Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

Spring at the Spanish Steps seen from the Keats-Shelley House (see a similar view from the nearby house of Isa and Giorgio de Chirico)

The Keats-Shelley House is located in Piazza di Spagna, next to the eastern side of the Spanish Steps. Most of the windows of the apartment face west but a small terrace at the back commands a magnificent view over SS. Trinità dei Monti. John Keats however had not enough strength and time to enjoy it. He arrived in Rome in mid-November 1820. Although the trip was meant to improve his health, he grew steadily worse. His last letter is dated November 30, 1820.
My dear Brown, (Charles Armitage Brown a close friend)
'Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book. (..) I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed, and that I am leading a posthumous existence. (..) I am so weak (in mind) that I cannot bear the sight of any handwriting of a friend I love so much as I do you. (..) I can scarcely bid you good bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.
God bless you!
Keats died on February 23, 1821.

Room where Keats died: (left) Keats' bedroom by Penny Graham (2008); (right) oval plaster medallion portraying John Keats based on a small cameo made by Giuseppe Girometti soon after Keats's death. It can be seen also in the 1875 memorial tablet in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome

Joseph Severn (1793-1879), an English painter, travelled from England to Italy with John Keats. Keats and Severn had known one another in England, but they were only passing acquaintances. Yet it was Severn who agreed to accompany the poet to Rome when all others could, or would, not. The trip was intended to cure Keats's lingering illness, which he suspected was tuberculosis; however, his friends and several doctors disagreed and urged him to spend some time in a warm climate. While in Rome during the winter of 1820-21, Severn wrote numerous letters about Keats to their mutual friends in England, in particular William Haslam and Charles Armitage Brown. These letters now represent the only surviving account of the poet's final months and as a consequence are used as the primary historical source for biographers of Keats' last days. Severn nursed Keats until his death on 23 February 1821, three months after they had arrived in Rome. As he wrote to a friend: Each day he would look up in the doctors face to discover how long he should live -- he would say -- "how long will this posthumous life of mine last" - that look was more than we could ever bear - the extreme brightness of his eyes - with his poor pallid face - were not earthly.

Piazza di Spagna from Keats' bedroom

Joseph Severn to John Taylor: 24 December 1820 - This moment the doctor sends me word that my Landlady (the landlady's name seems to have been Anna Angeletti) has reported to the Police that Keats is dying of a Consumption - now this has [made] me vent some curses against her- the words dying and Consumption has rather dampt my spirits- the laws are very severe.
Joseph Severn to William Haslam: Rome. 15 January 1821- My dear Haslam, Poor Keats has just fallen asleep. (..) Keats is sinking daily. He is dying of a consumption, of a confirmed consumption. Perhaps another three weeks may lose me him forever. (..) This is not all. I have prepared myself to bear this now, now that I must and should have seen it before, but Torlonia's the bankers refused any more money. The bill is returned unaccepted, "no effects", and I tomorrow must - aye, must - pay the last solitary Crowns for this cursed lodging place. Yet more. Should our unfortunate friend die, all the furniture will be burnt; beds, sheets, curtains, and even the walls must be scraped. And these devils will come upon me for £100 or £150, the making good.
Severn had to leave the apartment in Piazza di Spagna where all evidence of Keats' sojourn was removed. He moved to Via di S. Isidoro (today Via degli Artisti) near the church by the same name. Severn lived in Rome until 1841 and he returned there as British consul in 1861.
It is one of the most sacred shrines in Rome, for it was in this house that the "young English poet whose name was writ in water" died to deathless fame three or fourscore years ago. It is the Keats house, which when he lived in it was the house of Severn the painter, his host and friend. I had visited it for the kind sake of the one and the dear sake of the others when I first visited Rome in 1864; and it was one of the earliest stations of my second pilgrimage. It is now in form for any and all visitors, but the day I went it had not yet been put in its present simple and tasteful keeping. A somewhat shrill and scraping-voiced matron inquired my pleasure when she followed me into the ground-floor entrance from somewhere without, and then, understanding, called her young daughter, who led me up to the room where Keats mused his last verse and breathed his last sigh. It is a very little room, looking down over the Spanish Steps, with their dike of bloom, across the piazza to the narrow stretch of the Via del Babuino. I must have stood in it with Severn and heard him talk of Keats and his ultimate days and hours; for I remember some such talk, but not the details of it. He was a very gentle old man and fondly proud of his goodness to the poor dying poet, as he well might be, and I was glad to be one of the many Americans who, he said, came to grieve with him for the dead poet.
William Dean Howells - Roman Holidays and Others - 1908

Protestant Cemetery by an unknown artist

Keats was buried at the Protestant Cemetery and his tomb became a site of pilgrimage, especially after Percy B. Shelley wrote Adonais, an elegy dedicated to it.
Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.

And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.

Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become? (..)

Library

In 1906, the house in which John Keats died was bought by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association. The money was raised by committees in the United States, England and Italy. At the time the house was in a dreadful condition. The formal dedication by the King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele III, took place on 3 April 1909 and was attended by descendants of the poets and by Rudyard Kipling. It now contains one of the finest reference libraries of Romantic literature in the world as well as a collection of manuscripts, paintings, sculpture and memorabilia. In addition to being a museum and library the House plays an important part in the cultural life of Rome organising lectures, art exhibitions, poetry recitals and gala events, similar to what occurs at Casa di Goethe, a German institution.

(left) Poster of the Keats-Shelley House (notice the pale faces); (right) Joseph Severn pencil self-portrait

It was during the XIXth century that tuberculosis was dubbed the mal de vivre, and mal du siècle. It was seen as a "romantic disease". Individuals with tuberculosis were thought to have heightened sensitivity. The slow progress of the disease allowed for a "good death" as those affected could arrange their affairs. The disease began to represent spiritual purity and temporal wealth, leading many young, upper-class women to purposefully pale their skin to achieve the consumptive appearance. Lord Byron is quoted to have said, "I should like to die from consumption", helping to popularize the disease as the disease of artists. The Monument to Devereux Plantagenet Cockburn at the Protestant Cemetery is a symbol of the Romantic view of death from consumption.

Shelley Composing 'Prometheus Unbound' in the Baths of Caracalla by Joseph Severn (1845); (right) Lord Byron by Richard Westall (1813)

Lord Byron left England in 1816, aged 28, scandal-ridden and debt-stricken - never to return. After time in the Swiss Alps where he befriended the Shelleys, he settled in Venice, later spending time in Rome, Ravenna, Genoa and Pisa. Shelley and his wife Mary Godwin were wanderers, living in various Italian cities in their own bittersweet version of the Grand Tour. Eventually they set up home in Pisa, where Byron joined them in 1821. Byron and Shelley both became proficient in Italian and engaged deeply with the heritage, politics and literature of the country that Shelley called "a paradise of exiles". They were in thrall to the Renaissance ideals of beauty in art and literature, and also believed that the country offered greater tolerance and freedom than their English homeland.

Books by Keats and Leigh Hunt, a friend of both Keats and Shelley

The image used as background for this page shows four volumes with works by "Shelley and Mary".

See the houses of:
Hendrik Christian Andersen
Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi
Pietro Canonica
Isa and Giorgio de Chirico
Mario Praz