LOVE

Consciousness addressed

Someone is not in the room. The letter goes anyway.

A love letter is consciousness addressed.

John Keats's handwritten draft of To Autumn, ink on paper, 1819.

1819

Isle of Wight, early July 1819. John Keats has just left Fanny Brawne in Hampstead. She is not in the room. The letter is going back.

Can a letter keep a person?

A day or two before this, he was still next door to her. Now he is at a cottage window, the sea in sight. On Tuesday night he wrote a letter and did not send it. It sounded, he said, too much like Rousseau's Heloise. Morning is when he will trust himself. She kept what he did send. The letters were printed in 1878. He had died in Rome in 1821. The handwriting beside these words is not the letter. It is his draft of “To Autumn,” later that same year.

I am glad I had not an opportunity of sending off a Letter which I wrote for you on Tuesday night. 'Twas too much like one out of Rousseau's Heloise. I am more reasonable this morning.

Keats to Fanny Brawne, the letter he did not send

Write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been.

Same letter. He wants the paper kissed.

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days. Three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

Same letter. His spelling.

He asks her to kiss the words, so his mouth can touch the place. She is still in Hampstead.

Camp Clark. 14 July 1861.

He will be dead within a week.

Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Sullivan Ballou to Sarah, and to their sons

First Bull Run, 21 July 1861.

A husband.To Sarah, and to their sons.Willie. Edgar. The field may take him.

John Keats.To Fanny Brawne.She is in Hampstead. He has gone.

Sources
  1. Keats, John. Letter to Fanny Brawne, early July 1819. Public domain. Usually dated 1 July, from Shanklin, Isle of Wight. A common printing says Newport, 3 July. He says he left Hampstead a day or two before. The Tuesday-night letter was not sent. She kept the correspondence. Harry Buxton Forman published the letters in 1878. Keats died in Rome, 23 February 1821.
  2. Keats, John. “To Autumn,” autograph draft, Winchester, September 1819. Public domain. The photograph is this poem, not the July letter.
  3. Ballou, Sullivan. Letter to Sarah Ballou, 14 July 1861, Camp Clark, Washington. Public domain. The text is the letter as later printed. He died at First Bull Run, 21 July 1861.