Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/292

 two days late and with the seal broken caused him to leave the Hunts' house suddenly on 12 Aug. He was taken in and nursed by Mrs. Brawne and her daughter at Wentworth Place. Here he passed a period of relative tranquillity, during which he made up his mind, on medical advice, to try the effect of a winter in Italy, 'as a soldier marches against a battery.' From Shelley, who had heard of his condition through the Gisbornes, he received an invitation in the kindest possible terms to Pisa. But Keats preferred the society of one of his more intimate friends, and, failing that of Brown (whom the news of his relapse had failed to reach in the highlands), determined to go with Severn, who had won the gold medal of the Royal Academy the year before, and was now about to start for Rome. Keats and Severn accordingly took passage for Naples on board the ship Maria Crowther, which sailed from London on 18 Sept. 1820. Brown had in the meantime come back from Scotland, and the friends just missed each other at Gravesend. The Maria Crowther was delayed by adverse winds in the Channel, but the voyage at first seemed to do Keats good, and landing one day on the Dorset coast, he composed in a relatively peaceful temper the sonnet 'Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art.' This was his last attempt in poetry, although during the remainder of the passage he spoke much of a projected poem on the subject of Sabrina. Fresh storms retarded the voyage, and it was after a month at sea that Keats reached Naples. There he was detained ten days in quarantine, during which, he says, he summoned up 'in a kind of desperation' more puns than ever in his life before. For about a fortnight after landing Keats stayed at Naples, whence he unbosomed himself of his sufferings in an agonised letter to Brown; and having declined a second invitation from Shelley to Pisa, started with Severn for Rome about 12 Nov. Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Clark had taken lodgings for them in the Piazza di Spagna, in the corner house on the right going up the steps of Sta. Trinità de' Monti. Here the remaining three months of Keats's life were spent. A delusive rally, during which his thoughts turned again to the subject of Sabrina, was followed on 10 Dec. by a violent relapse, with attendant symptoms of fever and anguish of mind bordering on delirium. Similar attacks recurred at intervals, and during one such crisis Keats entreated to be given the bottle of laudanum he had entrusted to Severn, in order that he might put an end to his own sufferings and his friend's watching. After a while becoming calmer, he lingered through January and the greater part of February, peacefully on the whole, though with intervals when Severn was almost exhausted, 'beating about in the tempest of his mind.' Severn nursed him with assiduous devotion, and has recorded the invincible sweetness of nature which he showed through all his sufferings. His chief comfort was in listening to Severn's reading and music, the book he preferred being Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying,' the music, Haydn's sonatas. 'When will this posthumous life of mine come to an end?' was the question with which he would habitually turn to the doctor. 'I feel,' he used to say, 'the flowers growing over me.' He asked that if any epitaph were placed over his grave, it might be in the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.'  On 23 Feb. 1821 the approaches of death came on about four o'clock in the morning, and at about eleven he passed away peacefully in Severn's arms.

Three days later his remains were buried in the old protestant cemetery, near the pyramid of Gaius Cestius. Through Severn's care the spot was marked by a tombstone, carved with a lyre and inscribed with the poet's name and an epitaph, including his own words above quoted. In 1875 a committee of Englishmen and Americans, headed by Sir Vincent Eyre, provided for the repair of the monument and the placing on an adjacent wall of a medallion portrait of the poet presented by its sculptor, Mr. Warrington Wood. In 1881 the remains of Severn were laid in a tomb of similar design beside those of his friend.

Miss Brawne is recorded to have been 'very much affected' by the news of Keats's death; 'because she had treated him so badly,' adds the witness above quoted. Her own words about him, as given in Medwin's 'Life of Shelley,' are kind and feeling enough. After his death she remained on intimate terms with his sister Fanny. She afterwards married a Mr. Lindo, who changed his name to Lindon, and was one of the secretaries of the Great Exhibition of 1851. She died in 1865. Her mother was burnt to death from 'her dress having caught fire at her own front door while they were still living at Wentworth Place.

Fanny Keats on reaching her majority had to put the law in motion (with the help of Dilke) in order to get from Mr. Abbey the inheritance due to her. She married in 1826 a Spanish gentleman, Señor Llanos, well known as a writer and liberal politician, and had by him two sons, one of whom followed the profession of painting, and two daughters. She died at Madrid in December 1889 (see Athenæum, 1890, p. 16).