Byron May Clarissa Gillington
A Day with Keats
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh'd not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.
Yet Keats is young, and youth means buoyancy. With an effort – increasingly difficult – he is able to shake off this sombre fit for awhile; and he makes use of the simplest means to that end. "Whenever I feel vapourish," he has said, "I rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt; brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in fact adonize as if I were going out: then, all clean and comfortable, I sit down to write." These very prosaic methods adopted, he abandons himself to the full flood of inspiration, and lets his mind suffuse itself in antique glory. As Endymion, he receives the divine commands of the passionately bright Moon-Lady, as she stoops at last to bless him.
And as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swelled ample, in display
Full golden: in her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love.
Endymion.
Or, as Lycius, he succumbs to the serpentine grace of Lamia; or as Porphyro, hidden in the silence, watches Madeline at prayer.
A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.
Eve of St. Agnes.
But the inspiration does not well up to-day: its flow is frustrated, in view of the mountainous difficulties which hedge him in. Ill-health, stinted means, hopeless love, and continual lack of success – these are calculated to give the bravest pause. And presently Keats, snatching a few hurried mouthfuls of lunch, is off to the studio of his friend, the painter Haydon – the one man among all his acquaintance who is capable of really understanding him. He sits down morbid and silent in the painting room: for a while nothing will evoke a word from him, good or bad. But his keen interest in matters of art, and the entry of various friends one by one – Wentworth Dilke, Hamilton Reynolds, Bailey and Leigh Hunt – soon arouse him to animated conversation. Keats is shy and ill at ease in women's society: but a "delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry distinguishes his intercourse with men." He says fine things finely, jokes with ready humour, and at the mention of any oppression or wrong rises "into grave manliness at once, seeming like a tall man." No wonder that his society is much sought after, and himself greatly beloved by these congenial spirits; no wonder that here, at least, he meets with that appreciation of which elsewhere his genius has been starved. In this young fellow of twenty-three, who unites winning, affectionate ways, and habitual gentleness of manner, with the loftiest and most nobly-worded ideals, few would discover that imaginary "Johnny Keats, the apothecary's assistant," upon whom the Blackwood reviewer had lavished such vials of vituperation. He is here openly acknowledged as one of the "bards of passion and of mirth," and his poems are each accepted, as
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodies of truth,
Philosophic numbers smooth,
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries…
"No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveliness." (Matthew Arnold). But only these few friends of his are able to recognise that perfection. Outside their charmed circle, lies an obstinately unappreciative world.
The afternoon wears on, and the friends disperse. Keats, returning to Wentworth Place flushed with hectic exhilaration, finds a veritable douche of cold water awaiting him, in the shape of a letter from his publishers. They refer to his unlucky first volume of poems, brought out in 1817. "By far the greater number of persons who have purchased it from us," they say, "have found fault with it in such plain terms, that we have in many cases offered to take the book back, rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has time after time been showered upon it. In fact, it was only on Sunday last that we were under the mortification of having our own opinion of its merits flatly contradicted by a gentleman who told us that he considered it 'no better than a take-in.'"
For a few minutes the pendulum swings back to despair. A man whose whole business in life is the creation of the best work, who "never wrote a line of poetry with the least shadow of public thought," who believes that after his death he will be among the English poets, and that if he only has time now, he will make himself remembered – that such a one should be merely the butt and laughing-stock of his readers! It is an unendurable position. Not that Keats attaches undue importance to popular applause. "Praise or blame," he says, "has but a momentary effect upon the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works… In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure: for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
But what will Fanny think of such a letter? He falls to miserable meditation over the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune, and the constant erection of new obstacles in the course of his luckless love. And of Fanny's love he always has had a smouldering doubt: yet he remains her vassal, from the first, as he has told her – irrevocably her slave. He conceives himself an outcast on the wintry hillside, exiled from all his heart's desires.