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Fanny Keats: Biographical Notes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the last letter he is known to have written, John Keats mentions “my sister—who walks about my imagination like a ghost—she is so like Tom.” This sister, Fanny, remained more or less a ghost until Mrs. Adami published an interesting biography of her in 1937.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944
References
Note 1 in page 200 The Letters of John Keats, ed. M. B. Forman (New York, 1935), p. 527 (November 30, 1820).
Note 2 in page 200 Marie Adami, Fanny Keats (London, 1937).
a Rosa Llanos y Keats wrote to F. H. Day, February 25, 1891 : “I should like very much to know what has become of the letters of my Mother to my uncle John. I am sure he preserved them, and I have not found them amongst the corespondence of my dear Mother.” To the same correspondent on June 9, she expressed her belief that “my uncle John did not destroy my Mothers letters.”
Note 4 in page 200 Those of the dates February 12, 1833, and September, 1838, quoted below. All the letters I mention, except those of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, are in the Harvard Keats Collection. I have attempted to quote them exactly, though I have substituted s for / and v for medial u. I am indebted to Professor William A. Jackson for various suggestions and to Miss Mabel A. E. Steele, of the Houghton Library, for kindly verifying my transcripts.
Note 5 in page 200 Epistolae Ho-Elianae, ed. Joseph Jacobs (London, 1890), i, 39.
Note 6 in page 201 On January 6, 1821, however, George wrote to her: “I am informed you feel disappointed at not hearing from me, the date of this will show you, you were not forgotten, nor will you ever be forgotten altho you may not hear from me very frequently . . . writing letters instead of being as formerly a pleasure is now become a task.“
Note 7 in page 202 Rosa Llanos y Keats wrote to F. H. Day on June 9, 1891 : “I find a letter of Mr Dilke to my dear Mother in 1826, the address to Lewis Esqre Beaufort Row Chlesea [sic]. This was the year my Mother was maried, and as I remember having heard her speak of her friends Mr and Mrs Lewis, I think she must have been living with them when she maried. I think my Mother left the house of M' Abley [sic] very short time before her mariage.” Presumably this passage accounts for Mrs. Adami's undocumented comments on pp. 122 f.
Note 8 in page 202 Fred Edgcumbe, Letters of Fanny Brawne to Fanny Keats (New York, 1937), pp. 44 f.
Note 9 in page 202 The same, pp. 46 f.
Note 10 in page 202 The same, p. 91.
Note 11 in page 202 C. C. Clarke and Mary C. Clarke, Recollections of Writers (London, 1878), p. 122.
Note 12 in page 203 Daniel Griffin, The Life of Gerald Griffin, 1843 (Dublin, 1857), pp. 146f.
Note 13 in page 203 In a letter to Dilke, April 20, 1825, George laments that he has no “Picture, bust, Cast” of John. A miniature of George, painted by Severn, is reproduced in M. B. Forman's edition of Keats's Poetical Works (New York, 1938), volume I, facing p. lxxvi.
Note 14 in page 203 M. B. Forman (The Letters of John Keats, p. xlviii) remarks that Rice, whose partner for a time was J. H. Reynolds, “was not alive at the end of 1833.” Actually, as early as February 12, 1833, Dilke wrote to George Keats: “Poor Rice . . . is dead—he was the best of all who formed the associates of my early life—the best man indeed I ever knew.“
Note 15 in page 203 Mrs. Adami (p. 133) asserts that after the death of Mrs. Brawne in November, 1829, “Fanny apparently moved next door to stay with the Llanos family.” For this suggestion, which seems not to have been advanced elsewhere, no doubt she follows Rosa Llanos y Keats, who wrote to F. H. Day on February 25, 1891, “Fanny Brawn lived with my parents till they left Ingland for Spain.” Rosa added, “Mr Lindo the husband of Fanny lost his fortune, and when he died was very badly of.” Mrs. Adami (p. 234) also describes Day's unsuccessful overtures in 1891 to Fanny Brawne Lindon's son, Herbert, in regard to publishing her letters. He can hardly have been surprised at his failure, for earlier still, on October 6, 1889, Herbert Lindon had written to Day, requesting Day not to publish a photograph of his mother's grave (her life, he said, ceased to be public property when she married), and flatly refusing him permission to reproduce her miniature.
Incidentally, Mrs. Adami (p. 240) considers it “strange that a student so enthusiastic and pertinacious as Miss Lowell should be able to contrive to see only two of the thirty-one [Fanny Brawne] letters and to make so scanty a use of the whole.” Correspondence in the Harvard Keats Collection, however, shows that Miss Lowell did her best. In March, 1922, she visited the “anonymous” American possessor, F. H. Day, who withheld all information about the person addressed by Fanny Brawne as well as about how the letters came into his hands. After a second visit in May, she was promised some “neutral extracts,” but the “anonymous” owner took care that she should not learn ‘anything about the person to whom Miss Brawne wrote.‘ Before 1925, when her biography of Keats was published, she had learned the name of Fanny Brawne's correspondent, and evidently she had been favored with further extracts, not all of them “neutral“; for in her second volume (pp. 133–135, 385, 476, 489, 491 f., 529) she quotes from eight of the letters.
To prolong this footnote by clearing up another matter: Mrs. Adami (p. 240) remarks that after 1925 nothing more was heard of the Fanny Brawne letters “until 1934, when a typed copy of the whole was presented to Harvard College Library by an anonymous donor. . . .” She has overlooked the account given of them and Day in S. F. Damon's Amy Lowell (Boston and New York, 1935), pp. 693 f. The volume in the Harvard Keats Collection, not presented but purchased on June 26, 1934, is very interesting indeed. It contains the rough first proofs (supposed to be unique), cut to page size and mounted, of twenty-one of the letters. They are arranged (to keep the numbers assigned to them in the Edgcumbe edition) in the following order: 1–10, 12, 14, 20, 21, 30, 11, 31, 26, 28, 29, 22. Then comes a design for a printed title-page, which is followed by typewritten copies of 13, 27, 16, 17, 23, 18, 19, 24, 25, 15, 13, 27, 16, 17, 23, 18, 19, 24, 25, 15. The volume, then, contains all the letters, ten of them in two typewritten copies. At the end of Fanny Brawne's extract from a letter of Severn, appended to No. 9, a printed footnote runs: “The folio is numbered 2, and the creases in the paper show that another had been folded within it, which was not among the letters delivered to me.—F. H. D.“
Note 16 in page 204 George Keats asked Dilke on April 20, 1825: “What is thought of Shelly it appears he became in [] he wrote an elegy on his death which I have requested [] me a copy of.” The letter is torn.
Note 17 in page 205 Or rather, Don Estaban (1825).
Note 18 in page 205 Sandoval; or, The Freemason (1826).
Note 19 in page 205 Mrs. George Keats (Georgiana Wylie). George wrote Fanny, May 20, 1820: “You cannot fail to like Mrs. Keats, she has good sense, an excellent temper, and good taste enough to dislike this country.“
Note 20 in page 205 Frederick William Smith, born August 25, 1797, exhibited busts at the Royal Academy from 1818 to 1828, winning its gold medal in 1821, and died at Shrewsbury on January 18, 1835 (Samuel Redgrave, A Dictionary of Artists [London, 1874], pp. 380 f.; Dictionary of National Biography [London, 1898], liii, 16; Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts [London, 1906], vii, 176). Graves, to whom Mr. T. C. D. Eaves directed my attention, lists Smith's “Bust of the late John Keates” as having been exhibited (catalog number 1023) at the Academy in 1822. Some of this information was given by H. B. Forman (Keats's Poetical Works [London, 1883], i, xl) on the strength of a notice in The London Magazine, May, 1822, which I have not seen. Forman remarks: “The probability is that the bust was executed after Keats's death by the aid of the mask; but I have no knowledge on the subject.” G. C. Williamson (The Keats Letters, Papers, and Other Relics Forming the Dilke Bequest in the Hampstead Public Library [London, 1914], p. 105), following Forman, says: “This bust has been entirely lost sight of, and none of the various writers upon Keats have been able to state where it now is.” It may or may not have been the bust which Keats's publisher, John Taylor, on February 13, 1845, told Edward Moxon he owned. Fanny's “young artist of some merit” was probably Patrick MacDowell, R. A. (1799–1870), whose first bust was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1822. According to Williamson (p. 110), on September 9, 1828, MacDowell made a bust of Keats “under the supervision of the poet's sister Fanny . . . and Fanny Brawne.” It was bequeathed by Dilke to the Hampstead Public Library.
Note 21 in page 206 George Keats's brother-in-law.
Note 22 in page 206 These remarks explain a passage, not annotated by Edgcumbe, of December 13, 1821, in the Letters of Fanny Brawne to Fanny Keats, p. 55 : “I have not written to Mr. WyLie nor am I sure that I shall ever summon courage to do so— . . . so dont feel disappointed if you never get the picture at all—To be sure it is very dishonest of him to keep it.“
Note 23 in page 206 The publishing firm of Hunt and Clarke, 38 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, the former being Henry, son of John Hunt, was formed in succession to that of John and Leigh Hunt in 1826. It failed in 1829. See P. P. Howe, The Life of William Hazlitt (London, 1922), pp. 387, 416; M. B. Forman, The Letters of John Keats, pp. xxxvi f.; The Post-Office London Directory for 1827.
Note 24 in page 206 John Clarke, master of the Enfield school, where Keats studied for five years, died in December, 1820 (C. C. Clarke and Mary C. Clarke, Recollections of Writers, p. 29).
Note 25 in page 206 Mrs. John Clarke, Mary C. Clarke (My Long Life [New York, 1896], p. 49) writes, lived “at Frome, in Somersetshire, with her unmarried youngest daughter [Eliza]. . . . Her married daughter, Mrs. Towers, resided at some miles distant from her, at Standerwick.” Isabella Jane Towers was the author of The Children's Fireside (1828).
Note 26 in page 206 Hodgkinson was Abbey's junior partner, “whose name,” Keats said in 1819 (Letters, éd. M. B. Forman, pp. 376, 498), “I cannot bear to write,” and about whose illness in July, 1820, he rejoiced.
Note 27 in page 206 I have not identified Johnson, Frith, and the Beilbys. The only grocer named Frith listed in The Post-Office London Directory for 1827 (I have seen no others of appropriate date) is Robert James Frith, grocer and tea-dealer, 69 Shoreditch. N. I. White (Shelley [New York, 1940], ii, 17) mentions “a Mr. Beilby,” a friend of Shelley's in 1818. There were also a publisher and a paper manufacturer of that name.
Note 28 in page 206 George Keats worked for Abbey and Cocks, wholesale tea-dealers, 4 Paneras Lane, and lived there until a quarrel with Hodgkinson drove him away around November 20, 1816 (Amy Lowell, John Keats [Boston and New York, 1925], i, 186).
Note 29 in page 206 Writing to George on April 15, 1817, John (Letters, éd. M. B. Forman, p. 18) urges him to tell “how you get on with Wilkinson's plan.” Miss Lowell (John Keats, i, 298) explains that the question “probably refers to some new business venture which George had started upon.” Miss Naomi J. Kirk, in her “Memoir of George Keats” (Keats's Poetical Works [New York, 1938], i, lxxxi), thinks it possible that George had “a temporary position in the law office of one Wilkinson. So much is hinted at in letters.“
Note 30 in page 207 Rice and Reynolds.
Note 31 in page 207 See Miss Lowell's John Keats, i, 172.
Note 32 in page 207 George told Dilke on March 25, 1828: “He [Rice] wrote on the 5th April 1827 … informing me that my Sister was indebted to me £7.18.7 money and £341.11.9. stock.” He then sadly complains of how Rice had accepted his draft for £350 on October 5, 1827, and yet of how on January 7, 1828, it was protested for non-payment. The draft remained unpaid when he wrote again to Dilke on April 18, 1828, but in a letter of July 12, 1828, he thanks Dilke for his good offices with Rice and acknowledges a remittance for £450. George's financial troubles continued, involving him in a serious misunderstanding with Dilke. Writing to him on November 14, 1829, George tried to explain his actions and formally renounced “any claim whatever” on Dilke. Some twenty years later (December 28, 1846) Dilke went into considerable details to defend George's conduct to Milnes against the charges of C. A. Brown, ending, “I doubt whether George received altogether more than £2300 or £2400” when the property was finally divided. As everybody knows, because of his explanation Milnes, in the Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (London, 1848, ii, 39–42) took pains to say that after Keats's death his friends acknowledged “that they had been deceived by appearances and that they fully acquitted him [George] of unfraternaland ungenerous conduct.“
Note 33 in page 208 It is recorded, as “bits,” to Valentine Llanos, No. 5734, December 15, 1828, in Bennet Woodcroft's Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions, From March 2, 1617 . . . to October 1, 11852 (London, 1854), p. 342.
Note 34 in page 208 See Fanny's letter of August, 1824 (Mrs. Adami, p. 108), in which she tells of having considered accepting George's invitation to Louisville.
Note 35 in page 209 I do not understand “Lynn.“
Note 36 in page 210 Dilke misquoted his words to Milnes (December 28, 1846) : “Borrow, in Ms ‘Spain,’ mentions an interview with the Minister & speaks of the ‘fine intellectual head’ of the Secretary, a judgement in which I do not agree.“
Note 37 in page 210 E. B. d'Auvergne, A Queen at Bay (London, 1910), p. 133; William Bollaert, The Wars of Succession of Portugal and Spain (London, 1870), ii, 211.
Note 38 in page 210 Mrs. Adami (p. 142), quoting a few phrases from this same letter, reads “an uncommonly prosperous,” which scarcely agrees with “reasonably well off.“