In the pink
Sir : With reference to Mr Martin Seymour- Smith's review of the Cowden Clarke book (25 April), I wonder if, it -wou14, be of interest to give Keats's fascinating vignette of Coleridge whose conversation was, perhaps, the genesis of the 'Ode to a Nightingale.'
It is in his long journal letter to his brother and sister-in-law; and the day he met Coleridge -was Easter Sunday, 1819.
'Last Sunday I took a walk towards High- gate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park I met Mr Green our Demonstrator at Guy's in conversation with Coleridge—I joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be acceptable— I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for nearly two miles I suppose. In those two miles he broached a thousand things—let me see if I can give you a list—Nightingales, Poetry' and Keats names sixteen more subjects, including dreams, first and second conscious- ness, the Kraken and Southey's belief in mer- maids. He ends: 'A Gost story—Good morn- ing—I heard his voice as he came towards me— I heard it as he moved away—I had heard it all the interval—if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at High- gate.'
In the same letter is a reference to claret— Woodhouse ordering a bottle when they lunched iii a London coffee-house, which indicates this was a treat. Cowden Clarke may well have been right when he said Keats had never bought a bottle of claret, though he could not have known
this except from the conversation of others. Not everyone agrees with Mr Gittings's con- clusions about Keats.
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