intending to take a walking tour of the north of Britain, so as to acquire some poetic inspiration and alleviate his depression. The tour would take Keats & Brown to the famed and picturesque Lake District of Northwest England’s Cumbria region, along with a tour of Scotland & Ireland. To save on travel expenses, they’d walk everywhere except where boat ferries were needed. George Keats and his new wife Georgina accompanied John & Charles part of the way. They was bound to emigrate for America where ultimately they would remain but perish poor and suffering from tuberculosis. George said what would be his farewell to John in Lancaster, England. Seeing each other only once more briefly in 1820.
-Keats & Brown made for the Lake District in Cumbria where famed first generation Romantic poet, William Wordsworth was living. He attempted to meet with Wordsworth at his home in the area but no one was home at the time. The two poets had met in 1817 on a number of occasions.
-Keats wrote a series of letters to his siblings almost daily, serving as a diary and practice place for his new found poetry. In it he described not only the natural scenery of mountains, lake, rivers and glens but of the habits and appearance of the people of Northern England, Scotland & Ireland. Which to 19th century Londoners was almost as foreign as far flung parts of the European continent.
-Keats visited the grave and cottage of Scottish lyricist Robert Burns, he also visited Northern Ireland in the vicinity of Belfast along with the Scottish Highlands and several of the Scottish islands. Keats also made observations of the extreme poverty the average Scots & Irish rural families faced at the time, with most children walking barefoot and that to keep warm meant burning bog peat in smoky huts with no outlets but the one doorway into the home. The poverty shocked Keats sensibilities but the walking tour was pivotal in giving Keats new perspectives & indeed inspiration.
Return to Hampstead, Wentworth Place & Fanny Brawne:
-Keats and Brown returned to Hampstead in August of 1818, after two months of a walking tour. He returned to caring for Tom whose condition worsened and would eventually pass away from his prolonged illness on December 1st, depressing Keats greatly. Its possible during his caring for Tom that Keats contracted the disease himself which he began to refer to as a “family disease” having previously taken his mother.
-Following Tom’s death and George’s moving to America, John found himself alone with the English winter oncoming. He moved into Charles Brown’s newly owned Wentworth Place, a house about ten minutes from his old lodgings in Hampstead. It was here that Keats in the spring of 1819 would write a handful of his greatest known poems, his Odes on which his legacy largely rests to this day. Including Odes to a Nightingale, Melancholy & Grecian Urn.
-Meanwhile, the publication of his second volume of poetry, the classically influenced Endymion, was also negatively received by the literary critics, many of whom opposed Keats for his association with Leigh Hunt and the radical politics he espoused.
-1819 also produced some of his other posthumously best known works: Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. His publishers were lukewarm to the poems but did agree to publish them in 1820 the third and final collections of poems released in his lifetime under the title-Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes & Other Poems.
-Previously in 1817, he had met an Isabella Jones who appears to have been an early long term flirtation with Keats and likely was one whom inspired much of his poetry that was noted for its sensual language. In letters to his brother George and from glancing remarks from others, it appears likely Keats had his first and possibly only sexual relationship with Jones though the two seemed to never commit to an actual full blown romantic relationship. Their trysts continued until early 1819.
-By autumn 1818 Keats would be meet the great love of his life, Fanny Brawne. Fanny was an 18 daughter of a widow who was friends with Keats neighbors at Wentworth Place. By 1819 the Brawnes had moved next door and John saw Fanny daily. Evidently the two had much in common, including having grandparents who owned inns, family loss due to tuberculosis and interest in literature and theater.
-John gave books to Fanny to read and in time the two were almost inseparable. They appear by summer 1819 to have been informally engaged to marry, “engaged to be engaged” as is sometimes described. Nevertheless, despite his new romance and his productive and more mature poetry two things continued to put limitations on Keats as they always had. The first was finances or lack there of. Keats got his publishing advances but also had to borrow money and was often generous in loaning great sums to others making him indebted. He also had no critical or commercial breakthrough as a poet yet either. He did not want to marry Fanny until he made something of himself financially.
-The second trouble was the ever present danger of exposure to tuberculosis. The realization that Keats was fatally afflicted with the same disease that killed his mother, younger brothers & sister in law occurred in early 1820. Upon hemorrhaging blood in coughing fits, Keats was aware his death was approaching.
-He wrote hundreds of letters and messages to Fanny and professed what amounted to great anguish over loving her and the realization that his poverty and now fatal affliction would prevent their marriage from ever taking place.
Exile to Italy and Death:
-The treatment for tuberculosis patients in the early 19th century usually to ease though not cure the symptoms was to send the patient to warmer climates to ease the burden on the lungs and English winters with cold and damp conditions in confined spaces was usually regarded as too harsh on a patient in Keats state.
-In September 1820 on the recommendations of his doctors, Keats left England and Fanny behind forever, ship bound for Italy with the final destination being Rome.
-Percy Shelley, now living in self-imposed exile in Italy to evade creditors to whom he was indebted back in England along with the goal of establishing his own radical magazine publication jointly with Leigh Hunt & Lord Byron heard of Keats illness and wrote to him with the offer of having him stay with the Shelleys in Pisa & Florence Italy where they were staying. Keats, who had previously met Shelley in England through Hunt years before declined the offer. Shelley was a proponent and fan of Keats work but offered unsolicited advice to Keats on how to improve his poetry in time. Keats found this patronizing and ever stubborn about making his own way refused Shelley’s help, albeit politely and under the guise of not wanting to burden’s Shelley’s family which had suffered numerous deaths of Percy and Mary’s children (of which only one would survive to adulthood)
-Shelley also wrote to Byron about Keats but Keats & Byron whom never met had a more distanced relationship. Byron thought Shelley was too high praising of Keats abilities and in turn Keats felt that their differences were really creative stating: “You speak of Lord Byron and me – There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees – I describe what I imagine – Mine is the hardest task.”
-Keats’ friends helped contribute financially for his trip and to accompany him was his friend the artist Joseph Severn. Their journey to Italy was plagued by storms and then followed up with a ten day on ship quarantine while docked in Naples due to a cholera outbreak in Britain. From Naples, they travelled overland to Rome arriving in November two months after they left England.
-Keats & Severn settled into a villa next to he famed Spanish Steps in Rome, at first he took daily carriage rides but his bad health caused this to cease. he was cared for by Severn & an English doctor by the name of Clark. Fearing he might commit suicide by being given opium tinctures in laudanum, he was denied any real painkiller leaving him in agonizing coughing fits. Additionally, Clark followed the normal course of recommended treatment in those days including reducing his diet and bleeding the patient with lancets & leeches. This probably weakened an already sick Keats.
-1821 came around and so Keats linger in agony, often to the point of tears as described by Severn, mostly due to the prolonged suffering and wishing to end his ordeal.
-Finally, Keats succumbed to the disease and died in his rented Roman villa on February 23, 1821. He was 25 years old.
-Severn had him buried in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery with a tombstone arranged by Severn & Charles Brown. To this day it is a common place for tourists to visit.
-Percy Shelley & Leigh Hunt claimed that Keats died due to his sensitive nature from reading a bad review of his poetry which in turn burst a blood vessel. Byron while not personally subscribing to that theory did make a sarcastic quip in reference to it in his latest narrative poem, Don Juan. Shelley meanwhile had immortalized Keats in his poetic tribute, Adonais.
-1822 saw Shelley, Byron, Leigh Hunt and others stationed near Livorno, Italy to finally piece together Shelley’s long awaited radical publication which attacked the politics of monarchy in England, an offense that in the 19th century could land one in prison. All three men had liberal or radical leanings and were also supportive of Italian nationalism rising up against the Austrian Empire & Papacy which ruled over much of Italy at the time which existed as multiple kingdoms and occupied territory than one state. For their politics and to avoid press coverage in England over personal scandals especially on Byron’s case, the three had exiled themselves to Continental Europe.
-However, in July 1822, just shy of his 30th birthday, Shelley while boating with another friend was caught in a storm at sea. Having never learned to swim, Shelley drowned and washed ashore days later. He was unrecognizable due to crabs eating his face but for a copy of a Keats’ poem Lamia kept in the pocket of his pants which he was known to have had on his person at the time of his boating excursion. In a dramatic scene on an Italian beach, Shelley’s body was cremated with Byron in attendance. His heart however was calcified and not reduced to ashes, instead Mary Shelley supposedly kept this as a keepsake and had it stored in a cabinet at her home in England until her own death where his heart was supposedly buried with her when she died decades later. Shelley’s ashes however were like Keats buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, next to his son’s grave. Both poets graves are widely visited and the villa Keats died in is now the Keats-Shelley museum dedicated to both men with memorabilia contained therein, including Keats’ death bed.
-With Shelley’s death, the project for a radical publication died away. Byron tired of life in Italy after several years decided to join the Greek War of Independence then underway in revolt against centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule. Byron had hoped to use his celebrity and wealth to help finance Greek rebels and possibly be given command of troops despite no real military experience. Byron arrived in Greece in summer 1823 to find the rebels poorly organized and facing in-fighting. His next several months was coordinating the donation of loans to provide supplies and uniforms but he tried to avoid alienating different Greek factions. In April 1824, having contracted a fever and weakened like Keats with bleeding treatment via lancets and leeches and from this weakness he died of complications to his fever. He was age 36. His remains were embalmed and except for his heart were buried in England.
-Thus ended the second generation of English Romantic poets, all dead within three years of each other and none older than their mid-thirties.
-All three men are routinely taught at school and cited by subsequent generations of poets and writer as influences. Though often Byron and Shelley will be regarded for the quality of their work, their work is sometimes overshadowed by their tumultuous personalities, political outlooks and the many scandals that colored their lives. John Keats, relative to the other two major poets of his generation is generally only regarded for his work and his Odes in particular are regarded as among the finest examples of English language poetry in history, fulfilling his dream to be regarded as one of the great poets of the language, albeit posthumously…
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