Keats, John, 1795-1821; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"Perhaps, as you are fond of giving me sketches of characters,
you may like a little picnic of scandal, even across the
Atlantic. Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height,
with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort. She
wants sentiment in every feature. She manages to make her hair
look well; her nostrils are very fine, though a little painful;
her mouth is bad, and good; her profile is better than her full
face, which indeed is not 'full,' but pale and thin, without
showing any bone; her shape is very graceful, and so are her
movements; her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet
tolerable. She is not seventeen [Keats, if he really wrote 'not
seventeen,' was wrong here; 'not nineteen' would have been
correct, as she was born on August 9, 1800.] But she is ignorant,
monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions; calling
people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the
term 'minx.' This is, I think, from no innate vice, but from a
penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, tired of
such style, and shall decline any more of it. She had a friend to
visit her lately. You have known plenty such. She plays the
music, but without one sensation but the feel of the ivory at her
fingers. She is a downright Miss, without one set-off. We hated
her ["We" would apparently be Keats, Brown, and the Dilkes], and
smoked her, and baited her, and I think drove her away. Miss
Brawne thinks her a paragon of fashion, and says she is the only
woman in the world she would change persons with. What a stupe!
She is as superior as a rose to a dandelion."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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