JOHN KEATS
IN
TEIGNMOUTH
EDITED AND ILLUSTRATED BY
MAUREEN FAYLE
Acknowledgements
It would have been impossible to
complete this project without the
computer skills of Tom Fayle and
Katie Boswell
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TEIGNMOUTH Spring 1818
On Tuesday 10th March the 25-year-old poet John Keats arrived in Teignmouth. He spent three months
here and kept up a lively correspondence with his friends in London. He comes across as an energetic young
man, his head buzzing with ideas and open to every new experience. His letters, including light verse and
doggerel, describe places and people he encountered on his walks in the local area.
He had “a fine clamber over the rocks all along as far as Babbacombe.”
“I found a lane banked on each side with store of Primroses, while the earlier bushes are beginning to leaf.”
“………………....the first page I read
Upon a lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers; ‘twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat sand; ……………….”
He had come to keep his brother, Tom, company. Tom was suffering from tuberculosis but had become
much better in Teignmouth. However he was thinking of returning to London and Keats had come down to
“prevent his coming up”. They had taken dark, ground-floor rooms in a newly built house in the Strand, now
Northumberland Place, and after Keats’s arrival it rained solidly for six days. He wrote, “The climate here
weighs us down completely; Tom is very low spirited. It is impossible to live in a country which is continually
under hatches”. When the rain finally stopped, he commented, “I enjoyed the most delighted walks these
three fine days.”
Keats’ mood fluctuated with the weather. One day he wrote “…..the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty,
snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county.” The next day he felt could stay all summer. Whatever his
mixed feelings were about Devon, he remembered it affectionately. Two months later on a walking holiday in
Scotland he was wishing that the Kirkcudbright cottages “were as snug as those up the Devonshire valleys”
and was pleased to find that Burns’ native Ayrshire “was as rich as Devon.”
In illustrating these verses I have tried to convey their light-hearted tone and the pleasure Keats felt in
exploring the spring countryside. All the pictures are based on sketches and photos I have made of local
scenes and they can be located on the map at the end of this booklet.
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TEIGNMOUTH
“Some Doggerel” sent in a letter to
B. R. Haydon
HERE all the
summer could
I stay
For there’s Bishops teign
And Kings teign
And Coomb at the clear teign head-
Where close by the stream
You may have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.
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