by Julia Herdman | Jun 7, 2017 | Blog
Did Queen Marie Antoinette ever say ‘Let them eat cake’?
‘Let them eat cake.’ is one of the most famous quotes in history, but did the queen ever say it and what was going on in France for such a quote to become so popular?
Love her or hate her Marie Antoinette is one of the most famous women in French history but was she blamed for things she never said or had any control over?
The Weather in 1788
Historians and archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware of the influence of weather on the world’s significant events and as someone who has been researching life in the 18th century Britain and France I was amazed to find that the weather could be said to one of the causes of the French Revolution.
In the spring and summer of the year before the Revolution France suffered a drought. Although there was no drought in England the summer of 1788 was an unusually warm one in London. As temperatures soared in the capital, the incidence of Scarlet fever and Typhus spread through the city. In August over 1000 deaths were attributed to fever alone.
As Londoners sweltered the French baked. The French were not particularly competent farmers at the time, the aristocracy and major landowners were not interested in developing and improving their land for agriculture and food production, unlike their British counterparts. Consequently, food production was already pretty miserable when the drought struck.
The drought of 1788 ended when the skies opened and hail the size of fists fell from the sky bashing the fruit from the trees and the smashing the crops in the fields to smithereens so when the French entered the winter of 1788-9 food stocks were at an all-time low. The storms of July caused damage in parts of the country. To make matters worse, the disastrous harvest was followed by months of freezing weather. The temperature barely rose above freezing for three months through November, December and January. In London, the river Thames froze.
The bad weather was most likely caused by the eruption of the Laki volcanic fissure in southern Iceland which spewed out ash for eight months from 8 June 1783 to February 1784 killing much of the livestock and perhaps a quarter of the Icelandic population at the time. The British naturalist Gilbert White described that summer in his classic Natural History of Selborne as “an amazing and portentous one … the peculiar haze, or smokey fog that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man.”
The State of French Agriculture
Tobias Smollett wrote about Boulogne near Calais in 1763. As much as he hates France he can see that the peasants and landowners around the town have adopted some English farming improvements unlike in the rest of France. ” I am certain that a man may keep house in Boulogne for about one half of what it will cost him in London; and this is said to be one of the dearest places in France. The adjacent country is very agreeable, diversified with hill and dale, corn-fields, woods, and meadows. There is a forest of a considerable extent, that begins about a short league from the Upper Town: it belongs to the king, and the wood is farmed to different individuals. In point of agriculture, the people in this neighbourhood seem to have profited by the example of the English. Since I was last in France, fifteen years ago, a good number of inclosures and plantations have been made in the English fashion. There is a good many tolerable country-houses, within a few miles of Boulogne; but mostly empty. I was offered a compleat house, with a garden of four acres well laid out, and two fields for grass or hay, about a mile from the town, for four hundred livres, about seventeen pounds a year: it is partly furnished, stands in an agreeable situation, with a fine prospect of the sea, and was lately occupied by a Scotch nobleman, who is in the service of France.” ( Project Gutenberg’s Travels Through France and Italy, by Tobias Smollett.)
High Prices and High Taxes
The poorer classes, 95% of whose diet consisted of bread and cereals and which before the drought had to spend about 55% of their earnings on bread, were forced by the famine conditions of the first half of 1789 to spend now 85% and over of their income on this staple food. In France rural taxes called “privilege seigneriaux” or seigniorial privileges, severely burdened farmers.The clergy and nobility exercised a preeminent right over all land property but evaded most of the taxes and financial burdens of managing it. By 1789, some 90% of the population were hungry by the beginning of 1789. The famine added to the woes of the French people who was also suffering from a 10 year economic slump with its attendant unemployment.
The Riots and the Queen’s Response
When the riots did come, they were triggered by a chance remark by a wallpaper manufacturer named Reveillon, who said in a public meeting that the government should lower grain prices so that wages could be limited to 15 sous. Rumours of impending wage reductions swept the restless capital and set off the train of events we call The French Revolution.
Queen Marie-Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake,” on hearing there was no bread to be had in Paris but it was just the sort of thing the crowd thought her capable of saying. As was expected of a woman of her class and position she was remote but she was also totally unaware and untroubled by the plight of her people. She was, as all 18th century monarchs in Europe were, living a life of secluded luxury in their palaces. Marie Antoinette was of course living at one of Europe’s most opulent homes, the Palace at Versailles.
The phrase,’Let them eat cake’ first appeared in a slightly different form about Marie-Thérèse, the Spanish princess who married King Louis XIV in 1660. Marie-Thérèse allegedly suggested that the French people eat “la croûte de pâté” (or the crust of the pastry or the top of the pie - this was usually discarded as pastry was designed to protect the meat while it cooked). Over the next century, several other royals had the phrase attributed to them including two aunts of Louis XVI as it was a phrase that spoke of the royal family’s callousness to their people.
Land Reform
The Revolution brought the repealed feudal tenures, freed all those bound into serfdom, abolished feudal courts, and cancelled all payments not based on real property, including tithes. Once the reforms were in place; however, the peasants seized the land and refused to pay rent to the government, and in 1792, all payments were finally cancelled. Property of the clergy and political emigrants was confiscated and sold at auction, together with common land. The terms of sale, however, often favoured the wealthy, which may explain the rise of a new class of large landowners among the supporters of Napoleon I. The redistribution of land became the basis of French democracy and the small family farm has been the main feature of French agriculture ever since. Having secured their piece of land, there was little incentive or money to improve it for the peasant owners and so the economic benefits of the reforms were limited, France still struggled to feed itself and agricultural improvements that were being introduced in England were slow to be adopted.
France was a rural nation as late as 1940. After the creation of the land owning peasant class after the Revolution a next major change came in with the railways in the 1850s according to Peasants Into Frenchmen (1976), by historian Eugen Weber. Weber traced the modernisation of French villages and argued that rural France went from backward and isolated to modern and possessing a sense of French nationhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He emphasised the roles of railways, republican schools, and universal military conscription. He based his findings on school records, migration patterns, military service documents and economic trends. Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was weak in the provinces, a view that has been called into question by several writers. Nevertheless, he gives a good account of the development of rural France in the 19th century. Reforms brought in after World War II and France’s engagement in the European Union has transformed agricultural production again.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/land-reform/History-of-land-reform
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_peasants
Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: The Year Leading to the Revolution of 1789 in France, J. Neumann, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Drought and the French Revolution:The effects of adverse weather conditions on peasant revolts in 1789, Maria Waldinger (London School of Economics)
Julia Herdman writes historical fiction. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle
Sinclair is available of Amazon. Click here to get your copy.
Sinclair is set in the London Borough of Southward, the Yorkshire town of Beverley and in Paris and Edinburgh in the late 1780s. Strong female leads include the widow Charlotte Leadam and the farmer’s daughter Lucy Leadam. Sinclair is a story of love, loss and redemption. Prodigal son James Sinclair is transformed by his experience of being shipwrecked on the way to India to make his fortune. Obstacles to love and happiness include ambition, conflict with a God, temptation and betrayal. Remorse brings restitution and recovery. Sinclair is an extraordinary book. It will immerse you in the world of 18th century London where the rich and the poor are treated with kindness and compassion by this passionate Scottish doctor and his widowed landlady, the owner of the apothecary shop in Tooley Street. Sinclair is filled with twists and tragedies, but it will leave you feeling good.
Also available on:
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18th Century Smuggling Fact and Fiction
by Julia Herdman | Jun 5, 2017 | Blog
This is the shocking case of the Princess who was married against her will, spurned, divorced, and imprisoned for 33 years.
In August 2016, a human skeleton was found under the Leineschloss (Leine Palace, Hanover) during a renovation project; the remains are believed to be those of Swedish count, Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, (1665-1694) a soldier in the Hanoverian army and the lover of Princess Sophia Dorothea, the wife of the first Hanoverian king of Britain.
Early Life
Sophia Dorothea was just sixteen years old when she was married to her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, the future king of Great Britain and Ireland in 1705.
Poor Princess Sophia Dorothea did not get a good start in life; she was born illegitimately; the daughter of her father’s long-term mistress, Eleonore d’Esmier d’Olbreuse, Countess of Williamsburg (1639–1722) on 15 September 1666, and was considered an inconvenient royal bastard. Without a wife and an heir her father, Prince George William, Duke of Brunswick Lüneburg, eventually did the right thing and married his mistress which had the effect of legitimising his only child.
 |
| George I of Britain |
Her Father’s Legitimate Heir
Sophia Dorothea was ten years old when she became heir to her father’s kingdom, the Principality of Lüneburg. This made her a good catch despite her problematic origins because Lüneburg was a wealthy principality and Sophia Dorothea, like her mother, was attractive and lively.
Along with her legitimacy came talk about her marriage. In the six years between her acceptance into the royal family and her eventual marriage, three prospective husbands were considered for her.
Marriage Proposals
First, there was talk of marriage to the Danish heir presumptive. Some years later her engagement to the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was broken off by her father after her aunt, Duchess Sophia of Hanover, convinced him she should marry her cousin, George Louis of Hanover to join their two duchies together. Duchess Sophia hated her niece, whom she considered brazen, coquettish, and uneducated. When told of the change of plan, sixteen-year-old, Sophia Dorothea shouted, “I will not marry the pig snout!”
Twenty-two-year-old George Louis was not keen on the match either; he already had a mistress and was happy with his life as a soldier. Although he was a prince, he was ugly and boring, even his mother didn’t like him. Nevertheless, Duchess Sophia was determined to keep the family fortune together, and despite both Sophia Dorothea’s and her son’s objections, the pair were married on 22 November 1682, in Celle. For his pains, George Louis received a handsome dowry and was granted his father-in-law’s kingdom upon his death, and Sophia was left penniless.
 |
| The state parliament in the former Leineschloss /
Leine Castle in Hannover Lower Saxony Germany |
An Unhappy Marriage
The unhappy couple set up home in Leine Palace in Hanover where Sophia Dorothea was under the supervision of her odious aunt, Duchess Sophia, and spied on by her husband’s spies when he was away on campaign. Despite their unhappiness, the pair produced two children; George Augustus, born 1683, who later became King George II of Great Britain and a daughter born 1686 when Sophia Dorothea was twenty.
 |
| Sophia Charlotte
von Keilmannsegg |
Having produced two children, George became increasingly distant from his wife spending more time with his dogs and horses and his nights with his mistress, the married daughter of his father’s mistress, a woman called Sophia Charlotte von Keilmannsegg, who was rumoured to be George Louis’ half-sister.
Aggrieved, lonely, and unhappy Sophia Dorothea found a friend in the Swedish count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, (1665-1694) who was a soldier in the Hanoverian army. Philip was a year older than Sophia Dorothea and the antithesis of her ugly, boorish husband.
 |
| Countess of Platen |
The Fatal Affair
Sophia Dorothea was no saint. She was quick-tempered and rarely discrete, and her choice of Von Königsmarck as a lover was not the best. Königsmarck was a dashing, handsome gigolo and the former lover of her father-in-law’s mistress, the Countess of Platen and the Countess had a jealous nature.
Königsmarck and Sophia Dorothea began a love affair of clandestine trysts, real love, and their coded correspondence facilitated by a trusted go-between. Their love affair was uncovered in 1692 when the Duchess of Platen presented a collection of their letters to her lover, Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law the Elector of Hanover. Von Königsmarck was banished from the Hanoverian court but soon found a position in the neighbouring court of Saxony where one night when he was buried in his cups he let slip the state of affairs in the bedchambers of the royal house of Hanover. George Louis got wind of what had been said and on the morning of 2 July 1694, after a meeting with Sophia at Leine Palace, Königsmark was seized. No one except his murderers knew what happened to him next.
 |
| Philip Christoph von Königsmarck,
(1665-1694) |
A Sad and Lonely Death
Dorothea never saw her lover again. George Louis divorced her in December, and early the following year she was confined her to Schloss Ahlden a stately home on the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. She stayed there for the rest of her life. Her children were taken away from her, and she was forced to live alone.
When Sophia Dorothea died in 1726, she had spent 33 years in her prison. Before she died, she wrote a letter to her husband, cursing him for his treatment of her. A furious George forbade any mourning of her in Hanover and London.
George, I died shortly after the Countess of Platen exonerated him of any involvement in Von Königsmark’s death. Two of her henchmen made deathbed confessions to the crime. Although George I was cleared of Von Königsmark’s death, his son George II never forgave his father for the treatment he had meted out to his mother.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Dorothea_of_Celle
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty By Leslie Carroll
The Georgian Princesses By John Van der Kiste
Julia Herdman writes historical fiction. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle.
Sinclair is available of Amazon. Click here to get your copy.
Sinclair is set in the London Borough of Southward, the Yorkshire town of Beverley and in Paris and Edinburgh in the late 1780s. Strong female leads include the widow Charlotte Leadam and the farmer’s daughter Lucy Leadam. Sinclair is a story of love, loss and redemption. Prodigal son James Sinclair is transformed by his experience of being shipwrecked on the way to India to make his fortune. Obstacles to love and happiness include ambition, conflict with a God, temptation and betrayal. Remorse brings restitution and recovery. Sinclair is an extraordinary book. It will immerse you in the world of 18th century London where the rich and the poor are treated with kindness and compassion by this passionate Scottish doctor and his widowed landlady, the owner of the apothecary shop in Tooley Street. Sinclair is filled with twists and tragedies, but it will leave you feeling good.
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Princess Anne - The Princess Who Married a Hunchback
by Julia Herdman | May 30, 2017 | Blog
Secret and Clandestine Marriage
A clandestine or illicit marriage is a plot device in many 18th and 19th-century stories, think of Jayne Eyre and Mr Rochester, but what seems like the work of fiction was a fact of life for women from all social classes in 18th Century Britain. No one knew who was married to whom until the law of marriage was changed. Even the Prince Regent tried to marry a woman clandestinely and illegally.
On May 11, 1786, the Coachmakers’ Hall, Debating Society debated the following proposition: “Are not the Restraints contained in the Marriage Act, and every other Restriction on the Matrimonial Contract, contrary to the natural Rights of Mankind, and injurious to Conjugal Felicity?” Someone at the Coachmakers’ Hall was clearly stirring the pot of civil discord that evening as the formalities prescribed by the Act were hardly novel, and had been observed even when they were not essential to the validity of a marriage, and the protection afforded by the previous law was not as generous as many who wished to deviate from the new law claimed.
The Marriage Act
The Marriage Act 1753, popularly known as Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, was the first statutory legislation in England and Wales to require a formal ceremony of marriage. The Act came into force on March 25, 1754, making compulsory the reading of the banns, and the registration of a marriage and its witnesses for the first time.
Before the Act, the legal requirements for a valid marriage in England and Wales had been governed by the canon law of the Church of England. This had stipulated that banns should be called or a marriage licence should be obtained before marriage and that the marriage should be celebrated in the parish where at least one of the parties was resident. However, these requirements were not mandatory and the absence of banns or a licence – or even the fact that the marriage was not celebrated in a church – did not render the marriage void. The only essential requirement was that the union be celebrated by an Anglican clergyman. So this left a lot of scope for clandestine marriages and for the wedding of those who were technically under the age of legal consent which was 21 at the time.
The King’s Secret Marriage
Maria Fitzherbert (July 26 1756 - March 27 1837) became the wife of George, Prince of Wales, the future George IV in extraordinary circumstances. Maria came from a respectable Roman Catholic family and was educated in France. She had been married twice before when she met Prince George. Maria married Edward Weld, who was sixteen years her senior, and the wealthy Catholic owner of Lulworth Castle in July 1775. Weld died just three months later after falling from his horse leaving Maria penniless. Her new husband had failed to sign his Will, so his estate went to his younger brother.
Maria, now a widow was left effectively destitute. She received little or no financial support from the Weld family and was obliged to remarry as soon as she could. Three years later, she married again. Her second husband was Thomas Fitzherbert of Swynnerton, Staffordshire who was ten years her senior. They had a son but he died young and then she was widowed again in 1781, but this time she got an annuity of £1000 and a townhouse in Park Street, Mayfair.
In 1783 George, Prince of Wales became infatuated with her after meeting her at the opera. The licentious Prince, he wanted her to become his mistress, but Maria’s devout Catholic beliefs would not allow it. So on December 15, 1785, they were married in a secret ceremony conducted by Robert Burt, an impoverished curate who set aside his scruples for the £500 fee.
The marriage was not legal. It not only contravened the 1753 Marriage Act it was also in breach of the Act of Settlement of 1701, preventing a Roman Catholic from ascending the British throne and the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. How George thought he was going to get away with is a mystery and how Maria could believe she was being married to a Prince of the realm legitimately in such circumstances is beyond belief.
The Illegally Married Couple
George and Maria spent much of their newly married life in Brighton where Mrs Fitzherbert was treated like a queen. Whether she was ignorant or deluded concerning her position is unknown, she never spoke of it. George’s intentions were never earnest, he always had an eye for the ladies.
The couple finally separated when George’s affections turned to Frances, Countess of Jersey in 1794. Their illegal marriage was finally put asunder when George married his cousin Caroline of Brunswick in 1795.
Five years later, in 1800, Maria and George were reunited as George could not stand the sight of his legal wife, Caroline.
By 1807, the Prince’s affections were wandering again, this time towards Lady Hertford. Unable to bear any further humiliation, on December 18 1809, Maria sent George a farewell letter and departed from Brighton where she and the Prince were living.
Following the death of George IV on June 26 1830, it was discovered that he had kept all of Fitzherbert’s letters, and steps were taken to destroy them. Fitzherbert told George IV’s brother, King William IV, about their marriage and showed him the documents in her possession. He asked Fitzherbert to accept a dukedom, but she refused, asking only for permission to wear widow’s weeds and to dress her servants in royal livery. The architect William Porden created Steine House for her, on the west side of Old Steine in Brighton where she lived from 1804 until her death in 1837. The king’s unofficial wife was buried at St John the Baptist’s Church in the Kemp Town area of Brighton.
Julia Herdman writes historical fiction. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 and on Kindle.
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Princess Sophia Dorothea the Uncrowned Queen of Britain
Dress to Impress Princess
by Julia Herdman | May 26, 2017 | Blog
Voltaire, the great rationalist, was always falling in love and had numerous love affairs. His love life began with great passion when he was just seventeen years old.
‘Voltaire in Love‘ is perhaps the best known work about his love life. It is a popular history of the sixteen-year relationship between Voltaire and the Émilie, the Marquise du Châtelet. I wrote about Emilie last month, she was a great physicist who died tragically young giving birth to her lover’s child (not Voltaire’s their affair was long since over). The book was written by Nancy Mitford and first published in 1957. As well as telling the story of Voltaire’s love for Emilie it explores the French Enlightenment.
A musical featuring the music of Leonard Bernstein with contributions from the greatest lyricists of the 20th century, Stephen Sondheim to Dorothy Parker, is an outrageous musical satire that tells the story of Voltaire’s character, the naïve Candide, who is banished for romancing the Baron’s daughter only to be plagued by a series of absurd hardships that challenge his optimistic outlook of life and love. Candide will leave you enchanted. As you will see from the letter below the story is somewhat based on his own experience.
In my novel Sinclair, Voltaire (1694-1778), the French philosopher is one of my eponymous hero’s favourite authors. He takes a copy of Candide to India with him and loses it when the ship goes down but once he’s established himself in Tooley Street he’s quick to buy himself another copy.
“Knowing there was no going back, he made himself comfortable. He lit his lamp, took out a battered copy of ‘Candide’, his favourite book, and checked the hour with his treasured pocket watch. Like the book, it was French, and the most beautiful thing he had ever owned. He cradled it in his palm. The warmth of its golden body reminded him of the smoothness of a woman’s skin; its pearly white face was elegantly marked with Roman numerals; and the back, the part that he loved most of all, was made of cobalt blue enamel and shimmered like the silk of Iona McNeal’s ballgown the night they had danced at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms. He turned it in his hand and kissed it then he put it back in his waistcoat pocket and started to read.
He chose the scene where Candide, the hero of the story, and his professor friend, Dr Pangloss, are nearly drowned in Lisbon harbour along with a sailor called Jacques. Candide and Pangloss survive, but Jacques dies attempting to save a fellow sailor. To explain how this is all part of God’s harmonious plan, Pangloss says that Lisbon harbour was created specifically so that Jacques could drown there and fulfil God’s divine plan for him. This was an idea so preposterous, like so many in the book, that it made Sinclair laugh out loud.”
Voltaire was incarcerated in the local prison for his own good to keep him away from the girl he had fallen in love with,Olympe Dunove. Olympe’s mother and the French ambassador disapproved of their relationship. Such was the power of French aristocrats before the Revolution. Shortly after he wrote the letter below, he managed to escape by climbing out of the window.
Voltaire to Olympe Dunover, written in 1713 while in prison in the Hague.
“I am a prisoner here in the name of the King; they can take my life, but not the love that I feel for you. Yes, my adorable mistress, to-night I shall see you, and if I had to put my head on the block to do it.
For heaven’s sake, do not speak to me in such disastrous terms as you write; you must live and be cautious; beware of madame your mother as of your worst enemy. What do I say? Beware of everybody; trust no one; keep yourself in readiness, as soon as the moon is visible; I shall leave the hotel incognito, take a carriage or a chaise, we shall drive like the wind to Sheveningen; I shall take paper and ink with me; we shall write our letters.
If you love me, reassure yourself; and call all your strength and presence of mind to your aid; do not let your mother notice anything, try to have your pictures, and be assured that the menace of the greatest tortures will not prevent me to serve you. No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives. Adieu, there is nothing that I will not brave for your sake; you deserve much more than that. Adieu, my dear heart!”
Arout, (Voltaire)
According to Victor Hugo: “To name Voltaire is to characterize the entire eighteenth century.” Goethe regarded Voltaire to be the greatest literary figure in modern times, and possibly of all times. According to Diderot, Voltaire’s influence on posterity would extend far into the future.
Napoleon commented that till he was sixteen he “would have fought for Rousseau against the friends of Voltaire, today it is the opposite…The more I read Voltaire the more I love him. He is a man always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic.”
Frederick the Great commented on his good fortune for having lived in the age of Voltaire.
Catherine the Great had been reading Voltaire for sixteen years prior to becoming Empress of Russia in 1762. In October 1763, she began a correspondence with the philosopher that continued till his death. The content of these letters has been described as being akin to a student writing to a teacher.Upon Voltaire’s death, the Empress purchased his library, which was then transported and placed in The Hermitage.
In England, Voltaire’s views influenced Godwin, Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Byron, and Shelley.[195] Macaulay made note of the fear that Voltaire’s very name incited in tyrants and fanatics. Voltaire was a man of reason and passion just like my character Sinclair. You can read about his escapades in my novel - see below.
Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle £2.42 Also available on:
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by Julia Herdman | May 25, 2017 | Blog
Like my hero Sinclair, the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) studied to become doctor but unlike Sinclair’s his heart was not really in it. Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne are among the most famous love letters ever written. As next-door neighbours, they exchanged numerous short notes, and occasionally more passionate letters.
Fanny Brawne
Keats trained as an apothecary at Guy’s Hospital from 1815 to 1816 and attended lectures on the principles and practice of surgery by the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper who also makes a brief appearance in my novel. In 1816, Keats received his apothecary’s licence, which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon.
Keats’s desire to become a poet led him to abandon medicine soon after he completed his training. In his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ recalls his experience of caring for the dying:
The weariness, the fever and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows spectre-thin, and dies.
Ironically, it was his medical training that made him such a good carer for his brother Tom when he died from tuberculosis. In giving that care Keats became infected with the disease himself; there was no inoculation at the time, the now well-know BCG vaccine was first used in humans in 1921. Infection for Keats meant certain death but not before, he fell in love and wrote some of the world’s greatest poetry and love letters. Here is one of them.
“25 College Street, London
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else – The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life – My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love – You note came in just here – I cannot be happier away from you – ‘T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet – You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great – My Love is selfish – I cannot breathe without you. Yours for ever, John Keats
Their love story was made into a film - Bright Star in 2009. It stars Ben Whishaw as Keats and Abbie Cornish as Fanny. It was directed by Jane Campion, who wrote the screenplay inspired by Andrew Motion’s biography of Keats; Motion served as a script consultant on the film. The film was in the main competition at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and was first shown to the public on 15 May 2009.The film’s title is a reference to a sonnet by Keats titled “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art”, which he wrote while he was with Brawne.
For more see: http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/love-letter-to-fanny-brawne-13-october-1819/
Julia Herdman writes #historical #fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle £2.29 Also available on:
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