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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