Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2010 | Page 36
life
ISLAND HISTORY
February/March 2010
Photo: Carisbrooke Castle
John Keats – a Poet’s
View of the Isle of Wight
In March 1817, twenty-one year old John Keats
recognised his passion for literature and
took a coach from London to Portsmouth
placed a bust of Shakespeare in his room. His
and crossed to the Island, taking lodgings in
immediate joy was the sight of Carisbrooke
Carisbrooke. The journey by mail coach and
Castle, then largely neglected, a romantic ruin
ferry would have taken at least sixteen hours.
on a hill. He wrote to his friend John Hamilton
At best it would have been tedious and Keats
Reynolds, another would-be poet, “I have not
was travelling alone.
seen many specimens of Ruins – I don’t think
He was at a good place in his life. He
had inherited money from his father and
Castle.’ He was particularly impressed that
grandmother, not enough to live on indefinitely
‘The Keep inside is one bower of ivy.’ He also
but sufficient to give him a degree of freedom.
commented on the colony of jackdaws that
For nearly six years he had trained in medicine,
‘had been there many years. I daresay I have
latterly at Guys Hospital, the reality sometimes
seen many a descendent of some old Cawer
being fraught with danger as he admitted, for
who peeped through the Bars at Charles the
when in the operating theatre his mind was
first, when he was there in Confinement.’ Visit
often elsewhere. An avid reader, the desire to
the castle today and happily the ancestors of
write had been growing and in 1817 his work
those jackdaws continue to breed.
was being published. He made the momentous
On the down side he reported that the
decision to abandon medicine and become a
presence of extensive barracks between
poet.
Cowes and Newport ‘disgusted me extremely
His Carisbrooke landlady, Mrs Cook,
36
however I shall see one to surpass Carisbrooke
with Government for placing such a Nest of
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