Unpublished Letters
Letters of Fanny Brawne to Fanny Keats (1820-1824). Edited by Fred Edgeumbe. (Oxford University Press. 10s. 6c1.) Some Letters and Miscellanea of Charles Brown: Edited by Maurice Buxton Forman. (Oxford University Press. 7s. 6d.) Letters of Hartley Coleridge. Edited by Grace Evelyn Griggs and Earl Leslie Griggs. (Oxford University Press. 15s.) FANNY BRAWNE began writing letters to John Keats's sister,
who was under the control of her guardian, Mr. Abbey, alpon the poet's departure to Italy. It was a duty ; Miss Brawne was to " communicate any intelligence she may hear " of her lover. After his death the correspondence was continued quietly until Miss Keats came of age and obtained something like freedom ; some of the letters mention Valentine Maria Llanos y Guiterez, who married this young lady in 1826. Seven years later Fanny Brawne became Mrs. Lindon, and is supposed to have spoken in terms of some indifference about her former association with Keats.
The memorials now published will be variously interpreted, although the youthfulness of the recipient and other circum- stances must be allowed for. They are at all events honourable to Fanny Brawne, though I find less indication of true love in them than of assenting esteem, and sympathy, and regret. They fill out the notion of Fanny's character, and interests,
which has been passed on to us through so much controversy. Even so, her portrait lacks depth, and, if the period be borne in mind, her occasional comments on theatres, books, periodicals cannot be regarded as remarkable. The life she
leads appears to be humdrum, diversified with an occasional excursion to Hampton Court, a visit to the opera, a new. fashion. Mr. Edgeumbe, who is the curator of Keats House at Hampstead, and knows its history with a minuteness which would have astonished the former occupants, has edited these letters with enthusiasm yet with accuracy. A new portrait of Fanny Keats, in middle age, deserves mention among the illustrations.
In this field of " anything concerning Keats and his circle," Mr. M. Buxton Forman is a noted and skilful discoverer ; his
new volume is based on- Some' letters surviving from the correspondence of Charles Brown with Thomas Richards. In
his introductiOn he prints a fragmentary Valentine front Brown to Fanny Brsarne ; and some other specimens of Brown's verse, and prose articles, build up the book. But the letters are the main thing ; not solely because they occasionally provide a sentence or two about Keats and his friends, or some queer scandal about Shelley's first wife, or an opinion on Byron's meanness, but because Brown was something of a character. His prominent place in the life of Keats, and in Keats's writings, has proved that ; and his letters, odd in their point of view, their erudition, their sequences, retain some personal force. Perhaps Mr. Buxton Forman's book may have the secondary result of bringing to light some larger series of Brown's correspondence, especially that to Joseph Sevens ; it will all be active with his crude originality.
Thus far of letters which would scarcely claim attention now but for the connexion with John Keats : the third collection is in a different order. Hartley Coleridge, just as in verse he can appear quite happily among the illustrious, can write letters of the most delightful kind. Behind them, through them, of course, the strange story of his life exercises its attraction ; and the editors have succeeded in giving us the inner history of Hartley's Oxford tragedy with unpre- cedented and moving fullness. But Hartley needed no startling or distressing episodes in order that he might write imperishable letters ; his intellectual resources. his unquenched comedy, his intense honesty, his vitality, his noble ideals were a surer means. The majority of the letters now published were addressed to members of his family, and one of the charming elements in them is the private view of the older generation of great men, Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge. No one could have been more faithful to their greatness than Hartley, but his joyful recognition of their human anchorage is just as laudable.
Still, Hartley as a letter-writer can dispense with famous names, reflected literary glories ; he draws upon, and from, life., " There are said to be some women that should be seen by daylight, and some by candle-light. but Miss Harding's proper light is the Aurora Borealis. She seems like the essential form of an old maid, broke loose from the ',indus intelligibilis, the very entity and quiddity of Prudism. Her approach chills the' air like a floating lump of ice, stray'd into the temperate Zone. She would be worth a mint of money within the Tropics, but in our climate she's worse than nothing." From his window : " the rain pours sullenly and perseveringly, and -the grouird looks sodden, the lakes crop- full, the field sploshy, women with wretched babies at. their backs, one scarce able to walk, clinging to its Manunie's ragged pettycoat ; and two, -three, four others, the eldest not six years old, trailing after ; a bespattered chaise with all the glasses •up, horses like drow•n'd rats, and driver like the Weather itself; a lied of wind that shakes the black-spotted elm-leaves from their stalks, and drops them on the earth like blotting-paper." The whole book has this freshness of expe-
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