1820

On February 3, 1820, Keats returned ill and fevered from a day in London. Charles Brown later wrote, “He mildly and instantly yielded to my request that he should go to bed…On entering the cold sheets, he slightly coughed, and I heard him say, ‘That is blood from my mouth…I know the colour of that blood; - it is arterial blood…that drop of blood is my death-warrant; - I must die.”

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- Keats was ill the rest of the winter. Fanny Brawne spent nearly every day with him as the gravity of his illness became apparent. When he was unable to see her, they exchanged letters, and each night Brawne sent a note to put under his pillow. Keats showed small signs of improvement by the spring, and was well enough to move to Kentish Town when Brown once again let the house for the summer.
  
  In the autumn, Keats’s friends encouraged him to travel to Italy, where they felt the warmer air might restore his health completely. Brawne’s mother promised Keats that when he returned to England, he could live with them and Brawne. With Brawne’s permission, Keats destroyed the letters she had written him. Keats gave her several of his books and a miniature, and Brawne gave him a new pocket-book, a knife, and a lock of her hair.

In this section

	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [February 10?,1820].	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [February, 1820].

	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [February? 1820]	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [March 1820].

	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [Kentish Town, June [?] 1820].	John Keats. Autograph letter to Fanny Brawne, [Kentish Town, 4 July [?] 1820].

	Edmund Spenser. Works (London, 1715).	Keats’s sitting room, and the Brawne family’s sitting room at Wentworth Place.

	John Keats. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems.