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John
Keats and Fanny Brawne
John Keats, the poet, died of tuberculosis in
1821, in Rome. He had left the passion of his life, Fanny Brawne, and his
closest friends behind in England.
Fanny was particularly devastated by her fiancé’s loss at
such a distance and wrote this moving letter to John Keats sister,
who was also called Fanny:
“I am patient, resigned, very resigned.
I know my Keats is happy, I know my Keats is happy, happier a
thousand times than he could have been here, for Fanny, you do not,
you never can know how much he has suffered. So much that I do
believe, were it in my power I would not bring him back. All
that grieves me now is that I was not with him, and so near it as I
was ... He at least was never deceived about his complaint, though
the Doctors were ignorant and unfeeling enough to send him to that
wretched country to die, for it is now known that his recovery was
impossible before he left us, and he might have died here with so
many friends to soothe him and me me with him.
All we have to console ourselves with is the great joy he felt that
all his misfortunes were at an end.”
Fanny Brawne
grieved for many years until eventually she married a man 12 years
younger than herself and had his children, but she always kept John
Keats love letters by her side. She gave the letters to her
children before she died, after making them promise to not reveal
them until after the death of their father.
Death and life, 1911 (detail)
Klimt, Gustav
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