That year I was asked many times what I intended to do on my birthday. I mark the passing of another year each chilly February, so generally the day is spent snuggled up in the warm eating and drinking. However on this occasion I was determined to do something different. How I enjoyed responding with ‘Oh, I am visiting a cemetery’. Just for a change, as you do.
This was not an eccentricity on my part though. I was fulfilling a long-held ambition to travel to Rome to visit the Keats-Shelley House on the Piazza Di Spagna where Keats spent his final months and where on the 23 February 1821 he died of tuberculosis, aged just 25. He was buried in the ‘Non-Catholic’ cemetary behind the Pyramid in Testaccio on the outskirts of the city and I was determined to spend my birthday morning on that very spot.
I am not the only person to have made such a pilgrimage. The House occupies a wonderful position at the foot of the Spanish Steps. The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association acquired it in 1906, to preserve it as a memorial to Keats and to other English Romantic poets who spent time in Italy; Shelley, Byron and Leigh Hunt. The video here details Keats’ last days and the history of the house.
http://www.youtube.com/v/Qr6PR6qjQ4c?fs=1&hl=en_GB
For me though, this video doesn’t really bring out the intensity of the feeling you get as you walk up the stairs into the apartment Keats shared with Joseph Severn. It is not exactly as he knew it of course. As the video explains, on returning from the funeral Severn found that all their possessions were being burnt; the Roman authorities believing this was the best way to avoid contagion. However, the small room that was Keats bedroom is set out in much the same way as it was for him. It is small, narrow, with a high ceiling and one window looking out over the fountain in the Piazza. It is not cheerless, but its tomb-like dimensions must have been claustrophobic in the extreme to one who was in any event struggling for breath. The ceiling is as he might have seen it – a chequerboard of carved daisies seemingly already growing over him..
I stood looking out of the small window at the only view Keats had of the outside world in those last weeks. A nun was pulling a shopping trolley just at the foot of the steps, and groups of young tourists were sitting eating ice creams from the nearby cafe. Seeing life going on outside that window was somehow as moving as the wonderful collection of treasures collected in the cabinets in the museum housed in the main salon.
No more wriggling out of writing ...... 