Keats and Rome
John Keats’s grave in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery
In September 1820 John Keats set sail for Rome. His doctors had told him it was essential for his health to spend the winter in Italy. His friends raised the money needed, and the artist Joseph Severn agreed to accompany him. Keats was distressed at leaving his fiance Fanny Brawne and feared he would never see her again. The publication of his third volume of poems in July had not led to the success he craved.
Keats disembarked in Naples on 31st October, his twenty-fifth birthday. He and Severn travelled to Rome and moved into lodgings on the second floor at 26 Piazza di Spagna. This house stands in a busy square alongside the marble steps (now known as the Spanish steps) leading up to a grand church, the Trinta dei Monti. In these small rooms Keats lived out his final days, dying from consumption on 23rd February 1821. He was buried in the protestant cemetery in Rome.
Having done so much research on Keats and written my novel about his time as an apothecary and surgeon, I dreamt of visiting the house which is now a museum and library dedicated to the second-generation English Romantic poets, maintained by the Keats-Shelly Memorial Association. I also wanted to see the cemetery. Last year in May I achieved my dream.
It was raining heavily the day I visited the house and the square (which isn’t square but more a long, thinnish triangle) was full of colourful umbrellas held by tourists. The Barcaccia fountain by Bernini, a boat filled with water which appears to be sinking, stands in front of the Spanish steps. 26 is right next to the steps, a tall thin house in white and pale orange with an imposing door. Inside it felt cold from the marble and it was a climb to the second floor. In his first few weeks here Keats went out on small excursions, but when his health deteriorated in early December he was confined to his rooms.
Keats’s bedroom has been recreated as it would have been (the original furniture all had to be burned under Italian law as he died of consumption). There are views over both the square and the Spanish steps, similar today to the ones Keats would have seen. There are some of his letters, books, manuscripts, Severn’s sketch of Keats and a life mask. I found it very moving to see it.
The next day I visited the Protestant Cemetery, a beautiful place with tall cyprus trees and spring flowers. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze blew and birds sang. It felt so peaceful. Keats’s grave is in the more open area of the cemetery with the grand Roman pyramid of Cestius in the background.
Keats wished only for the inscription, “Here lies one who’s name was writ in water” on his gravestone, but this was changed to, “This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, Who, on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart, at the Malicious Power of his Enemies, Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone “Here Lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water”. His friends Charles Armitage Brown and Joseph Severn were responsible for this change, and later expressed regret it was not what Keats wanted. It propagated the myth he had been killed by bad reviews of his poetry, despite the fact when his doctor performed an autopsy it showed his lungs were nearly destroyed by consumption. Shelley (who was buried in the same cemetery a year later) took this further with his poem Adonais, which is why Keats is so often seen as weak and frail, rather than the surgical student who would hold limbs as they were being amputated.
Keats’s grave in Rome’s protestant Cemetery
The tomb has a Grecian lyre on it, the symbol of Apollo, god of poetry (and medicine!). The broken strings represent a life cut short. The date of death is Feb 24th 1821 as he died near midnight, and at that time the Romans began the new day at sunset. Next to Keats’s grave is that of his friend Joseph Severn who lived to age 85. Part of his inscription reads, “Devoted friend and deathbed companion of John Keats.” A small grave between these two friends is that of Severn’s infant son.