Next came the younger, more rebellious group of poets, these included the notorious and scandalous poets (for their time), Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The fifth poet to gain a reputation (unfortunately, posthumously) was John Keats. He was unlucky in the respect he didn't fit into the older, respected group based on his age, nor in the younger group, for he was neither a lord nor in the upper classes. He was one of the first "middle class" poets of the then emerging middle class to gain the attention of a public which was then very snobbish about class and social status.
One of the aspects about Keats that also is unique to the background of the other Romantic poets was that he was trained to
be in the "professions". What I mean by this is Keats was apprenticed at a young age to be a surgeon. He eventually got his
license as an apothecary and could have done quite well financially if he decided to go into this line of work rather than poetry.
Keats's medical education, however, didn't end with his apothecary license. He went on to become a medical student. It was
only after he met Leigh Hunt that he decided that he didn't want to become a doctor; his true passion was in poetry. After this
decision he left medical school for good. He only practiced his medical skill when his younger brother, Tom Keats, was dying.
A century ago, a poet still could make a comfortable living, providing he was popular enough.
Unfortunately the popularity he craved never was forthcoming. Two critics (who cowardly
remained anonymous) wrote scathing reviews of Keats's poetry, one labeling him as a "Cockney"
poet since he lived in London and not the respectable "Lake District" of Wordsworth and
Coleridge. Since he was not formerly educated at Cambridge or Oxford (like Byron and Shelley)
nor held a title of any kind, it was easy to label him (despite his poetic merit) as being distinctly
"lower class".
Though some of his early poetry (which he wrote when he was twenty to twenty-two) wouldn't be considered "top-notch", the rate in which his poetry excelled and matured is astonishing. In his last year before he was struck ill with the soon-to-be-fatal tuberculosis, in 1820 he produced "The Eve of St. Agnes", "The Lamia", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and the amazing unfinished epics, "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion". Keats who was considered "uneducated" spent a great deal of time studying Shakespeare and Milton. He admired and imitated these two masters and it reflects in his poetry. The sensuous, detailed and all-encompassing quality of his work has often been likened to Shakespeare. I believe that if he had lived a full life and had not died at 26 he would have equalled Shakespeare in the depth, beauty and pathos of his poetic language.
Keats flirted and had many innocent relationships with young women when he was a teenager. Many were not as serious as
when he fell in love with Fanny Brawne.
Fanny Brawne appealed to Keats because she was a witty, high-spirited girl with a good sense of humor and an unusual understanding of Keats's personality. She was seventeen when she first met Keats and enjoyed not only his effusive praise for her beauty, but unfairly met with harsh criticism on Keats's part, especially when he contracted tuberculosis.
He accused her of flirting with Charles Brown and often scolded her for going off to parties. As the tuberculosis grew worse, Keats demanded more from her. She nursed him when he stayed at the Brawne's house before he left for Italy. She endured Keats's erratic mood swings and obsessive jealousy with incredible grace, tolerance and understanding. I believe Keats must not be blamed for his behavior, since he didn't hate Fanny, parse, but hated the fact she represented life. He hated he was being torn away from her, but from life itself.
It turned out Keats was right. He died early into the following year. Fanny always was saddened by Keats's early death (he
was her first fiancée), but she didn't dwell upon the past. She eventually married and led a full life, though she kept many letters
and mementos from Keats.
Keats wasn't marked out alone by the scourge of tuberculosis but nearly the whole Keats family.
As a child Keats's uncle died of tuberculosis and then his mother by the time he was fourteen. The death which hurt Keats the most was the death of his favorite brother, Tom, who he desperately tried to nurse back to health. Tom was sixteen when he died.
Keats was next on the tuberculosis death-list. It is believed he contracted it when he was nursing Tom and there it incubated in his lungs. Some speculate it first manifested itself in the Northern Tour Keats took with Charles Brown where he caught a chill and then got a terrible sore throat. The sore throat kept reoccurring and the full-blown tuberculosis showed itself on a cold March night when Keats forgot his coat. He came back greatly chilled and coughed up some blood. The terrible hemmorhages began soon after and he died that February.
George Keats contracted tuberculosis a few years after Keats's death. The only survivor of Keats's immediate family who never fell victim to the "family disease" was Fanny Keats, the youngest child of the Keats family.
Keats has often been linked more strongly to his sad, untimely death rather than the achievement of his work. The picture of a sensitive, frail young poet struck down in mid-life by harsh criticism is largely because of Percy Bysshe Shelley who perpetuated this myth in Adonais. Though Shelley meant well by the poem, it was not true and he didn't completely understand Keats's personality.
The more you read about Keats and his life, the more you realize he represented life, not death. He was in love with life and all within life.
Keats was actually very strong and healthy. He was unusually short, even for the times, (a little over five feet), but made up for it in a friendly and exuberant personality. Keats easily attracted friends and remained generous and loyal to them. Had Keats not contracted tuberculosis, he might have easily lived a long, full and very productive life. Keats, however, still retains most of his fame from his remarkable "death-themed" odes and the tragedy of his early death.