“I have just got your letter of the 10th,—the
contrast of your quiet, friendly home, with this lonely place, and our poor
suffering Keats, brings the tears into
my eyes. I wish many times that he had never left you. His recovery must have
been impossible, before he left England, and his excessive grief would, in any
case, have made it so. In your case, he seems to me like an infant in its
mother’s arms. You would have soothed his pains, and his death might have
been eased by the presence of his many friends; but here, with one solitary
friend, in a place
| 98 | LIFE OF SHELLEY. |
“I have had the hardest task. I have kept him alive week after week. He had refused all food, but I tried him every way—left him no excuse. Many times I have prepared his meals six times over, and kept from him the trouble I have had in so doing. I have not been able to leave him—that is, I dared not do so, except when he slept. Had he come here alone, he would have sunk into the grave in silence, and we should not have known one syllable about him. This reflection repays me for what I have done.
“It is impossible to conceive what the sufferings of
this poor fellow have been. Now he lies still and calm—if I say now, I
shall say too much. At times I have even hopes that he will recover, but the
doctor shakes his head, and Keats will
not hear that he is better. The thought of recovery is beyond anything dreadful
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“In the last week a great desire for books came over his mind. I got him all those at hand, and for three days the charm lasted; but now it is gone; yet he is very calm, and more and more reconciled to his misfortunes.
“Little or no change has taken place in Keats since the commencement of this letter,
except that his mind is growing to greater quietness and peace. This has its
rise from the increasing weakness of his body; but it seems like a delightful
sleep to me, who have been beating about in the tempest of his mind so long.
Tonight he has talked very much to me, but so easily that he at last fell into
a pleasant sleep. Among the many things he has to-night re-
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Here lies one whose name was writ in water. |
“Such a letter has come—I gave it to Keats, supposing it to be one of yours—but it proved sadly otherwise. The glances of that letter tore him to pieces. The effects were on him for many days. He did not read it—he could not; but requested me to place it in the coffin, with a purse and a letter (unopened) of his sister.
“The doctor has been here. He thinks Keats worse. He says the expectoration is the most dreadful he ever saw—He never met with an instance where the patient was so quickly pulled down. Keats’s inward grief must have been beyond all limits. He says he was fretted to death. From the first drops of blood, he knew he must die. No common chance of living was for him,—”
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