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Unit 6: Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop inn, an establishment he later managed Notes
and where the growing family lived for a few years. Keats thought that he was born at the inn,
a birthplace of humble origins, but no evidence is available to support this. The Keats at the
Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from modern day Moorgate station. Keats was
baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and was sent to a local dame school as a child.
Keats parents couldn’t afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803 he was sent to board at
John Clarke’s school in Enfield, close to his grandparents’ house. The small school had a generous,
advanced outlook and a progressive curriculum more up-to-date than the larger, more prestigious
schools. In the family atmosphere at Clarke’s, Keats developed an interest in classics and history
which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster’s son, Charles Cowden
Clarke, would become a significant influence, friend and mentor, introducing Keats to
Renaissance literature including Tasso, Spenser and Chapman’s translations. Keats is called a
volatile character “always in extremes”, given to fighting and indolence. At the age of 13 he
started focusing his energy towards reading and study and won his first academic prize in
midsummer 1809.

In April 1804, when Keats was eight old, his father deceased after fracturing his skull falling
from his horse when returning from visiting John and his brother George at the school. Thomas
died unheard. Frances married again two months later, but left her new spouse soon afterwards
and the four children went to stay with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of
Edmonton. In March 1810, Keats lost his mother at the age of 14. She died of tuberculosis leaving
the children in their grandmother’s custody. She appointed two caretakers, John Sandell and
Richard Abbey, to take care of him. That autumn, Keats left Clarke’s school to apprentice with
Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, neighbour and doctor of the Jennings family,
and lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813. Cowden Clarke, who
remained a close friend of Keats, described this as “the most placid time in Keats’s life”.

6.1.2 Early Career

From 1814 John Keats had two inheritances held in trust for him until his 21st birthday: £800
willed by his grandfather John Jennings (about £34,000 in today’s money) and a share of his
mother’s legacy, £8000 (about £340,000 today), to be equally distributed between her living
children. It appears he was not told of either, since he never applied for any of the money.
Historically, blame has often been put on Abbey as legal caretaker, but he may have also been
unaware. William Walton, solicitor for John Keats’s mother and grandmother, certainly knew
and had a duty to communicate the information to Keats. It looks like he did not do so. The
money would have made a crucial difference to the poet’s expectations. Money was always a
matter of great concern and difficulty for him, as he fought to stay out of debt and make his way
in the world independently.
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

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