Half in love
Anthony Storr
The Life and Letters of John Kent; Joanna Richardson (The Folio Society pp. 176, £7.85) John Keats was born on 6 October 1795, and died of tuberculosis on 23 February 1821. He wrote his first poem when he was 18: his last was attempted only six years later. His tragically abbreviated life included the experience of a passionate love Which was never consummated. This is the stuff of high romance; and it is not surprising that the biographies of Keats are, as Joanna Richardson tells us, 'almost countless'.
Why, then, does she embark upon another, especially one so brief? Because her plan could hardly be bettered. By judicious selection from Keats's letters, she has, as far as is Possible, allowed him to tell his own story in his own words; and, as Keats was an incomparable letter writer, and Miss Richardson is an indefatigably experienced biographer, the result is a competent introduction to Keats's life. It is, however, surprising, that she has confined herself to the edition of the Letters by Forman, without reference to the later edition by Hyder Rollins in two volumes: and disappointing that she has not found space to quote from some of the most famous letters. Where, for example, is Keats's affirmation: 'I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination,' so revealing of his whole attitude to life?
Keats's childhood experience was unfortunate, and left its mark upon his character. His father was killed by a fall from his horse When Keats was eight. Within two months of the death, his mother re-married, disastrously. Her own father died shortly afterwards; and Keats's mother, believing that she had been shabbily treated, involved herself in litigation about his will with her own mother and brother, a circumstance not mentioned by Miss Richardson, but one which divided the family. The Keats children, by then amounting to four, of whom John was the eldest, were taken over by their maternal grandmother. The future poet was left with a sense of insecurity, a liability to depression, and a distrust of others which persisted. As he wrote himself: 'I have suspected every Body.'
In his early days at school, John Keats was a fighter rather than a bookworm. In 1809, however, he began to read with an avidity which won him a prize for translation. His mother, having left her husband, returned home and died in March 1810, having been devotedly cared for by the son she had earlier abandoned. Miss Richardson states, without qualification, that Keats left school in 1811, at the age of 15 and a half. There is evidence that his departure actually took place in the previous year. For five years, he was apprenticed to a surgeonapothecary called Hammond, and, in 1815, registered as a pupil at Guy's Hospital. In July 1816, he was licensed to practise by the Court of Apothecaries at Blackfriars; and, in the same year, decided to abandon medicine for poetry.
Keats first encountered Fanny Brawne towards the end of 1818, shortly before the death from tuberculosis of his younger brother Tom. Fanny was only 18, and young for her age. Although their mutual attraction seems to have been immediate, both Keats's letters and his behaviour indicate that he was ambivalent about becoming more deeply involved with her, let alone married. In July 1818, he had written to Bailey saying: 'I am certain I have not a right feeling toward Women — at this moment I am striving to be just to them but I cannot — Is it because they fall so far beneath my Boyish imagination?'
The distrust engendered by his mother's early betrayal seems to have left him with a characteristically double image of woman: the personification of an ideal beauty on the one hand, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' the other. Keats was not only fearful of being enmeshed in women's toils, but, like other creative artists, may have believed that fulfilment in love would be inimical to creativity. If his idealised image of woman was projected upon flesh and blood, it might no longer operate as inspiration. Moreover, like other extreme romantics, Keats was more than 'half in love with easeful Death.' In his letters to Fanny Brawne he perpetually reverts to his wish to die, and to the impossibility of their living together, whilst at the same time professing his passionate love for her: a terrible burden for an adolescent girl to carry. Sometimes Keats combines love and death in a way which anticipates Tristan. 'I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. 0 that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.'
In February 1820, Keats had his first haemoptysis. He recognised the blood he coughed up as arterial, and knew that it was his death warrant. He was more prescient than the doctors who attended him. Even allowing for the state of contemporary medicine, their inability to diagnose his condition correctly and their general ineptitude seem almost incredible. As death was approaching, Keats turned more and more to Fanny Brawne. He even conceived the notion that their failure to consummate their love was the cause of his illness. In his last letter to her, he gives full expression both to his suspicious jealousy and to his love. It says much for Fanny that, in spite of the cruel way in which he had treated her, she nursed him devotedly during the last month he spent in England. In September, he set sail for Italy in the vain hope that the climate might help him to recover. His doctor in Rome told him that there was very little the matter with his lungs, which, on post-mortem, were found to be almost completely destroyed. On 23 February 1821, after hideous suffering, he died in the arms of his friend Joseph Severn.
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