Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-FameColvin, Sidney
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Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame
Colvin, Sidney
Keats, John, 1795-1821; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
A little later he improvises a sample, not more than mildly satirical,
from a comedy he professes to be planning on the ways and manners of
Hunt and his satellites.
In the same letter a new personage makes her momentous entry on the
scene. 'Mrs Brawne who took Brown's house for the summer still resides
at Hampstead--she is a very nice woman--and her daughter senior is I
think beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable, and
strange--we have a little tiff now and then, and she behaves better, or
I must have sheered off.' This Mrs Brawne was a widow lady of West
Indian connexions and some little fortune, with a daughter, Fanny, just
grown up and two younger children. She had rented Brown's house while he
and Keats were away in Scotland, and had naturally become acquainted
with the Dilkes living next door and sharing a common garden. After
Brown's return Mrs Brawne moved with her family to a house in Downshire
Street close by. The acquaintance with the Dilkes was kept up, and it
was through them, not long after he came back from Scotland, that Keats
first met Fanny Brawne. His next words about her are these:--
Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height with a fine style
of countenance of the lengthened sort--she manages to make her hair
look well--her nostrils are 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--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 not from any 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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