Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
decided for Westminster; and as Charley is to be a day boy, Dilke will
remove to Westminster. We lead very quiet lives here--Dilke is at present
in Greek histories and antiquities, and talks of nothing but the electors
of Westminster and the retreat of the ten-thousand. I never drink now
above three glasses of wine--and never any spirits and water. Though by
the bye, the other day Woodhouse took me to his coffee house and ordered a
Bottle of Claret--now I like Claret, whenever I can have Claret I must
drink it,--'tis the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. Would
it not be a good speck to send you some vine roots--could it be done? I'll
enquire--If you could make some wine like Claret to drink on summer
evenings in an arbour! For really 'tis so fine--it fills one's mouth with
a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not
feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a Peacemaker, and
lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the Queen
Bee, and the more ethereal Part of it mounts into the brain, not
assaulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad-house looking for
his trull and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainstcoat,
but rather walks like Aladdin about his own enchanted palace so gently
that you do not feel his step. Other wines of a heavy and spirituous
nature transform a Man to a Silenus: this makes him a Hermes--and gives a
Woman the soul and immortality of Ariadne, for whom Bacchus always kept a
good cellar of claret--and even of that he could never persuade her to
take above two cups. I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I
have--I forgot game--I must plead guilty to the breast of a Partridge, the
back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing and side of a Pheasant
and a Woodcock _passim_. Talking of game (I wish I could make it), the
Lady whom I met at Hastings and of whom I said something in my last I
think has lately made me many presents of game, and enabled me to make as
many. She made me take home a Pheasant the other day, which I gave to Mrs.
Dilke; on which to-morrow Rice, Reynolds and the Wentworthians will dine
next door. The next I intend for your Mother. These moderate sheets of
paper are much more pleasant to write upon than those large thin sheets
which I hope you by this time have received--though that can't be, now I
think of it. I have not said in any Letter yet a word about my affairs--in
a word I am in no despair about them--my poem has not at all succeeded; in
the course of a year or so I think I shall try the public again--in a
selfish point of view I should suffer my pride and my contempt of public
opinion to hold me silent--but for yours and Fanny's sake I will pluck up
a spirit and try again. I have no doubt of success in a course of years if
I persevere--but it must be patience, for the Reviews have enervated and
made indolent men's minds--few think for themselves. These Reviews too are
getting more and more powerful, especially the Quarterly--they are like a
superstition which the more it prostrates the Crowd and the longer it
continues the more powerful it becomes just in proportion to their
increasing weakness. I was in hopes that when people saw, as they must do
now, all the trickery and iniquity of these Plagues they would scout them,
but no, they are like the spectators at the Westminster cock-pit--they
like the battle and do not care who wins or who loses. Brown is going on
this morning with the story of his old woman and the Devil--He makes but
slow progress--The fact is it is a Libel on the Devil, and as that person
is Brown's Muse, look ye, if he libels his own Muse how can he expect to
write? Either Brown or his Muse must turn tail. Yesterday was Charley
Dilke's birthday. Brown and I were invited to tea. During the evening
nothing passed worth notice but a little conversation between Mrs. Dilke
and Mrs. Brawne. The subject was the Watchman. It was ten o'clock, and
Mrs. Brawne, who lived during the summer in Brown's house and now lives in
the Road, recognised her old Watchman's voice, and said that he came as
far as her now. "Indeed," said Mrs. D., "does he turn the Corner?" There
have been some Letters passed between me and Haslam but I have not seen
him lately. The day before yesterday--which I made a day of Business--I
called upon him--he was out as usual. Brown has been walking up and down
the room a-breeding--now at this moment he is being delivered of a
couplet, and I daresay will be as well as can be expected. Gracious--he
has twins!
I have a long story to tell you about Bailey--I will say first the
circumstances as plainly and as well as I can remember, and then I will
make my comment. You know that Bailey was very much cut up about a little
Jilt in the country somewhere. I thought he was in a dying state about it
when at Oxford with him: little supposing, as I have since heard, that he
was at that very time making impatient Love to Marian Reynolds--and guess
my astonishment at hearing after this that he had been trying at Miss
Martin. So Matters have been--So Matters stood--when he got ordained and
went to a Curacy near Carlisle, where the family of the Gleigs reside.
There his susceptible heart was conquered by Miss Gleig--and thereby all
his connections in town have been annulled--both male and female. I do not
now remember clearly the facts--These however I know--He showed his
correspondence with Marian to Gleig, returned all her Letters and asked
for his own--he also wrote very abrupt Letters to Mrs. Reynolds. I do not
know any more of the Martin affair than I have written above. No doubt his
conduct has been very bad. The great thing to be considered is--whether it
is want of delicacy and principle or want of knowledge and polite
experience. And again weakness--yes, that is it; and the want of a
Wife--yes, that is it; and then Marian made great Bones of him although
her Mother and sister have teased her very much about it. Her conduct has
been very upright throughout the whole affair--She liked Bailey as a
Brother but not as a Husband--especially as he used to woo her with the
Bible and Jeremy Taylor under his arm--they walked in no grove but Jeremy
Taylor's. Marian's obstinacy is some excuse, but his so quickly taking to
Miss Gleig can have no excuse--except that of a Ploughman who wants a
wife. The thing which sways me more against him than anything else is
Rice's conduct on the occasion; Rice would not make an immature resolve:
he was ardent in his friendship for Bailey, he examined the whole for and
against minutely; and he has abandoned Bailey entirely. All this I am not
supposed by the Reynoldses to have any hint of. It will be a good lesson
to the Mother and Daughters--nothing would serve but Bailey. If you
mentioned the word Tea-pot some one of them came out with an a propros
about Bailey--noble fellow--fine fellow! was always in their mouths--This
may teach them that the man who ridicules romance is the most romantic of
Men--that he who abuses women and slights them loves them the most--that
he who talks of roasting a Man alive would not do it when it came to the
push--and above all, that they are very shallow people who take everything
literally. A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few
eyes can see the Mystery of his life--a life like the scriptures,
figurative--which such people can no more make out than they can the
Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure but he is not figurative--Shakspeare
led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it--
March 12, Friday.
I went to town yesterday chiefly for the purpose of seeing some young Men
who were to take some Letters for us to you--through the medium of
Peachey. I was surprised and disappointed at hearing they had changed
their minds, and did not purpose going so far as Birkbeck's. I was much
disappointed, for I had counted upon seeing some persons who were to see
you--and upon your seeing some who had seen me. I have not only lost this
opportunity, but the sail of the Post-Packet to New York or Philadelphia,
by which last your Brothers have sent some Letters. The weather in town
yesterday was so stifling that I could not remain there though I wanted
much to see Kean in Hotspur. I have by me at present Hazlitt's Letter to
Gifford--perhaps you would like an extract or two from the high-seasoned
parts. It begins thus:
"Sir, you have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one
you do not like; and it will be the object of this Letter to cure you
of it. You say what you please of others; it is time you were told
what you are. In doing this give me leave to borrow the familiarity
of your style:--for the fidelity of the picture I shall be
answerable. You are a little person but a considerable cat's paw; and
so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons
high in office constantly influences your opinions and alone gives
importance to them. You are the government critic, a character nicely
differing from that of a government spy--the invisible link which
connects literature with the Police."
Again:
"Your employers, Mr. Gifford, do not pay their hirelings for
nothing--for condescending to notice weak and wicked sophistry; for
pointing out to contempt what excites no admiration; for cautiously
selecting a few specimens of bad taste and bad grammar where nothing
else is to be found. They want your invisible pertness, your
mercenary malice, your impenetrable dulness, your bare-faced
impudence, your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your hypocritical zeal,
your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their Prejudices and
pretensions to fly-blow and taint public opinion, to defeat
independent efforts, to apply not the touch of the scorpion but the
touch of the Torpedo to youthful hopes, to crawl and leave the slimy
track of sophistry and lies over every work that does not dedicate
its sweet leaves to some Luminary of the treasury bench, or is not
fostered in the hotbed of corruption. This is your office; 'this is
what is look'd for at your hands, and this you do not baulk'--to
sacrifice what little honesty and prostitute what little intellect
you possess to any dirty job you are commission'd to execute. 'They
keep you as an ape does an apple in the corner of his jaw, first
mouth'd to be at last swallow'd.' You are by appointment literary
toadeater to greatness and taster to the court. You have a natural
aversion to whatever differs from your own pretensions, and an
acquired one for what gives offence to your superiors. Your vanity
panders to your interest, and your malice truckles only to your love
of Power. If your instructive or premeditated abuse of your enviable
trust were found wanting in a single instance; if you were to make a
single slip in getting up your select committee of enquiry and green
bag report of the state of Letters, your occupation would be gone.
You would never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from acquaintance,
or a smile from a Punk of Quality. The great and powerful whom you
call wise and good do not like to have the privacy of their self-love
startled by the obtrusive and unmanageable claims of Literature and
Philosophy, except through the intervention of people like you, whom,
if they have common penetration, they soon find out to be without any
superiority of intellect; or if they do not, whom they can despise
for their meanness of soul. You 'have the office opposite to Saint
Peter.' You keep a corner in the public mind for foul prejudice and