November to December 1816: Busy & Important Months: An Expanding World yet Cloying, Aspirational Poetry
76 Cheapside, London
Where Keats lives with his brothers, Tom and George. He moves from 8 Dean Street to 76 Cheapside mid-November 1816; the stay at Dean Street is probably about one month.
These few months are busy and formative—and crucial in reinforcing his poetic goals and direction. For example, Keats has just met established figures of London’s cultural and literary scene—including Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Robert Haydon, and John Hamilton Reynolds— as well as a fellow young poet, the outspoken, aspiring, and eccentric Percy Bysshe Shelley; he has his best poem thus far published (Chapman’s Homer) in Hunt’s The Examiner, where he is publicly noted as an important, new young poet; he meets Horace Smith; Haydon promises to send some of Keats’s poetry to Wordsworth; he has a life-mask made by Haydon;* he is certified as a apothecary; and he is very close to confirming his decision to abandon a medical career for that of a poet. [For a flowchart of Keats’s movement into the London cultural and literary scene, see Keats’s Social Network.]
Midway in this period he writes his Great Spirits sonnet. The poem
commemorates his enthusiasm for the inspirational spirit of the age, of which Wordsworth, Hunt, and Haydon are considered parts.
Within the poem’s terms, Wordsworth seems to have the highest possible standing as
a poet,
capturing his originality and high powers from nothing less than the wings of an archangel,
which may hold some allusion to Milton’s poetic prowess; Hunt’s lighter poetic character
falls
into his social smile,
but Keats recognizes Hunt’s enduring fight for freedom; as for
Haydon, Keats seems to suggest that Haydon’s artistic determination is informed by
whisperings
from Raphael, the astonishing high Renaissance painter. By late November, Haydon (always
easily flattered) communicates to Keats his enthusiasm for Keats’s poetic gifts and
aspirations. As mentioned, he has also told Keats that he plans to show Wordsworth
the sonnet;
Keats is, understandably, overwhelmed by the idea. He moves from being an almost completely
unknown poet to having his poetry personally presented to arguably the most important
poet of
the era.
During this period, Keats also composes his thus-far most substantial verses, and
they become
the book-end poems for his 1817 collection, Poems, by John
Keats: I stood tip-toe, and Sleep and Poetry. Both poems are largely
about the desire to find inspiration and to write enduring, great poetry. Unfortunately,
neither poem is hardly successful: the language and style is often forced by the rhyme
(couplets), and the accounts of freshness, blisses, bowers, flora, fauna, birds, old
bards,
and various sweet, green pleasantries are, at once, fairly random in ordering and
predicable
in their descriptions. There is, in short, too much bowery thought and cloying desire
to be an
inspired poet. These two poems, however, do form the basis of his poetic apprenticeship
as he
searches for forms that reflect his poetic character and subjects that capture his
growing
original thinking and sensibilities. But it will take another two years of experiment
and
development to evolve that strong and original voice we know as Keatsian—unless, that
is, we
want Keatsian
to signal something between ineffectual, over-reaching, and prettified
poetry: a callow poet in search of worldly poetry.
But there is some hope in these two longer early poems, and in particular in Sleep and Poetry.
Despite the lingering jauntiness, fluttering, and sweet green delights that randomly
figure in
the poem, Keats is fully aware that he is (to use some of his own terms of reference
in the
poem) a thirsty, presumptuous novice aiming at poetic heights that are not just overwhelming
but possibly unachievable. The task, he notes, is both noble and mad. Indeed! But
for him, it
is also irresistible. This, then, is touching and endearing, but it does not in itself
add up
to what he strives for: that vast idea
(291) of exceptional poetry.
During November and December, Keats also composes a number of sonnets that will also appear in that first collection. While these are fairly stylistically accomplished and aim for larger relevance (like, for example, To Kosciusko), others express little that is outwardly poignant—like To My Brothers or On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour—or poetically notable. There is little original thought or striking phrasing in these poems.
More than once during this period, then, Keats pictures himself as a young poet holding
on to
his pen, quivering with poetic aspiration and anticipation. In, for example, that
latter poem
(On Leaving
Some Friends at an Early Hour, likely written early November), we have our
young poet asking for a “golden pen” and a glowing tablet; he hopes he might, while
leaning on
a pile of flowers, and by conjuring singing angels strumming the silver strings of
heavenly
harps, and while picturing pearly cars, diamond jars, pink robes, and delicious music,
be able
to “write down a line of glorious tone.” Keats’s excessive imagination, yet a sort-of
literal
grasping for something special to write with—once more, his desire to be poet—is at
once
touching and a poetic dead end. The imagery suggests that, in contending for poetic
heights,
he might on his way encounter some glittering prizes. He’ll have to wait some time,
and he’ll
have to figure out his own way to get there. (Those Friends
referred to include some
new ones, like Hunt and Reynolds.)
Keats will later acknowledge that his first collection amounts to little more than
first-blights
(letter, to Shelley, 16 August 1820), but they do provide the important
measure by which we can assess Keats’s poetic progress over the next few years.
And in the background of all this activity, the last two weeks of November into early
December see fairly serious political unrest in the form political meetings in the
London area
of Islington. Initially, at least, the issue is the demand for electoral reform, as
well as to
press the government to address widespread economic distress. The organized unrest—known
as
the Spa Fields riots—that spins out from a 2 December meeting does get out of control,
with a
radical group (known as the Spenceans) attempting to storm the Tower of London and
take over
the Bank of England in order to assume power (they openly have the spirit of French
Revolution
in mind); they loot a gunsmith’s shop; gunfire is exchanged between rioters and government
forces. Habeas corpus will be suspended in March 1817. While this particular
widely-written-about event that Keats knew fully about fizzled, momentum for protest
in the
name of reform is gained, and serious incidents of unrest are set off over the coming
years.
Some of the organizers and rioters were charged with treason, but acquitted. Given
Keats’s
sympathies and company, we can tell which side Keats would have been on: as he will
write to a
friend 22 September 1819 about these public meetings
of protest, he hopes he will be
able to put a Mite of help to the Liberal side of the Question before I die.
[See 3 March 1817 for more on the publication of Keats’s first collection.]
