Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats
John Stuart Mill · en
"My friends have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and
there they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct:
spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with anybody's
confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care not to see any
of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be the Friend of idle
Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our Loves should be put into
the microscope of a Coterie. Their laughs should not affect you (I
may perhaps give you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect
a few people to hate me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who
have pretended a great friendship for me) when in competition with
one, who if he should never see you again would make you the Saint of
his memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for
your Beauty, who would have God-bless'd me from you for ever: who
were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you eternally.
People are revengeful--do not mind them--do nothing but love
me."[143]
In his next letter to her he says:
"I shall never be able to endure any more the society of any of those
who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two
years taste like brass upon my Palate."[144]
The lack of self-control and the distrust seen in these extracts show that
Keats was laboring under hallucinations produced by an ill mind and body;
the letters from which they have been taken are unnatural, almost
terrible, in their passion and rebellion against fate.
Keats moved to the residence of the Brawnes. While he was here the trouble
seems to have been smoothed over, for in a letter to Hunt he says: "You
will be glad to hear I am going to delay a little at Mrs. Brawne's. I hope
to see you whenever you get time, for I feel really attached to you for
your many sympathies with me, and patience at all my _lunes_.... Your
affectionate friend, John Keats."[145] To Brown he says: "Hunt has behaved
very kindly to me"; and again: "The seal-breaking business is over-blown.
I think no more of it."[146] Hunt's reply is couched in most affectionate
terms:
"Giovani [sic] Mio,
"I shall see you this afternoon, and most probably every day. You
judge rightly when you think I shall be glad at your putting up
awhile where you are, instead of that solitary place. There are
humanities in the house; and if wisdom loves to live with children
round her knees (the tax-gatherer apart), sick wisdom, I think,
should love to live with arms about it's waist. I need not say how
you gratify me by the impulse that led you to write a particular
sentence in your letter, for you must have seen by this time how much
I am attached to yourself.