The Property of
AVOCA MUSEUM AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY*
Sold to further the educational and preservation goals of the Society
KEATS, JOHN. Autograph letter signed ("John") to Thomas and George Keats ("My Dear Brothers") in Teignmouth, Devon; Hampstead, [postmarked 30 January 1818]. 3 pages, 4to, 204 x 252mm. (9 7/8 x 8 1/16 in.), address panel (page 4) in Keats's hand: "Messrs Keats Post Office Teignmouth Devon," with postmarks ("Two Py Post Unpaid Hampstead") and remnants of red wax seal, address page docketed in an unidentified hand "Old letters of Brother John," paper separations along original fold lines with very slight losses to several letters (neatly repaired), a small triangular section of paper at outer margin torn away where letter was opened (that portion still present beneath seal) affecting one word on page 3.
Details
KEATS, JOHN. Autograph letter signed ("John") to Thomas and George Keats ("My Dear Brothers") in Teignmouth, Devon; Hampstead, [postmarked 30 January 1818]. 3 pages, 4to, 204 x 252mm. (9 7/8 x 8 1/16 in.), address panel (page 4) in Keats's hand: "Messrs Keats Post Office Teignmouth Devon," with postmarks ("Two Py Post Unpaid Hampstead") and remnants of red wax seal, address page docketed in an unidentified hand "Old letters of Brother John," paper separations along original fold lines with very slight losses to several letters (neatly repaired), a small triangular section of paper at outer margin torn away where letter was opened (that portion still present beneath seal) affecting one word on page 3.
"I AM CONVINCED THAT MY POEM WILL NOT SELL"; AN IMPORTANT UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF THE POET, DISCUSSING PUBLICATION OF "ENDYMION" AND CONTAINING A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN VERSION OF HIS "LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN"
An highly important letter, containing a new holograph version of "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," Keats's tribute to the Elizabethan poets. Thomas and George Keats were spending the winter in Devonshire for the sake of Thomas's health. John, whose first collection of poetry had been published in March 1817, was residing in Hampstead in quarters leased from a postman, Mr. Bentley, and enjoying the company of a circle of acquaintances (many of them mentioned in the letter) which included William Wordsworth, Horace Smith (1779-1849), Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Charles Armitage Brown ( 1786-1842), John Haslam, Horace Twiss and the painters Joseph Severn and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Keats had spent much of the winter revising his longest poem, "Endymion," to be published in April by the firm of Taylor and Hessey. He writes:
"You shall have the Papers. I lent the last to Dilke and he has not returned it, or rather I have been in Town two days getting the first Book [proof sheets of "Endymion," see Letters, ed. H.E. Rollins, no.57] which is I think going to the Press to day." Unfortunately, he adds, it will not be in quarto format (it was published as an octavo), and will not contain, as planned, the author's portrait. The publisher, John Taylor, "on looking attentively" at the manuscript, had changed his mind. Although Keats has received 5, he owes the same amount to Browne and has "been delaying here two or three days to give it him," without success, and so, he concludes, "must owe him still." He forwards the money with the wish that "perhaps this will do till Haslam sends you some." He enumerates outstanding debts: 10 to Mrs. Bentley (wife of Keats's Hampstead landlord) and 5 to his friend Twiss which have "nearly swallowed up" the money he recently received from Mr. Abbey, his guardian. Keats's publishers, Taylor and Hessey, who had received the first part of the manuscript of "Endymion" earlier this month, had initially proposed publishing it in quarto format, with a portrait of the poet by Haydon (see Letters, ed. Rollins, no.56).
"I am convinced now that my poem ["Endymion"] will not sell. Hope they say, so I will wait about three Months before I make my determination - either to get some employment at Home or abroad, or to retire to a very cheap way of living in the Country." His friend Haydon will nevertheless draw his portrait ("my likeness"), which he will keep, although "we can get it engraved." Haydon had proposed a chalk portrait, to be engraved for the book, and had already made the well-known life mask of Keats, in December.
Then Keats recounts an anecdote wonderfully evocative of his circle of youthful literary friends at this time: "Horace Twiss dined the other day with Horace Smith - now Horace Twiss has an affectation of repeating extempore verses - which however he writes at home...Horace T. was to recite some verses and before he did he went aside to pretend to make on the spot verses composed before hand. While H.T. was out of the room H.S. wrote the following and handed it about, when H. Twiss had done his spouting.
"What precious extempore verses are Twiss's
Which he makes ere he waters and vows as he pisses,
'Twould puzzle the Sages of greece to unriddle
Which flows out the fastest his verse or his piddle,
And 'twould pose them as much to know whether or not
His piss or his poems go quickest to pot!"
Keats was fond of sharing his poetry with his correspondents and one of his recent creations "has pleased Reynolds and Dilke beyond anything I ever did." He drew inspiration, he writes, from "Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher and the rest who used to meet at the Mermaid in days of yore..." A full fair copy of the poem later published as "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern" follows:
"Souls of Poets dead and gone
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field, or mossy cavern
Fairer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's canary wine;
Or are fruits of Paradise
Richer than those dainty pies
of venison. Oh! generous food!
Dres'd as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his Maid Marian,
Sup and booze from Horn and Can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine Host's sign board flew away,
Nobody knew whither till
An astrologer's old Quill
To a Sheepskin gave the story:
Says he saw yo[u] in your glory
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The mermaid in the Zodiac!
Souls of poets dead and gone
Are the winds a sweeter home,
Richer is uncellar'd Cavern
Than the new[?] Mermaid Tavern?"
Perhaps tired by the labor of this transcription, he concludes his letter with a passage in the right-hand margin, written across: "May the 5 do and this please you - trust to the Spring and farewell my dear Tom and Geo[rg]e. Your affectionate Brother John."
This exceptional letter presents an entirely unknown version of the poet's "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern." In a now lost letter to his friend Reynolds, Keats explained that the poem had been written after visiting the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, a legendary meeting place of Elizabethan wits and poets. That Keats's verse tribute proved popular among the poet's circle is attested to by the survival of at least seven other manuscript versions, of which only two are in Keats's hand: an early holograph at Harvard and a later, in George Keats's notebook, at the British Library. The other five are transcripts by Dilke, Woodhouse (3) and Brown (see Works, ed. J. Stillinger, p.230-231 and textual notes, pp. 593-594). The version in the present letter generally conforms to the text published in the poet's third and final book, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems (London, 1820).
The letter is not in Letters, ed. H.E. Rollins (1958) and is apparently unpublished (the scaturient couplets of Smith on the deceptively extemporaneous effusions of Twiss may well have inhibited its publication.) Keats letters are very rare on the market: the last to appear at auction was a brief social note in the Doris L. Benz collection (sale, Christie's New York, 16 November 1984, lot 194, $10,000); the last letter of significant content and length was sold in 1975.
Provenance:
1. George and Thomas Keats, the recipients. Probably brought to America with other letters when the poet's brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana Augusta Keats emigrated there in June 1818. The endorsement on the address page, "Old letters of Brother John," suggests that it was the uppermost piece in a group of letters bundled for storage.
2. Miss Juliet Fauntleroy (d.1871-1955), of Altavista, Virginia, who may have acquired the manuscript as early as 1924. When recently discovered, the Keats letter was folded in an envelope addressed to Miss Fauntleroy from New York, postmarked 9 February 1924, labeled in an unknown hand "Letter from John Keats."
4. AVOCA Museum and Historical Society, Altavista, Virginia, an educational institution which maintains and operates the Fauntleroy home (a Virginia Historic Landmark) as a museum and cultural center. The historic building and Miss Fauntleroy's collections were deeded by her descendants in 1981 to the town of Altavista. The Keats letter was discovered among miscellanous papers and records by the curator, Ms. Barbara Jastrebsky, in the summer of 1995.
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.
"I AM CONVINCED THAT MY POEM WILL NOT SELL"; AN IMPORTANT UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF THE POET, DISCUSSING PUBLICATION OF "ENDYMION" AND CONTAINING A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN VERSION OF HIS "LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN"
An highly important letter, containing a new holograph version of "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," Keats's tribute to the Elizabethan poets. Thomas and George Keats were spending the winter in Devonshire for the sake of Thomas's health. John, whose first collection of poetry had been published in March 1817, was residing in Hampstead in quarters leased from a postman, Mr. Bentley, and enjoying the company of a circle of acquaintances (many of them mentioned in the letter) which included William Wordsworth, Horace Smith (1779-1849), Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), Charles Armitage Brown ( 1786-1842), John Haslam, Horace Twiss and the painters Joseph Severn and Benjamin Robert Haydon. Keats had spent much of the winter revising his longest poem, "Endymion," to be published in April by the firm of Taylor and Hessey. He writes:
"You shall have the Papers. I lent the last to Dilke and he has not returned it, or rather I have been in Town two days getting the first Book [proof sheets of "Endymion," see Letters, ed. H.E. Rollins, no.57] which is I think going to the Press to day." Unfortunately, he adds, it will not be in quarto format (it was published as an octavo), and will not contain, as planned, the author's portrait. The publisher, John Taylor, "on looking attentively" at the manuscript, had changed his mind. Although Keats has received 5, he owes the same amount to Browne and has "been delaying here two or three days to give it him," without success, and so, he concludes, "must owe him still." He forwards the money with the wish that "perhaps this will do till Haslam sends you some." He enumerates outstanding debts: 10 to Mrs. Bentley (wife of Keats's Hampstead landlord) and 5 to his friend Twiss which have "nearly swallowed up" the money he recently received from Mr. Abbey, his guardian. Keats's publishers, Taylor and Hessey, who had received the first part of the manuscript of "Endymion" earlier this month, had initially proposed publishing it in quarto format, with a portrait of the poet by Haydon (see Letters, ed. Rollins, no.56).
"I am convinced now that my poem ["Endymion"] will not sell. Hope they say, so I will wait about three Months before I make my determination - either to get some employment at Home or abroad, or to retire to a very cheap way of living in the Country." His friend Haydon will nevertheless draw his portrait ("my likeness"), which he will keep, although "we can get it engraved." Haydon had proposed a chalk portrait, to be engraved for the book, and had already made the well-known life mask of Keats, in December.
Then Keats recounts an anecdote wonderfully evocative of his circle of youthful literary friends at this time: "Horace Twiss dined the other day with Horace Smith - now Horace Twiss has an affectation of repeating extempore verses - which however he writes at home...Horace T. was to recite some verses and before he did he went aside to pretend to make on the spot verses composed before hand. While H.T. was out of the room H.S. wrote the following and handed it about, when H. Twiss had done his spouting.
"What precious extempore verses are Twiss's
Which he makes ere he waters and vows as he pisses,
'Twould puzzle the Sages of greece to unriddle
Which flows out the fastest his verse or his piddle,
And 'twould pose them as much to know whether or not
His piss or his poems go quickest to pot!"
Keats was fond of sharing his poetry with his correspondents and one of his recent creations "has pleased Reynolds and Dilke beyond anything I ever did." He drew inspiration, he writes, from "Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher and the rest who used to meet at the Mermaid in days of yore..." A full fair copy of the poem later published as "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern" follows:
"Souls of Poets dead and gone
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field, or mossy cavern
Fairer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's canary wine;
Or are fruits of Paradise
Richer than those dainty pies
of venison. Oh! generous food!
Dres'd as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his Maid Marian,
Sup and booze from Horn and Can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine Host's sign board flew away,
Nobody knew whither till
An astrologer's old Quill
To a Sheepskin gave the story:
Says he saw yo[u] in your glory
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The mermaid in the Zodiac!
Souls of poets dead and gone
Are the winds a sweeter home,
Richer is uncellar'd Cavern
Than the new[?] Mermaid Tavern?"
Perhaps tired by the labor of this transcription, he concludes his letter with a passage in the right-hand margin, written across: "May the 5 do and this please you - trust to the Spring and farewell my dear Tom and Geo[rg]e. Your affectionate Brother John."
This exceptional letter presents an entirely unknown version of the poet's "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern." In a now lost letter to his friend Reynolds, Keats explained that the poem had been written after visiting the Mermaid Tavern in Cheapside, a legendary meeting place of Elizabethan wits and poets. That Keats's verse tribute proved popular among the poet's circle is attested to by the survival of at least seven other manuscript versions, of which only two are in Keats's hand: an early holograph at Harvard and a later, in George Keats's notebook, at the British Library. The other five are transcripts by Dilke, Woodhouse (3) and Brown (see Works, ed. J. Stillinger, p.230-231 and textual notes, pp. 593-594). The version in the present letter generally conforms to the text published in the poet's third and final book, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems (London, 1820).
The letter is not in Letters, ed. H.E. Rollins (1958) and is apparently unpublished (the scaturient couplets of Smith on the deceptively extemporaneous effusions of Twiss may well have inhibited its publication.) Keats letters are very rare on the market: the last to appear at auction was a brief social note in the Doris L. Benz collection (sale, Christie's New York, 16 November 1984, lot 194, $10,000); the last letter of significant content and length was sold in 1975.
Provenance:
1. George and Thomas Keats, the recipients. Probably brought to America with other letters when the poet's brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana Augusta Keats emigrated there in June 1818. The endorsement on the address page, "Old letters of Brother John," suggests that it was the uppermost piece in a group of letters bundled for storage.
2. Miss Juliet Fauntleroy (d.1871-1955), of Altavista, Virginia, who may have acquired the manuscript as early as 1924. When recently discovered, the Keats letter was folded in an envelope addressed to Miss Fauntleroy from New York, postmarked 9 February 1924, labeled in an unknown hand "Letter from John Keats."
4. AVOCA Museum and Historical Society, Altavista, Virginia, an educational institution which maintains and operates the Fauntleroy home (a Virginia Historic Landmark) as a museum and cultural center. The historic building and Miss Fauntleroy's collections were deeded by her descendants in 1981 to the town of Altavista. The Keats letter was discovered among miscellanous papers and records by the curator, Ms. Barbara Jastrebsky, in the summer of 1995.
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.