[
  {
    "heading": "Letter I",
    "body": "Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Thursday.\n\n                               [_Postmark_, Newport, 3 July, 1819.]\n\n    My dearest Lady,\n\n    I am glad I had not an opportunity of sending off a Letter\n    which I wrote for you on Tuesday night—’twas too much like\n    one out of Rousseau’s Heloise. I am more reasonable this\n    morning. The morning is the only proper time for me to write\n    to a beautiful Girl whom I love so much: for at night, when\n    the lonely day has closed, and the lonely, silent, unmusical\n    Chamber is waiting to receive me as into a Sepulchre, then\n    believe me my passion gets entirely the sway, then I would\n    not have you see those Rhapsodies which I once thought it\n    impossible I should ever give way to, and which I have often\n    laughed at in another, for fear you should [think me[23]]\n    either too unhappy or perhaps a little mad. I am now at a\n    very pleasant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly\n    country, with a glimpse of the sea; the morning is very fine.\n    I do not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I\n    might have in living here and breathing and wandering as free\n    as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remembrance of you\n    did not weigh so upon me. I have never known any unalloy’d\n    Happiness for many days together: the death or sickness of some\n    one[24] has always spoilt my hours—and now when none such\n    troubles oppress me, it is you must confess very hard that\n    another sort of pain should haunt me. Ask yourself my love\n    whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so\n    destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you\n    must write immediately and do all you can to console me in\n    it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write\n    the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch\n    my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to\n    express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word\n    than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were\n    butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days\n    with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years\n    could ever contain. But however selfish I may feel, I am sure I\n    could never act selfishly: as I told you a day or two before I\n    left Hampstead, I will never return to London if my Fate does\n    not turn up Pam[25] or at least a Court-card. Though I could\n    centre my Happiness in you, I cannot expect to engross your\n    heart so entirely—indeed if I thought you felt as much for me\n    as I do for you at this moment I do not think I could restrain\n    myself from seeing you again tomorrow for the delight of one\n    embrace. But no—I must live upon hope and Chance. In case of\n    the worst that can happen, I shall still love you—but what\n    hatred shall I have for another! Some lines I read the other\n    day are continually ringing a peal in my ears:\n\n      To see those eyes I prize above mine own\n      Dart favors on another—\n      And those sweet lips (yielding immortal nectar)\n      Be gently press’d by any but myself—\n      Think, think Francesca, what a cursed thing\n      It were beyond expression!\n\n                                                                 J.\n\n    Do write immediately. There is no Post from this Place, so\n    you must address Post Office, Newport, Isle of Wight. I know\n    before night I shall curse myself for having sent you so cold\n    a Letter; yet it is better to do it as much in my senses as\n    possible. Be as kind as the distance will permit to your\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.\n\n    Present my Compliments to your mother, my love to Margaret[26]\n    and best remembrances to your Brother—if you please so.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter II",
    "body": "July 8th.\n\n                              [_Postmark_, Newport, 10 July, 1819.]\n\n    My sweet Girl,\n\n    Your Letter gave me more delight than any thing in the world\n    but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any\n    absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses\n    which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive\n    your influence and a tenderer nature stealing upon me. All my\n    thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights, have I find not at all\n    cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am\n    miserable that you are not with me: or rather breathe in that\n    dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. I never knew\n    before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did\n    not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, lest it should\n    burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be\n    some fire, ’twill not be more than we can bear when moistened\n    and bedewed with Pleasures. You mention ‘horrid people’ and\n    ask me whether it depend upon them whether I see you again.\n    Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in\n    my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm\n    befalling you. I would never see any thing but Pleasure in\n    your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps. I\n    would wish to see you among those amusements suitable to your\n    inclinations and spirits; so that our loves might be a delight\n    in the midst of Pleasures agreeable enough, rather than a\n    resource from vexations and cares. But I doubt much, in case\n    of the worst, whether I shall be philosopher enough to follow\n    my own Lessons: if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could\n    not. Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I\n    could never have lov’d you?—I cannot conceive any beginning\n    of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort\n    of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the\n    highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the\n    richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love\n    after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, though to\n    my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try\n    elsewhere its Power. You say you are afraid I shall think you\n    do not love me—in saying this you make me ache the more to be\n    near you. I am at the diligent use of my faculties here, I do\n    not pass a day without sprawling some blank verse or tagging\n    some rhymes; and here I must confess, that (since I am on that\n    subject) I love you the more in that I believe you have liked\n    me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women\n    whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to\n    be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, and only\n    wish it was a sign that poor Rice would get well whose illness\n    makes him rather a melancholy companion: and the more so as so\n    to conquer his feelings and hide them from me, with a forc’d\n    Pun. I kiss’d your writing over in the hope you had indulg’d me\n    by leaving a trace of honey. What was your dream? Tell it me\n    and I will tell you the interpretation thereof.\n\n                       Ever yours, my love!\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.\n\n    Do not accuse me of delay—we have not here an opportunity of\n    sending letters every day. Write speedily.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter III",
    "body": "Sunday Night.\n\n                                   [_Postmark_, 27 July, 1819.[27]]\n\n    My sweet Girl,\n\n    I hope you did not blame me much for not obeying your request\n    of a Letter on Saturday: we have had four in our small room\n    playing at cards night and morning leaving me no undisturb’d\n    opportunity to write. Now Rice and Martin are gone I am at\n    liberty. Brown to my sorrow confirms the account you give of\n    your ill health. You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you:\n    how I would die for one hour——for what is in the world? I say\n    you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with\n    such eyes upon me as I have upon you: it cannot be. Forgive\n    me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day\n    employ’d in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with\n    you—two things which must excuse me. I have, believe me, not\n    been an age in letting you take possession of me; the very\n    first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal; but burnt\n    the Letter as the very next time I saw you I thought you\n    manifested some dislike to me. If you should ever feel for Man\n    at the first sight what I did for you, I am lost. Yet I should\n    not quarrel with you, but hate myself if such a thing were to\n    happen—only I should burst if the thing were not as fine as\n    a Man as you are as a Woman. Perhaps I am too vehement, then\n    fancy me on my knees, especially when I mention a part of your\n    Letter which hurt me; you say speaking of Mr. Severn “but you\n    must be satisfied in knowing that I admired you much more\n    than your friend.” My dear love, I cannot believe there ever\n    was or ever could be any thing to admire in me especially as\n    far as sight goes—I cannot be admired, I am not a thing to be\n    admired. You are, I love you; all I can bring you is a swooning\n    admiration of your Beauty. I hold that place among Men which\n    snub-nos’d brunettes with meeting eyebrows do among women—they\n    are trash to me—unless I should find one among them with a\n    fire in her heart like the one that burns in mine. You absorb\n    me in spite of myself—you alone: for I look not forward with\n    any pleasure to what is call’d being settled in the world;\n    I tremble at domestic cares—yet for you I would meet them,\n    though if it would leave you the happier I would rather die\n    than do so. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks,\n    your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have\n    possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world:\n    it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I\n    could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it.\n    From no others would I take it. I am indeed astonish’d to find\n    myself so careless of all charms but yours—remembering as I do\n    the time when even a bit of ribband was a matter of interest\n    with me. What softer words can I find for you after this—what\n    it is I will not read. Nor will I say more here, but in a\n    Postscript answer any thing else you may have mentioned in your\n    Letter in so many words—for I am distracted with a thousand\n    thoughts. I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray\n    to your star like a Heathen.\n\n                      Your’s ever, fair Star,\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.\n\n    My seal is mark’d like a family table cloth with my Mother’s\n    initial F for Fanny:[28] put between my Father’s initials. You\n    will soon hear from me again. My respectful Compliments to your\n    Mother. Tell Margaret I’ll send her a reef of best rocks and\n    tell Sam[29] I will give him my light bay hunter if he will tie\n    the Bishop hand and foot and pack him in a hamper and send him\n    down for me to bathe him for his health with a Necklace of good\n    snubby stones about his Neck.[30]",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter IV",
    "body": "Shanklin, Thursday Night.\n\n                             [_Postmark,_ Newport, 9 August, 1819.]\n\n    My dear Girl,\n\n    You say you must not have any more such Letters as the last:\n    I’ll try that you shall not by running obstinate the other\n    way. Indeed I have not fair play—I am not idle enough for\n    proper downright love-letters—I leave this minute a scene in\n    our Tragedy[31] and see you (think it not blasphemy) through\n    the mist of Plots, speeches, counterplots and counterspeeches.\n    The Lover is madder than I am—I am nothing to him—he has a\n    figure like the Statue of Meleager and double distilled fire\n    in his heart. Thank God for my diligence! were it not for\n    that I should be miserable. I encourage it, and strive not to\n    think of you—but when I have succeeded in doing so all day and\n    as far as midnight, you return, as soon as this artificial\n    excitement goes off, more severely from the fever I am left\n    in. Upon my soul I cannot say what you could like me for. I\n    do not think myself a fright any more than I do Mr. A., Mr.\n    B., and Mr. C.—yet if I were a woman I should not like A. B.\n    C. But enough of this. So you intend to hold me to my promise\n    of seeing you in a short time. I shall keep it with as much\n    sorrow as gladness: for I am not one of the Paladins of old\n    who liv’d upon water grass and smiles for years together. What\n    though would I not give tonight for the gratification of my\n    eyes alone? This day week we shall move to Winchester; for I\n    feel the want of a Library.[32] Brown will leave me there to\n    pay a visit to Mr. Snook at Bedhampton: in his absence I will\n    flit to you and back. I will stay very little while, for as I\n    am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have\n    its course bad or good—in it I shall try my own strength and\n    the public pulse. At Winchester I shall get your Letters more\n    readily; and it being a cathedral City I shall have a pleasure\n    always a great one to me when near a Cathedral, of reading them\n    during the service up and down the Aisle.\n\n    _Friday Morning._—Just as I had written thus far last night,\n    Brown came down in his morning coat and nightcap, saying he\n    had been refresh’d by a good sleep and was very hungry. I left\n    him eating and went to bed, being too tired to enter into\n    any discussions. You would delight very greatly in the walks\n    about here; the Cliffs, woods, hills, sands, rocks &c. about\n    here. They are however not so fine but I shall give them a\n    hearty good bye to exchange them for my Cathedral.—Yet again\n    I am not so tired of Scenery as to hate Switzerland. We might\n    spend a pleasant year at Berne or Zurich—if it should please\n    Venus to hear my “Beseech thee to hear us O Goddess.” And\n    if she should hear, God forbid we should what people call,\n    _settle_—turn into a pond, a stagnant Lethe—a vile crescent,\n    row or buildings. Better be imprudent moveables than prudent\n    fixtures. Open my Mouth at the Street door like the Lion’s head\n    at Venice to receive hateful cards, letters, messages. Go out\n    and wither at tea parties; freeze at dinners; bake at dances;\n    simmer at routs. No my love, trust yourself to me and I will\n    find you nobler amusements, fortune favouring. I fear you will\n    not receive this till Sunday or Monday: as the Irishman would\n    write do not in the mean while hate me. I long to be off for\n    Winchester, for I begin to dislike the very door-posts here—the\n    names, the pebbles. You ask after my health, not telling me\n    whether you are better. I am quite well. You going out is no\n    proof that you are: how is it? Late hours will do you great\n    harm. What fairing is it? I was alone for a couple of days\n    while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient\n    knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man’s, yet\n    regretted his return—it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt.\n    I had got in a dream among my Books—really luxuriating in a\n    solitude and silence you alone should have disturb’d.\n\n                      Your ever affectionate\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter V",
    "body": "Winchester, August 17th.[33]\n\n                                     [_Postmark_, 16 August, 1819.]\n\n    My dear Girl—what shall I say for myself? I have been here\n    four days and not yet written you—’tis true I have had many\n    teasing letters of business to dismiss—and I have been in the\n    Claws, like a serpent in an Eagle’s, of the last act of our\n    Tragedy. This is no excuse; I know it; I do not presume to\n    offer it. I have no right either to ask a speedy answer to\n    let me know how lenient you are—I must remain some days in a\n    Mist—I see you through a Mist: as I daresay you do me by this\n    time. Believe in the first Letters I wrote you: I assure you I\n    felt as I wrote—I could not write so now. The thousand images I\n    have had pass through my brain—my uneasy spirits—my unguess’d\n    fate—all spread as a veil between me and you. Remember I have\n    had no idle leisure to brood over you—’tis well perhaps I\n    have not. I could not have endured the throng of jealousies\n    that used to haunt me before I had plunged so deeply into\n    imaginary interests. I would fain, as my sails are set, sail\n    on without an interruption for a Brace of Months longer—I am\n    in complete cue—in the fever; and shall in these four Months\n    do an immense deal. This Page as my eye skims over it I see is\n    excessively unloverlike and ungallant—I cannot help it—I am\n    no officer in yawning quarters; no Parson-Romeo. My Mind is\n    heap’d to the full; stuff’d like a cricket ball—if I strive to\n    fill it more it would burst. I know the generality of women\n    would hate me for this; that I should have so unsoften’d, so\n    hard a Mind as to forget them; forget the brightest realities\n    for the dull imaginations of my own Brain. But I conjure you\n    to give it a fair thinking; and ask yourself whether ’tis not\n    better to explain my feelings to you, than write artificial\n    Passion.—Besides, you would see through it. It would be vain\n    to strive to deceive you. ’Tis harsh, harsh, I know it. My\n    heart seems now made of iron—I could not write a proper answer\n    to an invitation to Idalia. You are my Judge: my forehead is\n    on the ground. You seem offended at a little simple innocent\n    childish playfulness in my last. I did not seriously mean to\n    say that you were endeavouring to make me keep my promise. I\n    beg your pardon for it. ’Tis but _just_ your Pride should\n    take the alarm—_seriously_. You say I may do as I please—I do\n    not think with any conscience I can; my cash resources are for\n    the present stopp’d; I fear for some time. I spend no money,\n    but it increases my debts. I have all my life thought very\n    little of these matters—they seem not to belong to me. It may\n    be a proud sentence; but by Heaven I am as entirely above all\n    matters of interest as the Sun is above the Earth—and though\n    of my own money I should be careless; of my Friends’ I must be\n    spare. You see how I go on—like so many strokes of a hammer.\n    I cannot help it—I am impell’d, driven to it. I am not happy\n    enough for silken Phrases, and silver sentences. I can no more\n    use soothing words to you than if I were at this moment engaged\n    in a charge of Cavalry. Then you will say I should not write at\n    all.—Should I not? This Winchester is a fine place: a beautiful\n    Cathedral and many other ancient buildings in the Environs.\n    The little coffin of a room at Shanklin is changed for a large\n    room, where I can promenade at my pleasure—looks out onto a\n    beautiful—blank side of a house. It is strange I should like it\n    better than the view of the sea from our window at Shanklin. I\n    began to hate the very posts there—the voice of the old Lady\n    over the way was getting a great Plague. The Fisherman’s face\n    never altered any more than our black teapot—the knob however\n    was knock’d off to my little relief. I am getting a great\n    dislike of the picturesque; and can only relish it over again\n    by seeing you enjoy it. One of the pleasantest things I have\n    seen lately was at Cowes. The Regent in his Yatch[34] (I think\n    they spell it) was anchored opposite—a beautiful vessel—and all\n    the Yatchs and boats on the coast were passing and repassing\n    it; and circuiting and tacking about it in every direction—I\n    never beheld anything so silent, light, and graceful.—As we\n    pass’d over to Southampton, there was nearly an accident.\n    There came by a Boat well mann’d, with two naval officers at\n    the stern. Our Bow-lines took the top of their little mast\n    and snapped it off close by the board. Had the mast been a\n    little stouter they would have been upset. In so trifling an\n    event I could not help admiring our seamen—neither officer nor\n    man in the whole Boat moved a muscle—they scarcely notic’d it\n    even with words. Forgive me for this flint-worded Letter, and\n    believe and see that I cannot think of you without some sort of\n    energy—though mal à propos. Even as I leave off it seems to me\n    that a few more moments’ thought of you would uncrystallize and\n    dissolve me. I must not give way to it—but turn to my writing\n    again—if I fail I shall die hard. O my love, your lips are\n    growing sweet again to my fancy—I must forget them. Ever your\n    affectionate\n\n                                                             KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter VI",
    "body": "Fleet Street,[35] Monday Morn.\n\n                  [_Postmark_, Lombard Street, 14 September, 1819.]\n\n    My dear Girl,\n\n    I have been hurried to town by a Letter from my brother George;\n    it is not of the brightest intelligence. Am I mad or not?\n    I came by the Friday night coach and have not yet been to\n    Hampstead. Upon my soul it is not my fault. I cannot resolve\n    to mix any pleasure with my days: they go one like another,\n    undistinguishable. If I were to see you today it would\n    destroy the half comfortable sullenness I enjoy at present\n    into downright perplexities. I love you too much to venture\n    to Hampstead, I feel it is not paying a visit, but venturing\n    into a fire. _Que feraije?_ as the French novel writers say\n    in fun, and I in earnest: really what can I do? Knowing well\n    that my life must be passed in fatigue and trouble, I have\n    been endeavouring to wean myself from you: for to myself alone\n    what can be much of a misery? As far as they regard myself\n    I can despise all events: but I cannot cease to love you.\n    This morning I scarcely know what I am doing. I am going to\n    Walthamstow. I shall return to Winchester tomorrow;[36] whence\n    you shall hear from me in a few days. I am a Coward, I cannot\n    bear the pain of being happy: ’tis out of the question: I must\n    admit no thought of it.\n\n                     Yours ever affectionately\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter VII",
    "body": "College Street.[37]\n\n                                    [_Postmark_, 11 October, 1819.]\n\n    My sweet Girl,\n\n    I am living today in yesterday: I was in a complete fascination\n    all day. I feel myself at your mercy. Write me ever so few\n    lines and tell me you will never for ever be less kind to\n    me than yesterday.—You dazzled me. There is nothing in the\n    world so bright and delicate. When Brown came out with that\n    seemingly true story against me last night, I felt it would\n    be death to me if you had ever believed it—though against any\n    one else I could muster up my obstinacy. Before I knew Brown\n    could disprove it I was for the moment miserable. When shall\n    we pass a day alone? I have had a thousand kisses, for which\n    with my whole soul I thank love—but if you should deny me the\n    thousand and first—’twould put me to the proof how great a\n    misery I could live through. If you should ever carry your\n    threat yesterday into execution—believe me ’tis not my pride,\n    my vanity or any petty passion would torment me—really ’twould\n    hurt my heart—I could not bear it. I have seen Mrs. Dilke this\n    morning; she says she will come with me any fine day.\n\n                            Ever yours\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.\n\n    Ah hertè mine!",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter VIII",
    "body": "25 College Street.\n\n                                    [_Postmark_, 13 October, 1819.]\n\n    My dearest Girl,\n\n    This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I\n    cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a\n    line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from\n    my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of\n    nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise\n    and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My\n    love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am\n    forgetful of everything but seeing you again—my Life seems to\n    stop there—I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a\n    sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I\n    should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing\n    you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My\n    sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I\n    have no limit now to my love.... Your note came in just here. I\n    cannot be happier away from you. ’Tis richer than an Argosy of\n    Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished\n    that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shudder’d at it.\n    I shudder no more—I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is\n    my religion—I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed\n    is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away\n    by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw\n    you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often\n    “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no\n    more—the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot\n    breathe without you.\n\n                          Yours for ever\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter IX",
    "body": "Great Smith Street, Tuesday Morn.\n\n                    [_Postmark_, College Street, 19 October, 1819.]\n\n    My sweet Fanny,\n\n    On awakening from my three days dream (“I cry to dream\n    again”) I find one and another astonish’d at my idleness and\n    thoughtlessness. I was miserable last night—the morning is\n    always restorative. I must be busy, or try to be so. I have\n    several things to speak to you of tomorrow morning. Mrs.\n    Dilke I should think will tell you that I purpose living at\n    Hampstead. I must impose chains upon myself. I shall be able to\n    do nothing. I should like to cast the die for Love or death. I\n    have no Patience with any thing else—if you ever intend to be\n    cruel to me as you say in jest now but perhaps may sometimes\n    be in earnest, be so now—and I will—my mind is in a tremble, I\n    cannot tell what I am writing.\n\n                        Ever my love yours\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.\n\n\n\n\nX TO XXXII.\n\nWENTWORTH PLACE.\n\n\n\n\nX—XXXII.\n\nWENTWORTH PLACE.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter X",
    "body": "Dearest Fanny, I shall send this the moment you return. They\n    say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The\n    consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of\n    the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:\n    this evening, without fail—when you must not mind about my\n    speaking in a low tone for I am ordered to do so though I _can_\n    speak out.\n\n                    Yours ever sweetest love.—\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.\n\n    turn over\n\n    Perhaps your Mother is not at home and so you must wait till\n    she comes. You must see me tonight and let me hear you promise\n    to come tomorrow.\n\n    Brown told me you were all out. I have been looking for the\n    stage the whole afternoon. Had I known this I could not have\n    remain’d so silent all day.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XI",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    If illness makes such an agreeable variety in the manner of\n    your eyes I should wish you sometimes to be ill. I wish I had\n    read your note before you went last night that I might have\n    assured you how far I was from suspecting any coldness. You\n    had a just right to be a little silent to one who speaks so\n    plainly to you. You must believe—you shall, you will—that I\n    can do nothing, say nothing, think nothing of you but what\n    has its spring in the Love which has so long been my pleasure\n    and torment. On the night I was taken ill—when so violent a\n    rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated—I\n    assure you I felt it possible I might not survive, and at that\n    moment thought of nothing but you. When I said to Brown “this\n    is unfortunate”[38] I thought of you. ’Tis true that since\n    the first two or three days other subjects have entered my\n    head.[39] I shall be looking forward to Health and the Spring\n    and a regular routine of our old Walks.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XII",
    "body": "My sweet love, I shall wait patiently till tomorrow before I\n    see you, and in the mean time, if there is any need of such\n    a thing, assure you by your Beauty, that whenever I have at\n    any time written on a certain unpleasant subject, it has been\n    with your welfare impress’d upon my mind. How hurt I should\n    have been had you ever acceded to what is, notwithstanding,\n    very reasonable! How much the more do I love you from the\n    general result! In my present state of Health I feel too much\n    separated from you and could almost speak to you in the words\n    of Lorenzo’s Ghost to Isabella\n\n      “Your Beauty grows upon me and I feel\n      A greater love through all my essence steal.”\n\n    My greatest torment since I have known you has been the\n    fear of you being a little inclined to the Cressid; but that\n    suspicion I dismiss utterly and remain happy in the surety of\n    your Love, which I assure you is as much a wonder to me as a\n    delight. Send me the words ‘Good night’ to put under my pillow.\n\n    Dearest Fanny,\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XIII",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    According to all appearances I am to be separated from you as\n    much as possible. How I shall be able to bear it, or whether\n    it will not be worse than your presence now and then, I cannot\n    tell. I must be patient, and in the mean time you must think\n    of it as little as possible. Let me not longer detain you from\n    going to Town—there may be no end to this imprisoning of you.\n    Perhaps you had better not come before tomorrow evening: send\n    me however without fail a good night.\n\n    You know our situation——what hope is there if I should be\n    recovered ever so soon—my very health will not suffer me to\n    make any great exertion. I am recommended not even to read\n    poetry, much less write it. I wish I had even a little hope.\n    I cannot say forget me—but I would mention that there are\n    impossibilities in the world. No more of this. I am not strong\n    enough to be weaned—take no notice of it in your good night.\n\n    Happen what may I shall ever be my dearest Love\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XIV",
    "body": "My dearest Girl, how could it ever have been my wish to forget\n    you? how could I have said such a thing? The utmost stretch my\n    mind has been capable of was to endeavour to forget you for\n    your own sake seeing what a chance there was of my remaining\n    in a precarious state of health. I would have borne it as I\n    would bear death if fate was in that humour: but I should as\n    soon think of choosing to die as to part from you. Believe too\n    my Love that our friends think and speak for the best, and\n    if their best is not our best it is not their fault. When I\n    am better I will speak with you at large on these subjects,\n    if there is any occasion—I think there is none. I am rather\n    nervous today perhaps from being a little recovered and\n    suffering my mind to take little excursions beyond the doors\n    and windows. I take it for a good sign, but as it must not be\n    encouraged you had better delay seeing me till tomorrow. Do not\n    take the trouble of writing much: merely send me my good night.\n\n    Remember me to your Mother and Margaret.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XV",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    Then all we have to do is to be patient. Whatever violence I\n    may sometimes do myself by hinting at what would appear to any\n    one but ourselves a matter of necessity, I do not think I could\n    bear any approach of a thought of losing you. I slept well last\n    night, but cannot say that I improve very fast. I shall expect\n    you tomorrow, for it is certainly better that I should see you\n    seldom. Let me have your good night.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XVI",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    I read your note in bed last night, and that might be the\n    reason of my sleeping so much better. I think Mr Brown[40]\n    is right in supposing you may stop too long with me, so very\n    nervous as I am. Send me every evening a written Good night. If\n    you come for a few minutes about six it may be the best time.\n    Should you ever fancy me too low-spirited I must warn you to\n    ascribe it to the medicine I am at present taking which is of\n    a nerve-shaking nature. I shall impute any depression I may\n    experience to this cause. I have been writing with a vile old\n    pen the whole week, which is excessively ungallant. The fault\n    is in the Quill: I have mended it and still it is very much\n    inclin’d to make blind es. However these last lines are in a\n    much better style of penmanship, tho’ a little disfigured by\n    the smear of black currant jelly; which has made a little mark\n    on one of the pages of Brown’s Ben Jonson, the very best book\n    he has. I have lick’d it but it remains very purple. I did not\n    know whether to say purple or blue so in the mixture of the\n    thought wrote purplue which may be an excellent name for a\n    colour made up of those two, and would suit well to start next\n    spring. Be very careful of open doors and windows and going\n    without your duffle grey. God bless you Love!\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.\n\n    P.S. I am sitting in the back room. Remember me to your Mother.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XVII",
    "body": "My dear Fanny,\n\n    Do not let your mother suppose that you hurt me by writing at\n    night. For some reason or other your last night’s note was not\n    so treasureable as former ones. I would fain that you call me\n    _Love_ still. To see you happy and in high spirits is a great\n    consolation to me—still let me believe that you are not half\n    so happy as my restoration would make you. I am nervous, I\n    own, and may think myself worse than I really am; if so you\n    must indulge me, and pamper with that sort of tenderness you\n    have manifested towards me in different Letters. My sweet\n    creature when I look back upon the pains and torments I have\n    suffer’d for you from the day I left you to go to the Isle of\n    Wight; the ecstasies in which I have pass’d some days and the\n    miseries in their turn, I wonder the more at the Beauty which\n    has kept up the spell so fervently. When I send this round I\n    shall be in the front parlour watching to see you show yourself\n    for a minute in the garden. How illness stands as a barrier\n    betwixt me and you! Even if I was well——I must make myself as\n    good a Philosopher as possible. Now I have had opportunities of\n    passing nights anxious and awake I have found other thoughts\n    intrude upon me. “If I should die,” said I to myself, “I have\n    left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends\n    proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty\n    in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself\n    remember’d.” Thoughts like these came very feebly whilst I\n    was in health and every pulse beat for you—now you divide with\n    this (may _I_ say it?) “last infirmity of noble minds” all my\n    reflection.\n\n                       God bless you, Love.\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XVIII",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    You spoke of having been unwell in your last note: have you\n    recover’d? That note has been a great delight to me. I am\n    stronger than I was: the Doctors say there is very little the\n    matter with me, but I cannot believe them till the weight and\n    tightness of my Chest is mitigated. I will not indulge or pain\n    myself by complaining of my long separation from you. God alone\n    knows whether I am destined to taste of happiness with you: at\n    all events I myself know thus much, that I consider it no mean\n    Happiness to have lov’d you thus far—if it is to be no further\n    I shall not be unthankful—if I am to recover, the day of my\n    recovery shall see me by your side from which nothing shall\n    separate me. If well you are the only medicine that can keep me\n    so. Perhaps, aye surely, I am writing in too depress’d a state\n    of mind—ask your Mother to come and see me—she will bring you a\n    better account than mine.\n\n                      Ever your affectionate\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XIX",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    Indeed I will not deceive you with respect to my Health. This\n    is the fact as far as I know. I have been confined three\n    weeks[41] and am not yet well—this proves that there is\n    something wrong about me which my constitution will either\n    conquer or give way to. Let us hope for the best. Do you hear\n    the Thrush singing over the field? I think it is a sign of mild\n    weather—so much the better for me. Like all Sinners now I am\n    ill I philosophize, aye out of my attachment to every thing,\n    Trees, Flowers, Thrushes, Spring, Summer, Claret, &c. &c.—aye\n    every thing but you.—My sister would be glad of my company a\n    little longer. That Thrush is a fine fellow. I hope he was\n    fortunate in his choice this year. Do not send any more of\n    my Books home. I have a great pleasure in the thought of you\n    looking on them.\n\n                     Ever yours my sweet Fanny\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XX",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    I continue much the same as usual, I think a little better. My\n    spirits are better also, and consequently I am more resign’d to\n    my confinement. I dare not think of you much or write much to\n    you. Remember me to all.\n\n                      Ever your affectionate\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXI",
    "body": "My dear Fanny,\n\n    I think you had better not make any long stay with me when Mr.\n    Brown is at home. Whenever he goes out you may bring your work.\n    You will have a pleasant walk today. I shall see you pass. I\n    shall follow you with my eyes over the Heath. Will you come\n    towards evening instead of before dinner? When you are gone,\n    ’tis past—if you do not come till the evening I have something\n    to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a\n    moment when you have read this. Thank your Mother, for the\n    preserves, for me. The raspberry will be too sweet not having\n    any acid; therefore as you are so good a girl I shall make you\n    a present of it. Good bye\n\n                          My sweet Love!\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXII",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    The power of your benediction is of not so weak a nature as\n    to pass from the ring in four and twenty hours—it is like a\n    sacred Chalice once consecrated and ever consecrate. I shall\n    kiss your name and mine where your Lips have been—Lips! why\n    should a poor prisoner as I am talk about such things? Thank\n    God, though I hold them the dearest pleasures in the universe,\n    I have a consolation independent of them in the certainty\n    of your affection. I could write a song in the style of Tom\n    Moore’s Pathetic about Memory if that would be any relief to\n    me. No—’twould not. I will be as obstinate as a Robin, I will\n    not sing in a cage. Health is my expected heaven and you are\n    the Houri——this word I believe is both singular and plural—if\n    only plural, never mind—you are a thousand of them.\n\n               Ever yours affectionately my dearest,\n\n                                                              J. K.\n\n    You had better not come to day.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXIII",
    "body": "My dearest Love,\n\n    You must not stop so long in the cold—I have been suspecting\n    that window to be open.—Your note half-cured me. When I want\n    some more oranges I will tell you—these are just à propos. I am\n    kept from food so feel rather weak—otherwise very well. Pray do\n    not stop so long upstairs—it makes me uneasy—come every now and\n    then and stop a half minute. Remember me to your Mother.\n\n                      Your ever affectionate\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXIV",
    "body": "Sweetest Fanny,\n\n    You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish? My\n    dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The\n    more I have known the more have I lov’d. In every way—even\n    my jealousies have been agonies of Love, in the hottest fit\n    I ever had I would have died for you. I have vex’d you too\n    much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The\n    last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the\n    brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d\n    my window home yesterday, I was fill’d with as much admiration\n    as if I had then seen you for the first time. You uttered\n    a half complaint once that I only lov’d your beauty. Have I\n    nothing else then to love in you but that? Do not I see a heart\n    naturally furnish’d with wings imprison itself with me? No ill\n    prospect has been able to turn your thoughts a moment from me.\n    This perhaps should be as much a subject of sorrow as joy—but I\n    will not talk of that. Even if you did not love me I could not\n    help an entire devotion to you: how much more deeply then must\n    I feel for you knowing you love me. My Mind has been the most\n    discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too\n    small for it. I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with\n    complete and undistracted enjoyment—upon no person but you.\n    When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window:\n    you always concentrate my whole senses. The anxiety shown about\n    our Loves in your last note is an immense pleasure to me:\n    however you must not suffer such speculations to molest you any\n    more: nor will I any more believe you can have the least pique\n    against me. Brown is gone out—but here is Mrs. Wylie[42]—when\n    she is gone I shall be awake for you.—Remembrances to your\n    Mother.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXV",
    "body": "My dear Fanny,\n\n    I am much better this morning than I was a week ago: indeed I\n    improve a little every day. I rely upon taking a walk with you\n    upon the first of May: in the mean time undergoing a babylonish\n    captivity I shall not be jew enough to hang up my harp upon\n    a willow, but rather endeavour to clear up my arrears in\n    versifying, and with returning health begin upon something new:\n    pursuant to which resolution it will be necessary to have my or\n    rather Taylor’s manuscript,[43] which you, if you please, will\n    send by my Messenger either today or tomorrow. Is Mr. D.[44]\n    with you today? You appeared very much fatigued last night: you\n    must look a little brighter this morning. I shall not suffer\n    my little girl ever to be obscured like glass breath’d upon,\n    but always bright as it is her _nature to_. Feeding upon sham\n    victuals and sitting by the fire will completely annul me. I\n    have no need of an enchanted wax figure to duplicate me, for\n    I am melting in my proper person before the fire. If you meet\n    with anything better (worse) than common in your Magazines let\n    me see it.\n\n                    Good bye my sweetest Girl.\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXVI",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny, whenever you know me to be alone, come, no\n    matter what day. Why will you go out this weather? I shall\n    not fatigue myself with writing too much I promise you. Brown\n    says I am getting stouter.[45] I rest well and from last\n    night do not remember any thing horrid in my dream, which is a\n    capital symptom, for any organic derangement always occasions a\n    Phantasmagoria. It will be a nice idle amusement to hunt after\n    a motto for my Book which I will have if lucky enough to hit\n    upon a fit one—not intending to write a preface. I fear I am\n    too late with my note—you are gone out—you will be as cold as a\n    topsail in a north latitude—I advise you to furl yourself and\n    come in a doors.\n\n                          Good bye Love.\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXVII",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny, I slept well last night and am no worse this\n    morning for it. Day by day if I am not deceived I get a more\n    unrestrain’d use of my Chest. The nearer a racer gets to the\n    Goal the more his anxiety becomes; so I lingering upon the\n    borders of health feel my impatience increase. Perhaps on your\n    account I have imagined my illness more serious than it is:\n    how horrid was the chance of slipping into the ground instead\n    of into your arms—the difference is amazing Love. Death must\n    come at last; Man must die, as Shallow says; but before that\n    is my fate I fain would try what more pleasures than you have\n    given, so sweet a creature as you can give. Let me have another\n    opportunity of years before me and I will not die without\n    being remember’d. Take care of yourself dear that we may both\n    be well in the Summer. I do not at all fatigue myself with\n    writing, having merely to put a line or two here and there, a\n    Task which would worry a stout state of the body and mind, but\n    which just suits me as I can do no more.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration]\n\n[Illustration]",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXVIII",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    I had a better night last night than I have had since my\n    attack, and this morning I am the same as when you saw me. I\n    have been turning over two volumes of Letters written between\n    Rousseau and two Ladies in the perplexed strain of mingled\n    finesse and sentiment in which the Ladies and gentlemen of\n    those days were so clever, and which is still prevalent among\n    Ladies of this Country who live in a state of reasoning\n    romance. The likeness however only extends to the mannerism,\n    not to the dexterity. What would Rousseau have said at seeing\n    our little correspondence! What would his Ladies have said!\n    I don’t care much—I would sooner have Shakspeare’s opinion\n    about the matter. The common gossiping of washerwomen must be\n    less disgusting than the continual and eternal fence and attack\n    of Rousseau and these sublime Petticoats. One calls herself\n    Clara and her friend Julia, two of Rousseau’s heroines—they all\n    [_sic_, but qy. _at_] the same time christen poor Jean Jacques\n    St. Preux—who is the pure cavalier of his famous novel. Thank\n    God I am born in England with our own great Men before my eyes.\n    Thank God that you are fair and can love me without being\n    Letter-written and sentimentaliz’d into it.—Mr. Barry Cornwall\n    has sent me another Book, his first, with a polite note.[46] I\n    must do what I can to make him sensible of the esteem I have\n    for his kindness. If this north east would take a turn it would\n    be so much the better for me. Good bye, my love, my dear love,\n    my beauty—\n\n                         love me for ever.\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXIX",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    Though I shall see you in so short a time I cannot forbear\n    sending you a few lines. You say I did not give you yesterday a\n    minute account of my health. Today I have left off the Medicine\n    which I took to keep the pulse down and I find I can do very\n    well without it, which is a very favourable sign, as it shows\n    there is no inflammation remaining. You think I may be wearied\n    at night you say: it is my best time; I am at my best about\n    eight o’Clock. I received a Note from Mr. Procter[47] today.\n    He says he cannot pay me a visit this weather as he is fearful\n    of an inflammation in the Chest. What a horrid climate this\n    is? or what careless inhabitants it has? You are one of them.\n    My dear girl do not make a joke of it: do not expose yourself\n    to the cold. There’s the Thrush again—I can’t afford it—he’ll\n    run me up a pretty Bill for Music—besides he ought to know I\n    deal at Clementi’s. How can you bear so long an imprisonment at\n    Hampstead? I shall always remember it with all the gusto that a\n    monopolizing carle should. I could build an Altar to you for it.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXX",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    As, from the last part of my note you must see how gratified I\n    have been by your remaining at home, you might perhaps conceive\n    that I was equally bias’d the other way by your going to Town,\n    I cannot be easy tonight without telling you you would be\n    wrong to suppose so. Though I am pleased with the one, I am\n    not displeased with the other. How do I dare to write in this\n    manner about my pleasures and displeasures? I will tho’ whilst\n    I am an invalid, in spite of you. Good night, Love!\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXI",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    In consequence of our company I suppose I shall not see you\n    before tomorrow. I am much better today—indeed all I have to\n    complain of is want of strength and a little tightness in the\n    Chest. I envied Sam’s walk with you today; which I will not do\n    again as I may get very tired of envying. I imagine you now\n    sitting in your new black dress which I like so much and if\n    I were a little less selfish and more enthusiastic I should\n    run round and surprise you with a knock at the door. I fear\n    I am too prudent for a dying kind of Lover. Yet, there is a\n    great difference between going off in warm blood like Romeo,\n    and making one’s exit like a frog in a frost. I had nothing\n    particular to say today, but not intending that there shall be\n    any interruption to our correspondence (which at some future\n    time I propose offering to Murray) I write something. God bless\n    you my sweet Love! Illness is a long lane, but I see you at the\n    end of it, and shall mend my pace as well as possible.\n\n                                                              J. K.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXII",
    "body": "Dear Girl,\n\n    Yesterday you must have thought me worse than I really was. I\n    assure you there was nothing but regret at being obliged to\n    forego an embrace which has so many times been the highest\n    gust of my Life. I would not care for health without it. Sam\n    would not come in—I wanted merely to ask him how you were\n    this morning. When one is not quite well we turn for relief\n    to those we love: this is no weakness of spirit in me: you\n    know when in health I thought of nothing but you; when I shall\n    again be so it will be the same. Brown has been mentioning\n    to me that some hint from Sam, last night, occasions him\n    some uneasiness. He whispered something to you concerning\n    Brown and old Mr. Dilke[48] which had the complexion of being\n    something derogatory to the former. It was connected with\n    an anxiety about Mr. D. Sr’s death and an anxiety to set\n    out for Chichester. These sort of hints point out their own\n    solution: one cannot pretend to a delicate ignorance on the\n    subject: you understand the whole matter. If any one, my sweet\n    Love, has misrepresented, to you, to your Mother or Sam, any\n    circumstances which are at all likely, at a tenth remove, to\n    create suspicions among people who from their own interested\n    notions slander others, pray tell me: for I feel the least\n    attaint on the disinterested character of Brown very deeply.\n    Perhaps Reynolds or some other of my friends may come towards\n    evening, therefore you may choose whether you will come to see\n    me early today before or after dinner as you may think fit.\n    Remember me to your Mother and tell her to drag you to me if\n    you show the least reluctance—\n\n    ...\n\n\n\n\nXXXIII to XXXVII.\n\nKENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.\n\n\n\n\nXXXIII-XXXVII.\n\nKENTISH TOWN—PREPARING FOR ITALY.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXIII",
    "body": "My dearest Girl,\n\n    I endeavour to make myself as patient as possible. Hunt amuses\n    me very kindly—besides I have your ring on my finger and your\n    flowers on the table. I shall not expect to see you yet because\n    it would be so much pain to part with you again. When the\n    Books you want come you shall have them. I am very well this\n    afternoon. My dearest ...\n\n                                           [Signature cut off.[49]]",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXIV",
    "body": "Tuesday Afternoon.\n\n    My dearest Fanny,\n\n    For this Week past I have been employed in marking the most\n    beautiful passages in Spenser, intending it for you, and\n    comforting myself in being somehow occupied to give you however\n    small a pleasure. It has lightened my time very much. I am much\n    better. God bless you.\n\n                         Your affectionate\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXV",
    "body": "Wednesday Morning.\n\n    My dearest Fanny,\n\n    I have been a walk this morning with a book in my hand, but as\n    usual I have been occupied with nothing but you: I wish I could\n    say in an agreeable manner. I am tormented day and night. They\n    talk of my going to Italy. ’Tis certain I shall never recover\n    if I am to be so long separate from you: yet with all this\n    devotion to you I cannot persuade myself into any confidence\n    of you. Past experience connected with the fact of my long\n    separation from you gives me agonies which are scarcely to be\n    talked of. When your mother comes I shall be very sudden and\n    expert in asking her whether you have been to Mrs. Dilke’s, for\n    she might say no to make me easy. I am literally worn to death,\n    which seems my only recourse. I cannot forget what has pass’d.\n    What? nothing with a man of the world, but to me deathful. I\n    will get rid of this as much as possible. When you were in the\n    habit of flirting with Brown you would have left off, could\n    your own heart have felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown\n    is a good sort of Man—he did not know he was doing me to death\n    by inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in\n    my side now; and for that cause, though he has done me many\n    services, though I know his love and friendship for me, though\n    at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his\n    assistance, I will never see or speak to him[50] until we are\n    both old men, if we are to be. I _will_ resent my heart having\n    been made a football. You will call this madness. I have heard\n    you say that it was not unpleasant to wait a few years—you have\n    amusements—your mind is away—you have not brooded over one\n    idea as I have, and how should you? You are to me an object\n    intensely desirable—the air I breathe in a room empty of you is\n    unhealthy. I am not the same to you—no—you can wait—you have a\n    thousand activities—you can be happy without me. Any party, any\n    thing to fill up the day has been enough. How have you pass’d\n    this month?[51] Who have you smil’d with? All this may seem\n    savage in me. You do not feel as I do—you do not know what it\n    is to love—one day you may—your time is not come. Ask yourself\n    how many unhappy hours Keats has caused you in Loneliness. For\n    myself I have been a Martyr the whole time, and for this reason\n    I speak; the confession is forc’d from me by the torture. I\n    appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in: Do\n    not write to me if you have done anything this month which it\n    would have pained me to have seen. You may have altered—if\n    you have not—if you still behave in dancing rooms and other\n    societies as I have seen you—I do not want to live—if you have\n    done so I wish this coming night may be my last. I cannot live\n    without you, and not only you but _chaste you_; _virtuous you_.\n    The Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and you follow the bent\n    of your inclination to a certain extent—you have no conception\n    of the quantity of miserable feeling that passes through me in\n    a day.—Be serious! Love is not a plaything—and again do not\n    write unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. I would\n    sooner die for want of you than——\n\n                          Yours for ever\n\n                                                          J. KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXVI",
    "body": "My dearest Fanny,\n\n    My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce know what I\n    shall say though I am full of a hundred things. ’Tis certain I\n    would rather be writing to you this morning, notwithstanding\n    the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than enjoy any other\n    pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with you. Upon my\n    soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you could know the\n    Tenderness with which I continually brood over your different\n    aspects of countenance, action and dress. I see you come down\n    in the morning: I see you meet me at the Window—I see every\n    thing over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I get\n    on the pleasant clue I live in a sort of happy misery, if\n    on the unpleasant ’tis miserable misery. You complain of my\n    illtreating you in word, thought and deed—I am sorry,—at times\n    I feel bitterly sorry that I ever made you unhappy—my excuse\n    is that those words have been wrung from me by the sharpness\n    of my feelings. At all events and in any case I have been\n    wrong; could I believe that I did it without any cause, I\n    should be the most sincere of Penitents. I could give way to\n    my repentant feelings now, I could recant all my suspicions,\n    I could mingle with you heart and Soul though absent, were\n    it not for some parts of your Letters. Do you suppose it\n    possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think of\n    myself and what of you. You know that I should feel how much\n    it was my loss and how little yours. My friends laugh at you!\n    I know some of them—when I know them all I shall never think\n    of them again as friends or even acquaintance. My friends\n    have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and there\n    they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct:\n    spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with any\n    body’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care\n    not to see any of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be\n    the Friend of idle Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our\n    Loves should be so put into the microscope of a Coterie. Their\n    laughs should not affect you (I may perhaps give you reasons\n    some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate\n    me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have pretended a\n    great friendship for me) when in competition with one, who if\n    he never should see you again would make you the Saint of his\n    memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for\n    your Beauty, who would have God-bless’d me from you for ever:\n    who were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you\n    eternally. People are revengful—do not mind them—do nothing\n    but love me—if I knew that for certain life and health will in\n    such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less painful.\n    I long to believe in immortality. I shall never be able to\n    bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with\n    you here—how short is the longest Life. I wish to believe in\n    immortality[52]—I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let\n    my name ever pass between you and those laughers; if I have no\n    other merit than the great Love for you, that were sufficient\n    to keep me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have\n    been cruel and unjust I swear my love has ever been greater\n    than my cruelty which last [_sic_] but a minute whereas my Love\n    come what will shall last for ever. If concession to me has\n    hurt your Pride God knows I have had little pride in my heart\n    when thinking of you. Your name never passes my Lips—do not let\n    mine pass yours. Those People do not like me. After reading\n    my Letter you even then wish to see me. I am strong enough to\n    walk over—but I dare not. I shall feel so much pain in parting\n    with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to see you; I am\n    strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever\n    round you again, and if so shall I be obliged to leave you\n    again? My sweet Love! I am happy whilst I believe your first\n    Letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul,\n    and I could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If\n    you think me cruel—if you think I have sleighted you—do muse it\n    over again and see into my heart. My love to you is “true as\n    truth’s simplicity and simpler than the infancy of truth” as I\n    think I once said before. How could I sleight you? How threaten\n    to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you—no—but in\n    the spirit of Wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious,\n    my angel Fanny! do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will\n    be as patient in illness and as believing in Love as I am able.\n\n                     Yours for ever my dearest\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter XXXVII",
    "body": "I do not write this till the last,\n                                 that no eye may catch it.[53]\n\n    My dearest Girl,\n\n    I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy\n    without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in\n    you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it\n    almost impossible to go to Italy—the fact is I cannot leave\n    you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it\n    pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will\n    not go on at this rate. A person in health as you are can have\n    no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine\n    go through. What Island do your friends propose retiring to?\n    I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company\n    I should object to it; the backbitings and jealousies of\n    new colonists who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is\n    unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a\n    very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able\n    any more to endure the society of any of those who used to meet\n    at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste\n    like brass upon my Palate. If I cannot live with you I will\n    live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I\n    am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you—I\n    cannot bear flashes of light and return into my gloom again.\n    I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you\n    yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility! it\n    requires a luckier Star than mine! it will never be. I enclose\n    a passage from one of your letters which I want you to alter\n    a little—I want (if you will have it so) the matter express’d\n    less coldly to me. If my health would bear it, I could write\n    a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation\n    for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one\n    in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you\n    do. Shakespeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign\n    manner. Hamlet’s heart was full of such Misery as mine is when\n    he said to Ophelia “Go to a Nunnery, go, go!” Indeed I should\n    like to give up the matter at once—I should like to die. I\n    am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I\n    hate men, and women more. I see nothing but thorns for the\n    future—wherever I may be next winter, in Italy or nowhere,\n    Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no\n    prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome—well, I should there\n    see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all\n    hours,——I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human\n    nature into my heart. I cannot muster any—the world is too\n    brutal for me—I am glad there is such a thing as the grave—I am\n    sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate\n    I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown\n    or any of their Friends. I wish I was either in your arms full\n    of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.\n\n                          God bless you.\n\n                                                              J. K.\n\n\n\n\nADDITIONAL LETTERS.\n\n\n\n\nADDITIONAL LETTERS.\n\n\nII _bis_.\n\n                                                           Shanklin\n\n                                                   Thursday Evening\n\n                                                [15 July 1819?[54]]\n\n    My love,\n\n    I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or\n    three last days, that I did not think I should be able to\n    write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as only\n    to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To night I am\n    greatly recovered only to feel the languor I have felt after\n    you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps might have made\n    me better: you would then have made me worse: now you could\n    quite effect a cure: What fee my sweet Physician would I not\n    give you to do so. Do not call it folly, when I tell you I took\n    your letter last night to bed with me. In the morning I found\n    your name on the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the\n    bad omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my\n    dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You must have\n    found out by this time I am a little given to bode ill like\n    the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; it has proceeded\n    from the general tenor of the circumstances of my life, and\n    rendered every event suspicious. However I will no more trouble\n    either you or myself with sad prophecies; though so far I am\n    pleased at it as it has given me opportunity to love your\n    disinterestedness towards me. I can be a raven no more; you\n    and pleasure take possession of me at the same moment. I am\n    afraid you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched\n    you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be selfish\n    enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive me this? I\n    have been reading lately an oriental tale of a very beautiful\n    color[55]—It is of a city of melancholy men, all made so by\n    this circumstance. Through a series of adventures each one of\n    them by turns reach some gardens of Paradise where they meet\n    with a most enchanting Lady; and just as they are going to\n    embrace her, she bids them shut their eyes—they shut them—and\n    on opening their eyes again find themselves descending to the\n    earth in a magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their\n    delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy ever\n    after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I palpitated\n    at it; how the certainty that you were in the same world with\n    myself, and though as beautiful, not so talismanic as that\n    Lady; how I could not bear you should be so you must believe\n    because I swear it by yourself. I cannot say when I shall get\n    a volume ready. I have three or four stories half done, but as\n    I cannot write for the mere sake of the press, I am obliged\n    to let them progress or lie still as my fancy chooses. By\n    Christmas perhaps they may appear,[56] but I am not yet sure\n    they ever will. ’Twill be no matter, for Poems are as common\n    as newspapers and I do not see why it is a greater crime in\n    me than in another to let the verses of an half-fledged brain\n    tumble into the reading-rooms and drawing-room windows. Rice\n    has been better lately than usual: he is not suffering from\n    any neglect of his parents who have for some years been able\n    to appreciate him better than they did in his first youth, and\n    are now devoted to his comfort. Tomorrow I shall, if my health\n    continues to improve during the night, take a look fa[r]ther\n    about the country, and spy at the parties about here who come\n    hunting after the picturesque like beagles. It is astonishing\n    how they raven down scenery like children do sweetmeats. The\n    wondrous Chine here is a very great Lion: I wish I had as many\n    guineas as there have been spy-glasses in it. I have been,\n    I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What\n    reason? When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely\n    room, without the thought as I fall asleep, of seeing you\n    tomorrow morning? or the next day, or the next—it takes on the\n    appearance of impossibility and eternity—I will say a month—I\n    will say I will see you in a month at most, though no one but\n    yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour. I should not\n    like to be so near you as London without being continually with\n    you: after having once more kissed you Sweet I would rather be\n    here alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary\n    chitchat. Meantime you must write to me—as I will every\n    week—for your letters keep me alive. My sweet Girl I cannot\n    speak my love for you. Good night! and\n\n                            Ever yours\n\n                                                        JOHN KEATS.\n\n\nXXXIV _bis_.\n\n                                                      Tuesday Morn.\n\n    My dearest Girl,\n\n    I wrote a letter[57] for you yesterday expecting to have seen\n    your mother. I shall be selfish enough to send it though I know\n    it may give you a little pain, because I wish you to see how\n    unhappy I am for love of you, and endeavour as much as I can\n    to entice you to give up your whole heart to me whose whole\n    existence hangs upon you. You could not step or move an eyelid\n    but it would shoot to my heart—I am greedy of you. Do not think\n    of anything but me. Do not live as if I was not existing. Do\n    not forget me—But have I any right to say you forget me?\n    Perhaps you think of me all day. Have I any right to wish you\n    to be unhappy for me? You would forgive me for wishing it if\n    you knew the extreme passion I have that you should love me—and\n    for you to love me as I do you, you must think of no one but\n    me, much less write that sentence. Yesterday and this morning I\n    have been haunted with a sweet vision—I have seen you the whole\n    time in your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at\n    it! How my heart has been devoted to it! How my eyes have been\n    full of tears at it! I[n]deed I think a real love is enough\n    to occupy the widest heart. Your going to town alone when I\n    heard of it was a shock to me—yet I expected it—_promise me\n    you will not for some time till I get better_. Promise me this\n    and fill the paper full of the most endearing names. If you\n    cannot do so with good will, do my love tell me—say what you\n    think—confess if your heart is too much fasten’d on the world.\n    Perhaps then I may see you at a greater distance, I may not be\n    able to appropriate you so closely to myself. Were you to loose\n    a favourite bird from the cage, how would your eyes ache after\n    it as long as it was in sight; when out of sight you would\n    recover a little. Perhaps if you would, if so it is, confess to\n    me how many things are necessary to you besides me, I might be\n    happier; by being less tantaliz’d. Well may you exclaim, how\n    selfish, how cruel not to let me enjoy my youth! to wish me to\n    be unhappy. You must be so if you love me. Upon my soul I can\n    be contented with nothing else. If you would really what is\n    call’d enjoy yourself at a Party—if you can smile in people’s\n    faces, and wish them to admire you _now_—you never have nor\n    ever will love me. I see _life_ in nothing but the certainty of\n    your Love—convince me of it my sweetest. If I am not somehow\n    convinced I shall die of agony. If we love we must not live\n    as other men and women do—I cannot brook the wolfsbane of\n    fashion and foppery and tattle—you must be mine to die upon the\n    rack if I want you. I do not pretend to say that I have more\n    feeling than my fellows, but I wish you seriously to look over\n    my letters kind and unkind and consider whether the person who\n    wrote them can be able to endure much longer the agonies and\n    uncertainties which you are so peculiarly made to create. My\n    recovery of bodily health will be of no benefit to me if you\n    are not mine when I am well. For God’s sake save me—or tell me\n    my passion is of too awful a nature for you. Again God bless\n    you.\n\n                                                              J. K.\n\n    No—my sweet Fanny—I am wrong—I do not wish you to be\n    unhappy—and yet I do, I must while there is so sweet a\n    Beauty—my loveliest, my darling! good bye! I kiss you—O the\n    torments!\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter I",
    "body": "FANNY BRAWNE’S ESTIMATE OF KEATS.\n\nIn discussing the effect which the _Quarterly Review_ article had on\nKeats, Medwin[58] quotes the following passages from a communication\naddressed to him by Fanny Brawne after her marriage:—\n\n    “I did not know Keats at the time the review appeared. It was\n    published, if I remember rightly, in June, 1818.[59] However\n    great his mortification might have been, he was not, I should\n    say, of a character likely to have displayed it in the manner\n    mentioned in Mrs. Shelley’s Remains of her husband. Keats,\n    soon after the appearance of the review in question, started\n    on a walking expedition into the Highlands. From thence he was\n    forced to return, in consequence of the illness of a brother,\n    whose death a few months afterwards affected him strongly.\n\n    “It was about this time that I became acquainted with Keats.\n    We met frequently at the house of a mutual friend, (not Leigh\n    Hunt’s), but neither then nor afterwards did I see anything\n    in his manner to give the idea that he was brooding over any\n    secret grief or disappointment. His conversation was in the\n    highest degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting\n    at moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health\n    dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in January\n    1820,[60] began from inflammation in the lungs, from cold. In\n    coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel. An hereditary tendency to\n    consumption was aggravated by the excessive susceptibility of\n    his temperament, for I never see those often quoted lines of\n    Dryden without thinking how exactly they applied to Keats:—\n\n      The fiery soul, that working out its way,\n      Fretted the pigmy body to decay.\n\n    From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden to write\n    a line of poetry,[61] and his failing health, joined to the\n    uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into deep\n    melancholy.\n\n    “The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr. Finch,\n    seems calculated to give a very false idea of Keats. That\n    his sensibility was most acute, is true, and his passions\n    were very strong, but not violent, if by that term violence\n    of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his\n    anger seemed rather to turn on himself than on others, and in\n    moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage\n    despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends.\n    Violence such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his\n    nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I\n    saw him every day, often witnessed his sufferings, both mental\n    and bodily, and I do not hesitate to say that he never could\n    have addressed an unkind expression, much less a violent one,\n    to any human being. During the last few months before leaving\n    his native country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict; for\n    whatever in moments of grief or disappointment he might say or\n    think, his most ardent desire was to live to redeem his name\n    from the obloquy cast upon it;[62] nor was it till he knew his\n    death inevitable, that he eagerly wished to die. Mr. Finch’s\n    letter goes on to say—‘Keats might be judged insane,’—I believe\n    the fever that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary\n    species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s task a\n    painful one.”",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  },
  {
    "heading": "Letter II",
    "body": "THE LOCALITY OF WENTWORTH PLACE.\n\nThe precise locality of Wentworth Place, Hampstead, has been a matter of\nuncertainty and dispute; and I found even the children of the lady to\nwhom the foregoing letters were addressed without any exact knowledge\non the subject. The houses which went to make up Wentworth Place were\nthose inhabited respectively by the Dilke family, the Brawne family,\nand Charles Armitage Brown; but these were not three houses as might be\nsupposed, the fact being that Mrs. Brawne rented first Brown’s house\nduring his absence with Keats in the summer of 1818, and then Dilke’s\nwhen the latter removed to Westminster.\n\nAt page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’s _Northern Heights of London_,[63] it\nis said of Keats:—\n\n    “From this time till 1820, when he left—in the last stage of\n    consumption—for Italy, he resided principally at Hampstead.\n    During most of this time, he lived with his very dear friend\n    Mr. Charles Brown, a Russia merchant, at Wentworth Place,\n    Downshire Hill, by Pond Street, Hampstead. Previously, he and\n    his brother Thomas had occupied apartments at the next house\n    to Mr. Brown’s, at a Mrs. ——’s whose name his biographers have\n    carefully omitted. With the daughter of this lady Keats was\n    deeply in love—a passion which deepened to the last.”\n\nNo authority is given for the statement that John and Tom Keats lodged\nwith the mother of the lady to whom John was attached; and I think it\nmust have arisen from a misapprehension of something communicated to\nMr. Howitt, perhaps in such ambiguous terms as every investigator has\nexperienced in his time. At all events I must contradict the statement\npositively; nor is there any doubt where the brothers did lodge, namely\nin Well Walk, with the family of the local postman, Benjamin Bentley.\nCharles Cowden Clarke mentions in his Recollections that the lodging was\n“in the first or second house on the right hand, going up to the Heath”;\nand the rate books show that Bentley was rated from 1814 to 1824 for the\nhouse which, in 1838, was numbered 1, the house next to the public house\nformerly called the “Green Man,” but now known as the “Wells” Tavern. At\npage 102, Mr. Howitt says:—\n\n    “It is to be regretted that Wentworth Place, where Keats\n    lodged, and wrote some of his finest poetry, either no longer\n    exists or no longer bears that name. At the bottom of John\n    Street, on the left hand in descending, is a villa called\n    Wentworth House; but no Wentworth Place exists between\n    Downshire Hill and Pond Street, the locality assigned to it.\n    I made the most rigorous search in that quarter, inquiring\n    of the tradesmen daily supplying the houses there, and of\n    two residents of forty and fifty years. None of them had\n    any knowledge or recollection of a Wentworth Place. Possibly\n    Keats’s friend, Mr. Brown, lived at Wentworth House, and that\n    the three cottages standing in a line with it and facing\n    South-End Road, but at a little distance from the road in a\n    garden, might then bear the name of Wentworth Place. The end\n    cottage would then, as stated in the lines of Keats, be next\n    door to Mr. Brown’s. These cottages still have apartments\n    to let, and in all other respects accord with the assigned\n    locality.”\n\nMr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth House _with_ the cottages\nmay possibly have borne the name of Wentworth Place; and he should have\nsaid that the house was on the _right_ hand in descending John Street.\nBut the fact of the case is correctly stated in Mr. Thorne’s _Handbook to\nthe Environs of London_,[64] Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more\nexplicit localization is given:\n\n    “The House in which he [Keats] lodged for the greater part of\n    the time, then called Wentworth Place, is now called Lawn Bank,\n    and is the end house but one on the rt. side of John Street,\n    next Wentworth House.”\n\nMr. Thorne adduces no authority for the statement; and it must be\nassumed that it is based on some of the private communications which he\nacknowledges generally in his preface. He may possibly have been biassed\nby the plane-tree which Mr. Howitt, at page 101 of _Northern Heights_,\nsubstitutes for the traditional plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s\naccount of the composition of the _Ode to a Nightingale_. Certainly there\nis a fine old plane-tree in front of the house at Lawn Bank; and there\nis a local tradition of a nightingale and a poet connected with that\ntree; but this dim tradition may be merely a misty repetition, from mouth\nto mouth, of Mr. Howitt’s extract from Lord Houghton’s volumes. _Primâ\nfacie_, a plane-tree might seem to be a very much more likely shelter\nthan a plum-tree for Keats to have chosen to place his chair beneath;\nand yet one would think that, had Mr. Howitt purposely substituted the\nplane-tree for the plum-tree, it would have been because he found it by\nthe house which he supposed to be Brown’s. This however is not the case;\nand it should also be mentioned that at the western end of Lawn Bank,\namong some shrubs &c., there is an old and dilapidated plum-tree which\ngrows so as to form a kind of leafy roof.\n\nEleven years ago, when I attempted to identify Wentworth Place beyond\na doubt by local and other enquiries, the gardener at Wentworth House\nassured me very positively that, some fifteen or twenty years before,\nwhen Lawn Bank (then called Lawn Cottage) was in bad repair, and the\nrain had washed nearly all the colour off the front, he used to read the\nwords “Wentworth Place,” painted in large letters beside the top window\nat the extreme left of the old part of the house as one faces it; and I\nhave since had the pleasure of reading the words there myself; for the\ncolour got washed thin enough again some time afterwards. After a great\ndeal of enquiry among older inhabitants of Hampstead than this gardener,\nI found a musician, born there in 1801, and resident there ever since,\na most intelligent and clear-headed man, who had been in the habit of\nplaying at various houses in Hampstead from the year 1812 onwards. When\nasked, simply and without any “leading” remark, what he could tell about\na group of houses formerly known as Wentworth Place, he replied without\nhesitation that Lawn Bank, when he was a youth, certainly bore that name,\nthat it was two houses, with entrances at the sides, in one of which\nhe played as early as 1824, and that subsequently the two houses were\nconverted into one, at very great expense, to form a residence for Miss\nChester,[65] who called the place Lawn Cottage. This informant did not\nremember the names of the persons occupying the two houses. A surgeon\nof repute, among the oldest inhabitants of Hampstead, told me, as an\nabsolute certainty, that he was there as early as 1827, knew the Brawne\nfamily, and attended them professionally at Wentworth Place, in the house\nforming the western half of Lawn Bank. Of Charles Brown, however, this\ngentleman had no knowledge.\n\nNot perfectly satisfied with the local evidence, I forwarded to Mr.\nSevern a sketch-plan of the immediate locality, in order that he might\nidentify the houses in which he visited Keats and Brown and the Brawne\nfamily: he replied that it was in Lawn Bank that Brown and Mrs. Brawne\nhad their respective residences; and he also mentioned side entrances;\nbut Sir Charles Dilke says his grandfather’s house had the entrance\nin front, and only Brown’s had a side entrance. Two relatives of Mrs.\nBrawne’s who were still living in 1877, and were formerly residents in\nthe house, also identified this block as that in which she resided, and\nso did the late Mr. William Dilke of Chichester, by whose instructions,\nduring the absence of his brother, the name was first painted upon the\nhouse. It is hard to see what further evidence can be wanted on the\nsubject. The recollection of one person may readily be distrusted; but\nwhere so many memories converge in one result, their evidence must be\naccepted; and I leave these details on record here, mainly on the ground\nthat doubts may possibly arise again. At present it does not seem as if\nthere could be any possible question that, in Lawn Bank, we have the\nimmortalized Wentworth Place where Keats spent so much time, first as\nco-inmate with Brown in the eastern half of the block, and at last when\nhe went to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne in the western half.\n\nIt should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. Thorne’s expression\nthat Keats _lodged_ there, that this was not a case of lodging in the\nordinary sense: he was a sharing inmate; and his share of the expenses\nwas duly acquitted, as recorded by Mr. Dilke. In the hope of identifying\nthe houses by some documentary evidence, I had the parish rate-books\nsearched; in these there is no mention of John Street; but that part of\nHampstead is described as the Lower Heath Quarter: no names of houses are\ngiven; and the only evidence to the purpose is that, among the ratepayers\nof the Lower Heath Quarter, very few in number, were Charles Wentworth\nDilk (without the final _e_) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs. Brawne\ndoes not appear; but, as she rented the house in Wentworth Place of Mr.\nDilke, it may perhaps be assumed that it was he who paid the rates.\n\nIt will perhaps be thought that the steps of the enquiry in this matter\nare somewhat “prolixly set forth”; and the only plea in mitigation to\nbe offered is that, without evidence, those who really care to know the\nfacts of the case could hardly be satisfied.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a Memoir by Richard\nMonckton Milnes. A new Edition._ 1863 (and other dates). See p. ix,\nMemoir.\n\n[2] _Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by\nRichard Monckton Milnes_ (Two Volumes, Moxon, 1848). My references,\nthroughout, are to this edition; but it will be sufficient to cite\nit henceforth simply as _Life, Letters, &c._, specifying the volume\nand page.\n\n[3] _The Poetical Works of John Keats. Chronologically arranged and\nedited, with a Memoir, by Lord Houghton, D.C.L., Hon. Fellow of\nTrin. Coll. Cambridge_ (Bell & Sons, 1876). See p. xxiii, Memoir.\n\n[4] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 234-6.\n\n[5] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 240.\n\n[6] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, pp. 252-3.\n\n[7] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 268, and Vol. II, p. 301.\nShould not the semicolon at _point_ change places with the comma at\n_knowledge_?\n\n[8] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 270, and Vol. II, p. 302.\n\n[9] This little book, now in my collection, is of great interest.\nIt is marked throughout for Miss Brawne’s use,—according to Keats’s\nfashion of “marking the most beautiful passages” in his books for\nher. At one end is written the sonnet referred to in the text,\napparently composed by Keats with the book before him, as there are\ntwo “false starts,” as well as erasures; and at the other end, in\nthe handwriting of Miss Brawne, is copied Keats’s last sonnet,\n\n    Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art.\n\nThe Spenser similarly marked, the subject of Letter XXXIV, is\nmissing.\n\n[10] See _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 35.\n\n[11] _The Philobiblion a monthly Bibliographical Journal.\nContaining Critical Notices of, and Extracts from, Rare, Curious,\nand Valuable Old Books._ (Two Volumes. Geo. P. Philes & Co., 51\nNassau Street, New York. 1862-3.) The Keats letter is at p. 196\nof Vol. I, side by side with one purporting to be Shelley’s, a\nflagrant forgery which has been publicly animadverted on several\ntimes lately, having been reprinted as genuine.\n\n[12] The correspondent of _The World_ would seem (I only say\n_seem_; for the matter is obscure) to have used Lord Houghton’s\npages for “copy” where a cursory examination indicated that they\ngave the same matter as the original letter,—transcribing what\npresented itself as new matter from the original. The fragment\nof _Friday 27th_ was, on this supposition, in its place when the\ncopies were made for Lord Houghton, because there is the close; but\nbetween that time and 1862 it must have been separated from the\nletter.\n\n[13] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 55.\n\n[14] It is interesting, by the way, to extract the following note\nof locality from the _Autobiography_ (Vol. II, p. 230): “It was not\nat Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York-buildings, in\nthe New-road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the _Indicator_; and he\nresided with me while in Mortimer-terrace, Kentish-town (No. 13),\nwhere I concluded it.”\n\n[15] _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 61.\n\n[16] See Hunt’s _Autobiography_, Vol. II, p. 216. It may be noted\nin passing that the _Indicator_ version of the Sonnet varies in\nsome slight details from the Original in the volume of Dante\nreferred to at page xliv, and from Lord Houghton’s text. It is\nnatural to suppose that Hunt’s copy was the latest of the three;\nand his text is certainly an improvement on the others where it\nvaries from them.\n\n[17] _The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the Writings of the\nlate Charles Wentworth Dilke. With a Biographical Sketch by his\nGrandson, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., M.P., &c. In Two\nVolumes._ (London. John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.) See Vol.\nI, p. 11.\n\n[18] This sonnet occurs at page 128 of _The Garden of Florence;\nand other Poems. By John Hamilton_. (London: John Warren, Old\nBond-street. 1821.)\n\n[19] _The Letters and Poems of John Keats._ In three volumes.\n(Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1883). Vol. I is called _The Letters\nof John Keats, edited by Jno. Gilmer Speed_: Vol. II and III, _The\nPoems of John Keats, with the Annotations of Lord Houghton and a\nMemoir by Jno. Gilmer Speed_.\n\n[20] _Keats by Sidney Colvin._ (Macmillan & Co., 1887). Mr. Colvin\nhas also contributed to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (August, 1888)\nan Article _On Some Letters of Keats_, which I have also duly\nconsulted.\n\n[21] _The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats_, (Four\nvolumes, Reeves & Turner, 1883, considerably earlier than Mr.\nSpeed’s volumes appeared.)\n\n[22] Charlotte, Mr. Colvin calls her; but her name was Jane.\n\n[23] These two words are wanting in the original.\n\n[24] His brother, “poor Tom,” had died about seven months before\nthe date of this letter.\n\n[25]\n\n    Ev’n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o’erthrew,\n    And mow’d down armies in the fights of Loo,\n    Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,\n    Falls undistinguish’d by the victor Spade!—\n\n                              Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_, iii, 61-4.\n\n[26] Fanny’s younger sister: see Introduction.\n\n[27] The word _Newport_ is not stamped on this letter, as on\nNumbers I, II, and IV; but it is pretty evident that Keats and his\nfriend were still at Shanklin.\n\n[28] I am not aware of any other published record that this name\nbelonged to Keats’s Mother, as well as his sister and his betrothed.\n\n[29] Samuel Brawne, the brother of Fanny: see Introduction.\n\n[30] I am unable to obtain or suggest any explanation of the\nallusion made in this strange sentence. It is not, however,\nimpossible that “the Bishop” was merely a nickname of some one in\nthe Hampstead circle.\n\n[31] The Tragedy referred to is, of course, _Otho the Great_, which\nwas composed jointly by Keats and his friend Charles Armitage\nBrown. For the first four acts Brown provided the characters, plot,\n&c., and Keats found the language; but the fifth act is wholly\nKeats’s. See Lord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol.\nII, pp. 1 and 2, and foot-note at p. 333 of the Aldine edition of\nKeats’s Poetical Works (Bell & Sons, 1876). A humorous account of\nthe progress of the joint composition occurs in a letter written by\nBrown to Dilke, which is quoted at p. 9 of the memoir prefixed by\nSir Charles Dilke to _The Papers of a Critic_, referred to in the\nIntroduction to the present volume, p. lviii.\n\n[32] He did not find one; for, in a letter to B. R. Haydon, dated\nWinchester, 3 October, 1819, he says: “I came to this place in the\nhopes of meeting with a Library, but was disappointed.” For this\nletter see _Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk_\n(Two volumes, Chatto and Windus, 1875), Vol. II, p. 16, and also\nLord Houghton’s _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848), Vol. II, p. 10, where\nthere is an extract from the letter somewhat differently worded and\narranged.\n\n[33] The discrepancy between the date written by Keats and that\ngiven in the postmark is curious as a comment on his statement\n(_Life, Letters, &c._, 1848, Vol. I, p. 253) that he never knew the\ndate: “It is some days since I wrote the last page, but I never\nknow....”\n\n[34] This word is of course left as found in the original\nletter: an editor who should spell it _yacht_ would be guilty of\nrepresenting Keats as thinking what he did not think.\n\n[35] Written, I presume, from the house of his friends and\npublishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, No. 93, Fleet Street.\n\n[36] Whether he carried out this intention to the letter, I know\nnot; but he would seem to have been at Winchester again, at all\nevents, by the 22nd of September, on which day he was writing\nthence to Reynolds (_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 23).\n\n[37] It would seem to have been in this street that Mr. Dilke\nobtained for Keats the rooms which the poet asked him to find in\nthe letter of the 1st of October, from Winchester, given at p.\n16, Vol. II, of the _Life, Letters, &c._ (1848). How long Keats\nremained in those rooms I have been unable to determine, to a\nday; but in Letter No. IX he writes, eight days later, from Great\nSmith Street (the address of Mr. Dilke) that he purposes “living\nat Hampstead”; and there is a letter headed “Wentworth Place,\nHampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]” at p. 35, Vol. II, of the _Life,\nLetters, &c._\n\n[38] It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced\nthis moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to\nis that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’s _Life_ (Vol. II,\npp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he\n“might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the\ncolour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in\nthat colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.”\n\n[39] This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from\nthe 3rd of February, 1820.\n\n[40] This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence\nor presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful\nphase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See Letters\nXXI, XXIV, XXVI, XXXV, and XXXVII.\n\n[41] If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us\nto the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the\nday on which Keats broke a blood-vessel.\n\n[42] George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significant _but_ indicates\nthat the absence of Brown was still, as was natural, more or less a\ncondition of the presence of Miss Brawne. That Keats had, however,\nor thought he had, some reason for this condition, beyond the\nmere delicacy of lovers, is dimly shadowed by the cold _My dear\nFanny_ with which in Letter XXI the condition was first expressly\nprescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a\nmorbid sensibility in Letters XXXV and XXXVII. Probably a man in\nsound health would have found the cause trivial enough.\n\n[43] The MS. of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ (the volume containing\n_Hyperion_, and most of Keats’s finest work).\n\n[44] I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke.\n\n[45] This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the\nbelief that this letter and the preceding one were written about\nthe same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in the\n_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark,\n“Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend\nBrown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and\nhe refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal\nfood, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as in Letter XXV he speaks\nto Miss Brawne of his “feeding upon sham victuals.” In the letter\nto Dilke he says: “If I can keep off inflammation for the next six\nweeks, I trust I shall do very well.” In Letter XXV he expresses\nto Miss Brawne the hope that he may go out for a walk with her on\nthe 1st of May. If these correspondences may be trusted, we are now\ndealing with letters of the first week in March, of which period\nthere are still indications in Letter XXVIII.\n\n[46] The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate\nthat this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in\nthe letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date,\nalready referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair\nof the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he\n“shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the\nweather changes for the warmer.”\n\n[47] Misspelt _Proctor_ in the original.\n\n[48] It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old\nMr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father\nof Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious\nletter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not\nbeen mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut\noff,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture.\n\n[49] The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so\nsmall that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably\ngiven to an autograph-collector.\n\n[50] This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened,\none would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was\nclearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend,\nwhich took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion\nthere is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in\nattachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a\nweek of this time had there been any opportunity.\n\n[51] This question may perhaps be fairly taken to indicate the\nlapse of a month from the time when Keats left the house at\nHampstead next door to Miss Brawne’s, at which he probably knew her\nemployments well enough from day to day. If so, the time would be\nabout the first week in June, 1819.\n\n[52] He was seemingly in a different phase of belief from that\nin which the death of his brother Tom found him. At that time he\nrecorded that he and Tom both firmly believed in immortality. See\n_Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication of his\nhaving shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy may be found in the\nexpression in Letter XXXV, “I appeal to you by the blood of that\nChrist you believe in:”—not “_we_ believe in.”\n\n[53] This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to the end, and\nthen filled in the words _My dearest Girl_, left out lest any one\ncoming near him should chance to see them. These words are written\nmore heavily than the beginning of the letter, and indicate a state\nof pen corresponding with that shown by the words _God bless you_\nat the end.\n\n[54] This letter appears to belong between those of the 8th and\n25th of July, 1819; and of the two Thursdays between these dates\nit seems likelier that the 15th would be the one than that the\nletter should have been written so near the 25th as on the 22nd.\nThe original having been mislaid, I have not been able to take the\nevidence of the postmark. It will be noticed that at the close he\nspeaks of a weekly exchange of letters with Miss Brawne; and by\nplacing this letter at the 15th this programme is pretty nearly\nrealized so far as Keats’s letters from the Isle of Wight are\nconcerned.\n\n[55] The story in question is one of the many derivatives from the\nThird Calender’s Story in _The Thousand and One Nights_ and the\nsomewhat similar tale of “The Man who laughed not,” included in\nthe Notes to Lane’s _Arabian Nights_ and in the text of Payne’s\nmagnificent version of the complete work. I am indebted to Dr.\nReinhold Köhler, Librarian of the Grand-ducal Library of Weimar,\nfor identifying the particular variant referred to by Keats as the\n“Histoire de la Corbeille,” in the _Nouveaux Contes Orientaux_ of\nthe Comte de Caylus. Mr. Morris’s beautiful poem “The Man who never\nlaughed again,” in _The Earthly Paradise_, has familiarized to\nEnglish readers one variant of the legend.\n\n[56] It will of course be remembered that no such collection\nappeared until the following summer, when the _Lamia_ volume was\npublished.\n\n[57] I do not find in the present series any letter which I can\nregard as the particular one referred to in the opening sentence.\nIf Letter XXXV (p. 93) were headed _Tuesday_ and this _Wednesday_,\nthat might well be the peccant document which appears to be missing.\n\n[58] _The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In Two Volumes._ London:\n1847 (see Vol. II, pp. 86-93).\n\n[59] It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on page 1,\nbut described on the wrapper as “published in September, 1818.”\n\n[60] See p. liii: it was the 3rd of February, 1820.\n\n[61] See Letter XIII, pp. 49-50.\n\n[62] See Letter XVII, pp. 57-8.\n\n[63] _The Northern Heights of London or Historical Associations\nof Hampstead, Highgate, Muswell Hill, Hornsey, and Islington. By\nWilliam Howitt, author of ‘Visits to Remarkable Places.’_ (London:\nLongmans, Green, & Co. 1869.)\n\n[64] _Handbook to the Environs of London, Alphabetically Arranged,\ncontaining an account of every town and village, and of all the\nplaces of interest, within a circle of twenty miles round London.\nBy James Thorne, F.S.A. In Two Parts._ (London: John Murray,\nAlbemarle Street. 1876.)\n\n[65] She first appeared upon the London boards in 1822, and\nafterwards became “Private Reader” to George IV.",
    "author": "John Keats",
    "recipient": "Fanny Brawne",
    "source": "Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne",
    "period": "1819–1820"
  }
]