Books: Keats’s Fannies

LETTERS or FANNY BRAWNE TO FANNY KEATS—Edited by Fred Edgcumbe—Oxford University Press ($3).

When John Keats died of consumption in Italy (1821) at the age of 26, he left two girls behind him. Both were named Fanny. One was his orphan sister, the other was Fanny Brawne, to whom he was engaged. Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne are classics in love-letter literature; hers to him were buried with him. In spite of such kind words as Amy Lowell’s (John Keats}, Fanny Brawne has generally figured in Keats’s story as a light-headed minx who failed to appreciate him. Last week 31 letters of Fanny Brawne to Fanny Keats were published for the. first time.

In his preface, Maurice Buxton Forman thought their evidence should at last lay the legend of Fanny Brawne’s heartlessness, establish her as the worthy sweetheart of a great poet. Lay readers could not see that, short of reading between the lines with a very sympathetic eye, the letters changed matters much one way or the other.

Fanny Brawne wrote her first letter to Fanny Keats a few days after she had said her last farewell to John. The last one was written four years later, when Fanny Keats had come of age, escaped from the restrictions of her foster parents and could meet her friends at will. The two girls had never met when they began their correspondence; Fanny’s first letter is on the formal side. But soon they were chattering away intimately about clothes, books and callers, sending each other patterns, discussing mutual friends and enemies. At first Fanny’s references to their greatest mutual interest, John, are very guarded. Not until after his death does she say in so many words that they were to be married: “Had he returned I should have been his wife and he would have lived with us.” And she breaks out: “It is now known that his recovery was impossible before he left us, and he might have died here with so many friends to soothe him and me me with him.” Two months later she writes: “I have not got over it and never shall—It’s better for me that I should not forget him but not for you, you have other things to look forward to.” After that the references to John are increasingly few and far between.

Fanny’s letters never mention what she really thought of her lover’s poetry, though on other literary subjects she is quite frank: “I goon as usual, reading every trumpery novel that comes in my way spoiling my taste and understanding. . . .”-A passage on Byron is almost a giveaway: “Don’t you or do you admire Don Juan? perhaps you like the serious parts best but I have been credibly informed that Lord B. is not really a great poet, have taken a sort of dislike to him when serious and only adore him for his wit and humour. I am by no means a great poetry reader. . . .” Later it comes out that “as my dear Keats did not admire Lord Byron’s poetry as many people do, it soon lost its value for me.”

Both Fannies married. Fanny Keats, five years after her brother’s death, was first. She married a Spaniard, one Valentine Llanos, settled in Spain. Fanny Brawne followed suit when she was 33 and her grief for John was 12 years old. As Mrs. Louis Lindon she became the mother of three, a tranquil matron; she lived to a ripe old age.