21 October 1820: This Kind of Suffering
; Arrival in Naples, Not in the World, &
An Intellect in Splints
From London to Naples to Rome
On 17 September, at the London Docks and with his friend, the young painter Joseph Severn, Keats steps on board the brigantine
rig Maria Crowther (a boat designed for
cargo, not passengers). A few other friends—Richard
Woodhouse, John Taylor, and William Haslam—will travel as far as Gravesend with
Keats and Severn. Keats is to voyage to Italy, with hopes to restore his sinking health.
There
is little doubt he is consumptive—the so-called wasting disease or white plague—and
what we
call pulmonary tuberculosis. Blood-letting and restrictive diets will end up making
his
condition worse, as do remedies ranging from laudanum to mercury. That the diagnosis
he gets
points to emotional or mental issues as the causes of his condition is also unfortunate
(as
well as agitation caused by thinking about poetry); Keats himself often refers to
his
sometimes uneven emotional state (that can be boiled down to nervous anxiety and occasional
depression) as the cause of his difficulties. On the last day of September, he surveys
his
condition, and, in his sadness crossed over with hopelessness, he turns a little
philosophical: we cannot be created for this kind of suffering
(letter, 30 Sept 1820).
On 21 October, thirty-five days after boarding, Keats arrives in Naples, only to have
the
vessel quarantined for ten further days over fears of typhus originating in London.
Conditions
on board during the quarantine are terrible, especially after a voyage with such constricted
quarters. He cannot even rouse himself to write about the beauties of the Bay of Naples.
On 31
October, the day of his 25th birthday, Keats finally sets foot on shore. From Naples,
thinking
about his disarranged love for Fanny Brawne
completely overwhelms him, and he attempts, though he cannot, to avoid thoughts of
what might
have been. His feelings, he writes, are coals of fire,
and conjuring one of Wordsworth’s major tropes while questioning his
fate, in a letter of 1 November to his closest friend, Charles Brown, he writes, It surprised me that the human heart is capable of
containing and bearing so much misery. Was I born for this end?
This in fact captures an
important point in Keats’s poetic thematics. What is the deep meaning of human suffering
and
sorrow? And this, then, also takes us back to Keats’s profound philosophical exploration
of
what it is to see into the heart of man, which, in May 1818,
takes Keats to consider human life via the simile of entering a Mansion of Many
Apartments,
where, if we go deep enough into the many chambers of that mansion—into
human life—the sharpening of one’s vision reveals that the World is full of Misery and
Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression.
Keats is now, in effect, in October 1820, not
just seeing far, far into that Mansion—he is, as it were, living within its darkened
passages.
Keats writes that to even see Fanny’s name written would be more than I can bear,
and
according to Severn’s later recollections, at this time Keats could not let go of
a gemstone
that Fanny gave him—an oval white carnelian.
After getting a visa, Keats sets off for Rome from Naples a week later. Severn seems to have picked some wild flowers to accompany them on the journey. Keats arrives in Rome 15 November, with a short-lived reprieve from the illness.
Keats is in poor condition; chances for recovery are impossibly slim. He will receive well-intended medical attention from a physician, Dr. James Clark, including blood-letting and eating restrictions. Keats is fevered, in pain, and has been spitting up blood; he is more or less confined to his bed and to the small quarters; Severn feels equally trapped. Symptoms that are earlier centered in his lungs seem now to have spread to his stomach (he complains of indigestion), which, given that pulmonary tuberculosis can cause bleeding in the intestines, is not surprising. The illness may have lingered and progressed slowly for as much as two years. Keats fully witnessed the deaths of both his mother and his youngest brother, Tom, to the illness.
Keats, then, knows what is coming. And so, even while he was in quarantine in Naples,
his
thoughts are of the inevitable—in a way, he feels his life is already over: to Mrs. Brawne, the mother of his love, Fanny, he writes, I do not feel in the
world
(?22 or 24 Oct). In the same letter, he wishes he could give an account of the Bay
of Naples; he repeats his feeling of being separated from this life; his forlorn wish
is to
once more be a Citizen of this world—[. . .] O what a misery it is to have an intellect in
splints!
