Читать книгу My Star Predominant - Raymond Knister - Страница 4

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Keats sat by the window in his new quarters in a house in the Poultry, and tried to write the poem which had come to him on that first walk with Hunt. He was not yet quite sure what it was about. “I stood tiptoe upon a little hill,” he began; and the feeling of elation which had overwhelmed him was not to be slaked by many lines of light and shapely, dewy and dulcet images. The fresh woodland would serve him as a sort of springboard from which to dive into deeper delight and meaning. Why, the ripples of a stream and its cresses gave to one another benefits like good men in their sincerities. And what was love but a golden-winged butterfly nestling a rose, convulsed as though it smarted from over-pleasure?

But before he came to the quintessential, he would pause and “pluck a posy Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy”, as his pen said. Each one made a poem of feeling for him: a bush of may flowers with bees upon them, lush laburnum with long grass about its roots, shaded violets and moss, a filbert hedge overtwined with wild brier, clumps of woodbine, and sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight: a medley of differing flavours. Why not put them all in, let them call up the most vivid hours of pleasure? Alas, the walks and talks with his beloved poet and master, the loiterings long ago over the rail of a footbridge spanning the little brook in the fields about Edmonton, were not to be evoked so simply. Or when they were evoked, the poem seemed to have vanished. What was to follow? It was a thundering big job actually to complete a long poem. He had not been able to compass it yet. You couldn’t finish a poem unless it had been finished inside you; and of course a great poem did not get finished inside you in a hurry. Perhaps never; and the accomplishment of writers was to give a semblance of organic completion to what they knew could have none.

Let us see how Hunt finished the Story of Rimini; or how this lordly fellow Shelley finished Alastor. Keats’s hand reached out for the “Rimini” volume, then stayed. It was no good. Because you had the answer was no reason that you could do the sum. He sighed. It was easier to think about Hunt and to relive those walks.

That very morning he had been out to Hampstead. That very morning they had stood at the top of the rising ground and surveyed again the delights of the countryside, still jewelled with dewdrops. The perfect stillness in everything from the new-washed clouds to the trembling leaves gave the impression of a world holding its breath before the mirror of its own loveliness. It was the same moment as that when with Clarke they had stood at the gate, and yet not the same. Again Keats had told Hunt of the poem stirring within him, though it was still unborn. The world was again the most perfect world conceivable, in which everything was more beautiful and more poignantly gustful than it ever had been before; yet it was different, with more than the difference between afternoon and morning. But that was what the poem was to be made of–the hitherto unapproached and matchless beauty of the world.

Hunt was the one man for such a walk, such a vision. Everything in the world on which Leigh Hunt troubled to bestow his attention was perfect in its kind and delightful. Everyone was motivated by the most charitable intentions–even sometimes when their ideas disagreed with his–at worst by stupidity. And of all the delightful world the environs of Hampstead Heights and Caen Wood were the most enchanting; his friends were the most disinterested and truest. He quoted lines in poems which Clarke had brought him from Keats months before. His wisdom was so complete that he was above all jealousy and malevolence. You felt that what he wanted was to see you become a great poet–greater than himself if you found it in yourself to be so. The long, dark, and beaming face stood before Keats as he tried to write.

This poem, though, of the culmination of delights–it would have to wait until another day before he could rival Mrs. Tighe or Spenser! ... Prothalamium, or Spousall Verse! What he Was trying to celebrate, then, was the nuptials between his soul and Nature’s.... Nature, bride and mother of all her creatures’ hearts.

He jumped to his feet, satisfied, despite his humiliation. Now he would take a walk. A knock sounded upon his door. He strode to open it. A long-faced, thin youth with dry, straggling hair peered around the door as though to see that Keats was alone, then entered.

“Aha! Rinaldo the Bold! Just in time for a promenade the famed Britomartis!”

“I’m afraid you have thrown us over for more exalted acquaintances.”

George Felton Mathews was the first-met fellow of his own age who wrote verses; and John had written to him an Epistle of near a hundred lines, comparing themselves to Beaumont and Fletcher, and at the same time tracing his descent, Ovid-inspired, from a flowret through a goldfish to a black swan, “kissing his daily food from Naiad’s pearly hands”. But latterly Mathews seemed a tepidly nervous fellow who enjoyed pathos and shed tears over passages of Spenser, which caused Keats to adopt a brusque and callous manner in things that lay nearest his heart.

“You know, I was thinking of Ann–and Charlotte, a few minutes ago, when I happened to remember how we used to enjoy reading Mrs. Tighe together.”

“And the time they gave you that curious shell, and the copy of verses you made for Ann!” Mathews exclaimed sentimentally. “They often talk of it.”

Keats proposed a walk, but Mathews said that he felt languid and thoughtful; he wanted to talk of poetry. And now his friend had actually had a poem printed! “Don’t you feel a kind of overweening pride?”

“Why, yes, I do. Do you blame me?” Keats smiled. “Sit down, Mathews.”

“I won’t stay. I see you are in one of your sceptical and republican moods.... The truth of the matter is, I have not been much inspired of late, and I thought seeing you ... You know we have so much in common, even if we do not agree in some opinions.”

“Good old Mathews!” said Keats, clapping him on the shoulder. But soon they were talking of democracy and the French revolution, the very notion of which threw Mathews into a fright. In the midst of the argument a knock was repeated, and a hatless red head and a pair of blue eyes, gibing rather than laughing, appeared. “Come in, Wells.”

A freckled, snub-nosed youth came toward the table, incongruously bearing a bunch of roses, which with a sheepish air he handed to Keats, curtsying and scraping.

“Lovely!” Keats sniffed rapturously. “Luscious! What made you think to bring them to me, Wells?”

“I don’t know ...” muttered Wells, staring at Mathews. “I knew you liked them.”

Keats remembered that he had been angry at Wells for badgering Tom when Tom was not feeling well. “Thanks, thanks for the roses, Charlie. You knew that Tom had gone to Lyons, did you not?”

“Yes, they told me at your old rooms. Pretty lucky for old Tom, getting away like this on a lark, playing sick, too. He’s a young customer.”

Introduced, the spindly, fair fellow and the firm-set little redhead shook hands. Keats saw that they made perfect foils for each other. They realized it themselves; and, being young, had almost nothing to say to each other. Finally both felt that they had to leave, and were about to do so together, hastened by the postman’s whistle, which called Keats down to the street to pay for a letter. It was a note from George, at Abbey’s shop in Pancras Lane, asking his brother to come to the Wylies’ that evening. They were having a bit of a party, with Haslam and Severn, and Tom, who had returned from Lyons that day. John forgot his poem and his walk and applied himself to his studies. The examinations were little more than two weeks off. After supper he proceeded, carefully dressed, toward the Wylie house.

Georgiana Wylie received him at the door with unaffected enthusiasm. The only daughter of the widow of an officer of Marines, she had accepted at fifteen a part of good sense and responsibility; yet the cheery good health indicated by her stocky figure and rosy colour was far from anything which might have tended toward the prim or the stolid.

“Oh, John, George said you might be coming, but I scarcely believed him. George is here,” she assured him, with pleasure in the news, before he had left the hall.

George rose, a tall, muscular, moustached young fellow, and shook hands with his brother. Though younger than John, George Keats was more mature in ways and attitudes. Most obviously he was less high-strung than John, though not insensitive, a brisk and businesslike fellow. Two boys sat on the sofa demurely, exchanging glances at the spectacle of Georgie and her beau.

“Hello, Henry-Charles! But where’s Tom?” John exclaimed. “Didn’t he come? I know he arrived safely from the coast of Barbary, but where is he?”

“Just in the back parlour,” said George with a wave of the hand. “Mamma is showing him her goldfish.”

As he spoke, Mrs. Wylie came into the room, followed by Tom Keats, a trifle browner over his flush, and a trifle less thin.

“Mrs. Wylie, good evening to you! Tom, you are fine. If Lyons improved you so much so quickly, why didn’t you stay away?”

“I would have–I liked it. But I got homesick.”

They all laughed.

The chairs seemed to have ranged themselves about the hearth, in reminiscence of winter. Georgiana sat at one end, her back to the wall. George was next to her, and it wasn’t long before they were communicating in a code of their own–glance, smile, or brief word, and were only intermittently a part of the group. John, next to Mrs. Wylie, regarded them with pleased interest. It was less than a year since the enterprising George had introduced these friends–as he had the Mathews family–but John had become warmly attached to them. Mrs. Wylie reproached him for not coming there since the winter, when he had written a Valentine poem which George had given to Georgiana. He told her of his work, but he dilated upon the new acquaintance with Hunt, and the others were soon questioning him about that marvellous man; though George inquired whether he ate, as well as talked and walked.

The knocker at the front door sounded amid emulation of one of John’s puns. Mrs. Wylie did not wait for her maidservant, but rose at once. After due time for greetings and laying aside of hats, two male young voices materialized as a tall youth of awkward bearing, with a face aquiline yet somehow soft and womanish: Severn, the miniature-painter; and another tall one, with a hard stiffness and toughness of fibre about him, a long-jawed, homely, but dependable aspect: young William Haslam, like George, a budding tea-merchant.

The room was soon buzzing with talk and laughter. Keats was in his element rallying the sober, shrewd Haslam, and delivering puns and far-gathered quotations to the delightful admiration of Severn. A game of whist was arranged. George and Georgiana obviously wished to remain clear of it, and for this reason John insisted that they should join the game, with Haslam and Tom.

Mrs. Wylie was busy getting the table cleared and setting candles in convenient places. “It’s fortunate that none of us take whist seriously,” she remarked. “Because I am afraid Mr. Keats upsets the canons of the game completely with his advice and innuendoes.”

John did not heed their animadversions, and conferred with each player, delighting to get George in trouble or to help Tom and Haslam. He was referee to the game, he said. “Never fear, I smoke a good many things. I see who is attempting to cheat, though I say nothing.”

Mrs. Wylie would not allow the young men to go home without sampling, as they had done before, her cookery and the stock of her cellar. Then the ceremony of leave-taking was protracted beyond the departure of Haslam and Severn because George wished to arrange another meeting with Georgiana.

He consented to visit his brother’s new quarters, however, and as they walked along they got talking of Abbey, and Tom wanted to know just where they stood in regard to money. John undertook to explain. Their grandfather had left them each one thousand pounds. Their mother had left an amount to be divided among them, how large he did not know. And finally, Grandmother had left them a small annual income. But the thousand pounds apiece from Grandfather could not be touched until Fanny was one-and-twenty.

“And what about Father? Didn’t he leave us something too?”

“Well, you see, he left the ‘Swan and Hoop’ to Mother, and when she married again Rawlings got it. So our hands are tied, and we are dependent upon Abbey’s generosity to get what’s our own.”

“Now, John, it’s not quite so bad as that,” remonstrated George.

“What? Why is it not?”

“Abbey wouldn’t see us starve.”

“Of course he would not. That would make too much trouble for himself. He would merely give us as much inconvenience as he could. He wants, of course, to have credit for managing the estate well. I don’t say he would steal, but his vision is a poor light and a mean one.” In the semi-darkness of the June night John’s profile could be seen turning impatiently.

“He is all for business,” said George; and the fact that George pictured himself as a business man kept John from retorting.

“But what about the Chancery suit and Mrs. Midgely John? We used to talk a lot about Captain Midgely John being nearly shot at the Battle of Camperdown.”

“Yes,” laughed George, “there was not a boy in school ho did not know about our sailor uncle Jennings.”

“When Grandfather Jennings made his will, it did not dispose of all his property. The relations agreed that this sum left over should be arbitrated by the Court of Chancery. So Mother brought a suit against Grandmother and Uncle Midgely John. And of course they are all three dead, and the case is not settled yet. Mrs. Midgely John is prosecuting it.”

“I can hardly believe that Mother would sue Grandmother and Uncle.”

“It was all in a friendly spirit. Mother only wanted what was right, and it seemed best to have the Court decide. You must not think that Mother would try to obtain what was not hers.”

“No, of course not,” said Tom in confusion.

“Here’s our new home, Tom!” Keats suddenly swerved and darted up a flight of stairs through a door beside a shop. While the others stumbled after him, he unlocked the door and lit a candle with which he came to the threshold to welcome them.

“You have the same fondness for living over shops,” grumbled George.

“Better to be over shops than in ’em.” They all stood in a little sitting-room containing two easy chairs and two straight ones, a desk and a couple of shelves of books. “You should see it in daylight. My windows do not stare blankly at the other windows on the opposite side of the street. I can look down Cheapside, and, though you can’t expect that to be a royal thoroughfare with its name, it is no bad view.”

“Just this and the bedroom?” asked George.

“Yes, the bedroom is small too, but they seem like a palace after rooming with three other fellows and all their possessions. Cosy, eh, Tom?”

“It’s perfect, John. I shall be leaving Abbey’s to-morrow. Or may I stay here to-night, if you don’t mind?”

The brothers burst into a laugh at the summary emancipation.

“Aha! You shall share whatever I have. We shall do famously. It was near the examinations to move, of course. Less than a month until my destiny is decided. Shall I be a surgeon, or shall I not?”

“You might pass your examinations whether or not, if you don’t mind,” proffered George.

“Oh, he’ll pass,” said Tom. “But, then, there’s poetry. You’re not casting all that aside when you become a surgeon, are you, John?”

John gave him a look.

“Whether or not I am to be a poet is on the lap of the gods. Mr. Hunt holds out the richest prospects on that score. Of course, I do not want to be ruled by his enthusiasm. But I’ll write. So generous a man, you see, likes to find others akin to himself, and he may be deceived.”

“Now, John, you mustn’t be so modest as that,” said George. “The man must know what he is doing, or he wouldn’t have been editor of the paper so long. He has doubtless read a great number of poems in his day and not even printed them.”

“Well,” said John, permitting himself a smile, “he is a most delightful fellow, and he says he wants to see everything I write. It is enough to make a poet of the dullest clod on ’Change, I think, to be near such a man as Hunt. It is not only the sympathy he shows. My own dear brothers show me a sympathy and love nothing could replace–yes, you do....”

They talked heart-warmingly. John got up to pace the room.

“Indeed, no man knows,” he cried, “unless after he is dead, what is to be the fate of his name and the work he did on earth. But his good fortune may be to sound a stern alarum to the patriot, to startle senates and princes from their easy slumbers, and inspire thoughts in the sage.”

“I think,” said Tom, “that I shall pray every night that you may be as great a poet as you want. It is worth praying for, if you could be a great poet,” he added in a naïve, moved voice.

A fire of admiration and loyalty burned too in the breast of George, and he said, assuming gruffness: “You will. No doubt about it, you will be a great poet, John.”

“Sometimes I am sure that if I could smother the mad ambition I’d be happier myself, and better liked by others. Still, the attempt is forced upon me. A great deal can be learnt, knowledge and even wisdom; but no, the great thing, the one thing that cannot be replaced, that can’t be learnt, I am afraid. But still, one can try. One can try,” he repeated, stretching his arms above his head.

But that mad ambition was not lessened while they talked and confided in one another, and the hour grew later. Their hopes and experiences were shared, and they could not foresee a time when this would not be so. True brothers they had always been. At school any one of them would fight for the others. The two younger would see that John was undisturbed those winter evenings at supper in the schoolroom, when he would put a big book, or the Examiner, between himself and the table. Even then, George had bulked bigger than his elder; while Tom was weakly, and amiable unless roused to loyalty. They had put up with his tempers, but sometimes George had made him furious by taking advantage of size and weight to get him down and hold him until he cooled off and began to laugh. But they never had any doubt that he was right in most things, never got over the thrill and astonishment of his poetry, real as any printed. They talked so late that George stayed the night too. Keats collected some old greatcoats and made the best of the carpet. With hilarity and horseplay they settled for the night. At last John broke the news that after taking the examination he was going to Margate. Tom would be left alone in the lodgings; which prospect seemed almost as pleasant to him as the trip and holiday with his brother would have been.

At last the rooms were still. The moon’s light fell upon the floor where John lay, and seemed to ponder tenderly his upcast eye. Through spangled clouds she came into the blue again with gradual swim, blanching the plains, silvering the rivers and the trees of this wondrous world. Maker of sweet poets, lovely moon, meek Cynthia, queen of the wide air, give words of honey to tell but one wonder of thy bridal night ... closer of eyes to lovely dreams....