Читать книгу My Star Predominant - Raymond Knister - Страница 6

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The night, as Keats walked away from Abbey’s house, was such as he had known many times that autumn in walking home from Hunt’s fireside, when along the road through the fields keen, fitful gusts rifled the sere and half-leafless bushes. The dark, as now, was a pleasant setting to memories of magic communion; the bleak air cooled his forehead, while the stars which seemed to shrink away into the chill sky reminded him only of the awesome and glowing constellations of poesy. He had a sonnet composed by the time he reached home and almost forgot to tell his brothers of the momentous interview. They would look about for more spacious lodgings, and George would seek employment.

Next day John went to Guy’s and St. Thomas’s and secured his books and student apparatus. Since returning from Margate he had attended lectures sporadically; but now all that was past. Good-bye to the grimy old Borough, with its dingy buildings, and its poor, like crawling beetles. On a sudden, though, the grimy old Borough was somehow the dear old Borough. Some time when he was happy enough he would revisit the places which had seen him a lonely, discontented, boisterous and melancholy student. Even the squalid and imperative toil of caring for the eternal sick had touched his heart. Why, that must be poetry!

He lifted his head and shifted his armful of books. What should he do with this windfall? Of course–put new lines into “I Stood Tip-toe”. He’d finish that poem yet! The catalogue of blisses could not omit health, most disregarded of accepted boons. The very weather, bright and clear or for change rainy and arduous, brought pleasure to men of health. But Lady Nature’s bounty had to be of the purest ray to cheer the languid sick. How often he had watched until a sense crept over him of the blind instinctive life their bodies led while their brains drowsed or leaped into delirium. How many times he had watched the faces of friends who came to visit their sick, full of foreboding or joyous expectation. One old man, come to take away his son; the son, standing with the eager look of life about him once more; and the father, nearly foolish with delight, kissed him, felt his arms and chest, stared him up and down and parted the forehead’s tangled hair.

Stephens hove in sight, bound for a lecture.

“Why, it’s little Keats! Where are you going with all the books?”

“I am quitting the hospital; I have decided not to practise, Stephens.”

“Of course, you’re going to be a poet! Have you had any more printed in the Examiner? And is he going to print one of mine?”

“No,” said Keats, smiling. “It was an oversight. But he is not acquainted with you personally.”

“That’s it,” Stephens laughed. “But it cannot be helped. I’d rather be a successful surgeon than an unsuccessful poet.”

“So would I,” said Keats. “Good-bye.”

Stephens had been shuffling away, and walking backward as he bade adieu. Unabashed by this coolness, he demanded a verse for his notebook. Keats sat on a stone step and wrote while they both laughed.

Give me women, wine and snuff

Until I cry out, “Hold, enough!”

You may do so sans objection

Till the day of resurrection;

For bless my beard they aye shall be

My beloved Trinity.

Five minutes after reaching his lodgings he was blithely trudging off to the Vale of Health. His brothers had left him a note saying they had gone for a walk. It was a joke to serve them in the same way.

Hunt pulled him into the doorway by both hands. He had been working on the paper in town all morning, and was in exactly the mood for a good talk. Presently Mrs. Hunt and Holman, the oldest boy, came into the room; they were going out to make some purchases. Jennie could be called if they needed her.

The new sonnet, Hunt declared, was magnificent; he was proud that their friendship had been so transmuted. So was the chapman sonnet, but for the vagueness of the phrase, “realms of gold”. It was no mere flattery, he was sure, to say that Keats would be with Chapman and Spenser before he died.

“No sacrilege, no sacrilege!” cried Keats.

“The world shall know it too,” went on Hunt. “Make no mistake about that. True merit is far too rare for it to go unnoted. The world follows the sham-antique ballads of Scott, and even the fires of passion in Byron, with a kind of stupid wonder. But let someone arise possessing the true creational magic and it will fall at his feet....”

“Is it possible that you are over-confident of the world’s discernment?” asked Keats. “It does not seem to have crowned Wordsworth or Coleridge with haste. They are old men now. And Southey, as you have said, has degenerated into a mere hack for the Edinburgh.”

“It is true they are old, and their best poetry was written many years ago. When these men were young and ardent, their song was full of the day-spring, and they lent their minds and pens to the noblest aspirations for mankind. But the outcome of the Revolution disappointed them, and they joined the stupidest court pander or dragoon sergeant in upholding the Monarchy against the rights of man. I consider, as I would not dare to say so plainly in print, that these men have lost themselves their souls for their pains. But the poetry they made when those souls were in the ascendancy cannot die.”

Keats listened, glowing, to these opinions; they could not have appeared more true if the heavens had opened and shown them inscribed upon tablets of brass.

“I do not know,” he declared, trembling, “whether I would care to live a long time. If the poet seeks beauty, he should pray for early death.”

“It is an awesome thing what life can make of a man, whether or not he lends himself to its forces,” said Hunt thoughtfully. Of Scott and Coleridge and Wordsworth and Burns they talked. And then Hunt had an astounding proposal. He had spoken to his publishers, Messrs. Ollier, about Keats. It might be well for Keats to call and talk to them about a book of poems.

Wasn’t this just the disinterested friendship one could have expected of no one else but Libertas? Keats’s voice trembled when he thanked him. As for enemies (Hunt had been saying that his “Feast of the Poets” had treated Scott cavalierly, and that the pack of them would get in a circle and hold him at bay one day), as for enemies, “My right arm beside you!”

“Amen!”

Mrs. Hunt, whose return they had not noticed, announced that dinner had been served. The meal was bountiful but plain. Hunt was usually a frugal eater, as part of the regimen in which his long hours of work were varied by walks. The children were young cormorants; but their father appeared to think that discipline at their age was a matter outside the consumption of food. He smiled genially as he filled young Holman’s plate with a third helping. Mrs. Hunt, on the other hand, seemed now to have leisure to regulate their exuberance, though most of the day she gave them the run of the house. During the lull she spoke to the young poet amiably:

“You were not here, were you, Mr. Keats, during Mr. Haydon’s visit? He was with us two weeks and just left for his studio again yesterday.”

“No. I have heard so much of him, too. He is working on a painting of ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem’, isn’t he?”

“It seemed remarkable to me that he could stay away from it a fortnight.”

“His eyes, my dear,” murmured Hunt. “He had been applying himself so incessantly that his sight threatened to fail him. In fact, if I remember correctly, he was blind for a short time in his youth.”

“What a remarkable man!” exclaimed Keats. “Truly it seems that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man. A blind painter would be more wonderful than a blind and deaf Milton.”

“We had some memorable discussions while he was here. He is impetuous, I grant you, but well founded in his tastes. He is ready to argue every question–and we did, except religion and Bonaparte. We resolved never to talk of these. Of course, a man of his originality could not get on without a certain ready pugnacity. You know what a battle he has had to get the nation to accept the idea of buying the Elgin Marbles.”

“Posterity as well as ourselves will owe him a debt for that,” Keats agreed. He knew the story well. The collection of Grecian statues, full forms and magnificent fragments, which Lord Elgin had brought from their native resting-place and guarded almost inaccessible to the public and to student artists, had come to seem to Haydon almost his own discovery. Never before, possibly, and certainly never since, had such ideal forms been created by human art. No person could have any true notion of the reality of the sublime harmony native to art without long study of these marvels. Having contrived to get permission view them, to measure, compare, make endless drawings from every side, he was untiring in his efforts to make the Marbles available to every other artist and member of the public. He wrote pamphlets, waited upon Members and Ministers of the House of Commons, brought all kinds of trouble and enmity upon himself; but at last the Government bought the Marbles. He was enshrined in the hearts of all young-minded men who interested themselves in the new poetry and the social ideas of the Examiner, if not in Haydon’s painting itself.

“By the way,” Hunt was saying, “Haydon wants to have the privilege of meeting you, Keats.”

“Wh–what? Me? But there is only one way in which he could have heard my name,” Keats continued more calmly.

It was Clarke as much as himself, Hunt intimated, to whom he owed this. So Clarke and Hunt had been praising him to Haydon! What vistas of friendship would open! The studio of a great painter, the secrets of another art! Almost with surprise Keats found himself alone with his host in Hunt’s den. A bottle of wine was brought to them.

“This room seems as old to me and as dear as though it were mine. Think of the times we have talked and read or sat and thought or looked out at the moonlight or listened to the doubly enjoyed rain twinkling on the lattice.”

“Doubly enjoyed rain! Splendid, my dear fellow. I’ll warrant you improvise your poems as you run.”

“As I walk–to and from the chop-house.”

“Think how many etherealized young ladies––”

“Readers of the Story of Rimini?” interposed Keats.

“Such ladies–think how they would regard us two poets if they knew how we enjoyed a good meal and a bottle of port.”

“I would assure them that the ambrosial tipple they sip must have such bush. And no ignoble source, either,” Keats declared, looking into his glass. Hunt glanced with appreciative enjoyment at the ruddy-featured young man.

“I shall call you Junkets,” he now announced, “in honour of all Yorkshiremen.” He stood up before the fireplace, stretched his long form at which Keats looked almost incredulously, and remarked, feeling that his young friend might not relish such levity: “I say, Keats, I feel most damnably foolish. And that being so, why shouldn’t we act foolishly? Do you see the laurel sprigs in your vase? Let us crown ourselves with them after the fashion of the elder bards.”

“Foolish! Inspired!” Keats rose, and they were soon busily fashioning themselves laurel wreaths.

“It would be sacrilege to try on our crowns, would it not?” asked Keats, “and yet they must fit.”

“And yet they must fit,” agreed Hunt. “Your head is smaller than mine, I see. So are those of Byron and Shelley. I cannot get their hats over my portentous front.”

They eyed one another’s heads carefully, made a few last twists in the sprigs, and then ceremoniously crowned each other.

“I dub thee Bard,” said Hunt.

“I dub thee Master,” rejoined Keats. He looked quite as much awed as joking, Hunt thought, and they were silent until he poured another drink apiece.

“This must truly be ambrosia now!”

“It is a free and airy feel,” said Hunt thoughtfully. “You know we must compose upon this.”

“With all my heart!”

The knocker of the front door sounded upon the instant, and Hunt cocked his head towards the hall. Visitors were entering. “They’re ladies,” he decided. “Are they come to see me ... as well as my wife? It is the Reynolds girls. Let us go out to them.” He sighed as he reached for his laurel crown. “It seems this must go.” The strange voices sounded pleasantly.

“You may take off your crown,” exclaimed Keats feverishly. “But mine shall be doffed for no human being.”

“Bravo!” Hunt pressed his arm. “Come, let us see these ladies.”

The Misses Reynolds proved to be three, Jane, Mariane, and Charlotte, who was just a girl and stayed in the background. The older girls were interested, but not curious and wondering, at learning that he was a poet. They had a brother who was a poet, they said. He had had two or three books of poems published–little things–and he was younger than they were. Keats almost had to smile at this, which seemed too candid. A woman older than himself might have every charm and accomplishment, and it might even be forgotten that she was older; but loverlike thoughts of her, he was sure, were impossible. These young ladies were perhaps as much as two-and-twenty or older. They were perfect of their kind, correct, yet sympathetic; animated, yet not hoydenish. They would be as good listeners, Keats thought, as the sisters of George Felton Mathews had been, but they would understand things better, and even give their own share. Before he knew, he was bantering them and being bantered in turn like a brother, capping rhymes and matching puns.

This course was facilitated, as Keats felt when she returned, by the absence of Mrs. Hunt, who had been called away to put the children to bed. Hunt was disposed to keep things on the same level, but she made her matronly effect felt in Jane and Mariane through the solidarity of sex, confiding:

“You know, it seems strange; Hunt will have it that we are not to teach the children prayers; but how am I to put them to sleep at night? Putting them to bed and not hearing their prayers seems like a contradiction.”

“I’m sure it must,” murmured Mariane and Jane. It was certain that they were not unaccustomed to freethinking talk and ideas, but you could not have told from their manner how far their liberation went.

Hunt was talking to Charlotte.

“Won’t you sit down to the music? Mariane, my dear, we’re forgetting that Charlotte is quite a talented musician and we must hear her perform. As for her sister whose name begins with an M, she must not look so mischievous.” Hunt smiled roguishly as though at a joke he shared with Mariane, for he had noted the start she gave when he addressed his wife by name.

“Yes, do play, Charlotte dear,” said Mrs. Hunt, rising to superintend matters.

Keats forgot to regret the lost converse with his master. It even came to pass that he accompanied the Reynolds girls home to Lamb’s Conduit Street in Little Britain. By this time they were fast friends, and when they urgently invited him to their home, he promised to accept. They had told him so much about their brother, another John, that he promised himself one more friend.