W a y m a r k s ~: "Here Lies One Whose Name Is Writ In Water"

The Spanish Steps & Keats-Shelley House, Rome, 2001.

Today marks the 200^th anniversary of the death of John Keats at the age of 25 in Rome. Over the years I have developed a real and abiding affinity for Keats. I first read Keats when I was around 16 years old at Sixth Form College. I transferred to English from German A-Level (which I found far too difficult to keep up with), and I remember my first lesson began with an “unseen” examination of a poem by Keats. The teacher handed out a photocopy of one of Keats’ shorter verses to each student and we were given about five or ten minutes to read it and analyse it before the class discussed it. I read the poem and was struck by the (for want of a better term) antique-style of writing. Mulling over it though, I remember thinking I’d got the basic gist of what it was about, but I wasn’t totally sure. Looking around me, I was slightly startled to see my classmates furiously scribbling on their photocopies, and more alarmingly still, the kid sitting next to me seemed to be doing some sort of complex mathematical equation on the margins of her photocopy. Consequently, I felt some trepidation when the teacher called the class’s attention and announced that it was time for us to “start taking it apart.”

The graves of John Keats & Joseph Severn, Rome, 2001.

But what followed was an absolute revelation. First one student said it was an a-b, a-b, c-d, c-d, e-f, e-f, g-g rhyming scheme, with ten metrical beats per line in iambic pentameter. Another said they thought it was written in the ‘sonnet’ form. I knew a sonnet was a love poem, but the maths and trigonometry were entirely new to me. The rest of my classmates were already one term ahead of me, so they were all very well practiced at this sort of exercise. I realised I had some catching up to do!

However, at the same time, something remarkable was happening. And it was happening surprisingly rapidly. As the discussion continued, and as I sat there listening and scrutinised the lines in front of me, it all started to make sense. Almost as though it were visibly crystallising before my eyes and refracting the light directly into my mind through the prism of this short poem. The rhyme scheme leapt out at me, then I saw the metrical rhythm. I’d always assumed old poetry was difficult, but I never really knew how or why that seemed to be the case. But here I was, very quickly picking up the basic rules of this new game, and it was a game which I liked. I liked it a lot. From that moment onwards, I never looked back. “Unseens” became one of my favourite activities in English class, especially because the teachers would spring them on us without warning, which for me added to the fun of them.

John Keats reading in Wentworth Place, Hampstead in 1819, by Joseph Severn, 1821-1823.

We spent a term studying Keats. His poetry fitted in really well with my Classics A-Level because he drew on so many Classical myths and motifs, it was nice to study two subjects which complimented one another so neatly. I’d studied some Shakespeare for English GCSE – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but other than that, I remember very little of what I’d studied in English classes prior to doing my English A-Level. Certainly nothing like this, or at least not in this manner or technical depth. And yet, I can remember everything we studied at Sixth Form – Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice; Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse; several plays by Henrik Ibsen; Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (which I loved!); Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (which I didn't!); the poems of Thomas Hardy; and, of course, Keats. I was very fortunate to have two profoundly inspirational English teachers. Each English lesson was something I really looked forward to, but I think my favourite of all the writers we studied was Keats – partly because of how vividly I can still recall that moment of revelation. That sudden awakening and the realisation that “I get this! – This is something which I can actually do!” It was such a thrill. It meant I no longer feared works of literature, instead it made literary works all the more intriguing and compelling. If I can do Keats, then surely I can do the other Romantics, and even Shakespeare – bring ‘em on! – I’ll have a pop at doing all of them!

On the Spanish Steps with Keats-Shelley House behind, Rome, 2001.

And it was true, I never looked back. After finishing my A-Levels I carried on reading poetry purely for my own pleasure, soon discovering that the Romantics and the Metaphysical Poets were the ones I enjoyed the most. The local bookshop sold very cheap paperbacks of the complete works of famous poets – Blake, Coleridge, Clare, Byron, Shelley, Longfellow. Soon I had a nicely distinguished-looking shelf of Wordsworth Classics books with nice British racing green and imperial purple-coloured spines, but these were not simply for decoration, they were soon very well-thumbed tomes.

The Pyramid of Cestius, Rome, 2001.

There was also a creative writing group at my Sixth Form College, which I and several of my friends joined. Poetry became quite a big thing at our College. Everyone seemed to write poems – but it wasn’t all nouveau Dead Poets Society, mostly we wrote daft and silly Edward Lear-like rhymes about college life or absurd Spike Milligan-esque verses, which were then published in the College’s weekly newsletters. People also used to circulate handwritten poems in a kind of samizdat. And for a while, I genuinely thought of myself as ‘a poet.’ Some of the poems we wrote at the time I memorised (along with some by proper poets, such as Byron and Robert Herrick, and even passages from Shakespeare) which I can still recite to this day, almost 30 years later!

John Keats by Joseph Severn, 1817.

But the Keats connection was to become an increasingly uncanny one. A friend of mine at Sixth Form was convinced I looked like John Keats! – pointing to a poster in one of our classrooms, which I think might have been produced for an exhibition about Keats held at the British Library, that featured a sketch of Keats drawn by his friend Joseph Severn, who was with Keats when he died in Rome. Severn’s sketch shows Keats in profile with longish hair. We were all listening to grunge music at this time, and so I naturally grew my hair long, dressed in ripped jeans and an army surplus jacket, with Doc Martens boots. A year or two later, another friend of mine (who went on to art college) drew a sketch of me in profile, sitting by the River Thames on the Southbank. When she showed it to me, I was struck by the likeness of this sketch to the one of Keats on the poster in that classroom. Maybe my other friend was right? – I’d not really seen it myself at the time, but I kind of did now. It’s not often you get a chance to see yourself as others do, but having an artist friend who might draw you is perhaps the best way to do so. Consequently, there I saw myself – just as she saw me – but looking uncannily like John Keats.

John Keats sleeping in Rome, 28 January 1821, by Joseph Severn.

My fascination for Keats never faded. I read his biography by the then poet laureate, Andrew Motion, shortly before I went to Rome for the first time just over 20 years ago. Hence, my main sightseeing priorities in the ‘Eternal City’ were Keats-Shelley House and the Spanish Steps, followed by the cemetery where Keats is buried. The Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, and the Roman Forum all came second, and sadly there wasn’t time to see the Vatican on this very short trip, so one day I still intend to go back again. It was wonderful to wander round Keats-Shelley House, and rather moving to see the place where Keats passed away and to look into the somewhat macabrely serene face of his death mask. I’d always felt the sketch which Severn drew of Keats in that room whilst Keats was sleeping was perhaps my favourite portrait of the poet, and not simply because of how poignant it is.

John Keats' death mask, 1821 (Christies)

Sitting in the sunshine watching the many stray cats lounging around the graves of Keats and Severn, with the Pyramid of Cestius in the background, surrounded by tall pine trees and flowers, was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. And having read Motion’s biography so recently, along with the fact that I too was then 25, the same age Keats was when he tragically died of TB, was a real harmonic convergence for me. Keats’ poems (and a particular chapter in Motion’s biography) even inspired me to write a verse of my own on the tragedy of Keats’ early death:

THE RING OF POESY
(Keats' Final Journey)

It seems that there is little left to me,
O'er the realms of contempt and misery;
Spitéd thus, I have scorn'd the schoolroom slates
'Pon which learnt I the ciphers of this scrawl,
Scratching rank and file of Calendar dates
'Gainst this Cell, where left ‘lone, I moan and drawl;
Adding with each Annum thus, one by one,
Grudge upon grumble, sightless to reward
For all the toil and struggle I have done:
Ne'er shalt Pity hear Ignominy's call
Mumbling prelude to such Poetic Fall,
The landing laid prior, shall be my Sword!

(Please don’t think for a moment that I’m claiming to be anywhere near the level of John Keats as a poet! – Far from it. – But the point is, he inspired me to try my hand at writing serious poems. Even if, reading them 20+ years later, they now seem more than just a little bit poncey!)

Soon after returning to London, I went to Hampstead to visit Keats House, where he’d lived next door to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne. My affinity for Keats had grown further when I read more about his short life, and visited the places where he’d lived, died and was buried. The fact that he was derided by some as “the cockney poet”, given his relatively humble background, was something which struck a chord with me. I’d not found school easy. I’d worked reasonably hard, yet I only ever got average grades, but like Keats, I always felt as though there was something I should strive towards, that I should never give up, especially not because certain teachers (sadly not all teachers were as inspirational as my two English A-Level teachers!), or more clever or more privileged people around me said I shouldn’t bother. I always felt as though one should have something to aim towards, just as Keats used to dream of finding himself “amongst the English poets” after his death:

THE POETIC ENDEAVOUR

Shall I be among the English Poets
After my death? Of that I cannot know
For my mind was left alone to grow its
Own direction. ‘Twas not given to grow
By State Education. Fie! – which at best
Did nurture solely by adversity!
Flawed grammar’s arithmetic the means test
Of the doltish fall-out’s longevity -
Still persisting like the lingering hum
Of a radioactive disaster ...
‘Tis to me but a legacy to shun;
Such hath been my only goal hereafter:
Nobility of mind – ambition’s sun
Each day to rise, follow, and to o’ercome.

Several years later, when I was working in the Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum, I noticed we often used to get visitors knocking on the Department’s door asking “which urn in the Museum was the one which had inspired Keats to write his famous Ode?” – This was never a particularly straightforward question to answer. And most of the curators in the Department were Classicists and Archaeologists, rather than experts on Romantic English Poets, hence there would then be a scramble to pull together the relevant books and papers from the Departmental library to help answer this question. And so, it piqued my own interest, reawakening my affinity for both the poet and the place where I worked. I began to read up on Keats’ connection to the BM and that perennial question as to “which urn was it?”

Once again, it quickly became another Keats-connected lightbulb moment, when, not long afterwards, the editor of the BM Magazine came to one of our Departmental meetings, asking for anyone to pitch ideas to her for articles. So I suggested I might write a short piece on Keats and his Ode on a Grecian Urn, bringing together all those disparate theories and possible sources as to what had actually inspired him. The article was published in 2005, and it is now handed out to anyone who knocks on the door of the Department asking that particular question (you can also find it on-line here too).

The Sosibios Vase, drawn by John Keats (Keats-Shelley House, Rome)

Not long after the article came out, I was in Paris, wandering round the Louvre, when I bumped into the Sosibios Vase. Although Keats never saw this sculpture himself, it must have caught his eye, most likely in Henry Moses’ book of engravings, because Keats made his own drawing of it (the handwriting below is possibly/probably that of Charles Dilke, or so I've been told). I bumped into the sculpture once again only a couple of years ago in Zaragoza, Spain. Having spent so long looking at Keats drawing and thinking about it, each time I stumbled across it the sculpture was instantly recognisable to me. Rather like an old friend. It never ceases to amaze me how certain works of art – be they poems, paintings, songs, pieces of music, or sculptures – can engrave themselves into our souls and become indelibly inked into our lives and stay with us as familiar companions forever.

The Sosibios Vase, on display in Zaragoza, Spain, 2016.

But the most recent, and, perhaps the most personal, revelation connected to Keats came just a few years ago, when my mother began tracing her side of the family tree. We’d always known my grandfather’s mother’s family name had been ‘Kates’, but there was one relative who had a mad theory that ‘Kates’ was actually derived from ‘Von Katz’; hence my mother was keen to look into this and see if there might be any truth to it. But what she found was, to my mind, much more surprising and very much more intriguing. A couple of generations back from my great grandmother ‘Kates’ is spelt variously as ‘Keates’ and ‘Keats.’ But it was only when my mother was telling me about this that we realised there could be more to this unexpected coincidence than mere serendipity, because we also have the family name ‘Jennings’ in this branch of the family tree. The name ‘Jennings’ leapt out at me because I knew this was John Keats’ mother’s maiden name. And so, just like Keats, I have forebears in London who married with the surname ‘Keates’ and the maiden name ‘Jennings.’

In Keats case it was his parents, Thomas Keates and Frances Jennings, who were married in 1794. In my case, six generations back, I have forbears named William Keates and Sophia Jennings, who were married in 1803. There have been quite a few attempts by a whole host of different researchers over the years to trace John Keats’ family tree, but it has proved to be notoriously difficult, and several biographers have noted that Keats himself seems to have been quite cagey about discussing this subject with his friends. Because of this, some have speculated that there might have been something to hide – perhaps something shameful to do with illegitimacy, or a fall in social status for some other reason, or simply that the family was of very humble origin – or perhaps Keats himself was just not very interested in his own ancestry? But as Nicholas Roe, Keats’ most recent biographer notes, there does appear to have been a strong connection between the Keates and Jennings families which may well go back several generations before Keats’ own parents’ time. And so, given the near proximity of time and place, and the close linking of these two family names, there is a plausible chance that Keats’ forbears and my own may well be or share collateral relations of some sort. Until we can make a wider genealogical search, assuming the records are there to find, it remains a tantalising possibility.

Keats House (Wentworth Place), Hampstead.

Staring at those twinned family names popping up so unexpectedly on my own family tree, especially given my own long-held fascination with Keats’ life and work, I couldn’t help thinking back to that friend of mine who had dragged me into that classroom to see the poster of John Keats, which she thought looked like me. I still don’t really see it myself, but perhaps my friend had a keener eye than me, which might help to explain why my affinity for John Keats was so instant, and why it has remained so strong and so long abiding throughout my life. Keats’ name, as the headstone of his grave in Rome says, may well have been “writ in water” – but, for me at least, it’s true what they say about ‘still waters run deep.’