All roads lead to Rome and cheap airlines have recently made
the city more accessible than ever. Within Rome itself, all roads seem to lead
to the Spanish Steps. Even the limited metro system whose construction was hampered
and eventually curtailed by archaeological discoveries, stops in the Piazza
di Spagna. This is handy for English visitors for whom this part of the city
has long been a favourite haunt. George Eliot, Lord Byron, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, to name a few, came here to live and work. Most famous of all, in
October 1820, a little known poet called John Keats arrived here to die. He
already had advanced tuberculosis when he took lodgings in a house immediately
beside the Spanish Steps, dying in a small upstairs bedroom in February 1821,
aged 25. His one published volume had been cruelly rubbished by the critics
and his illness had prevented him marrying his fiancée, Fanny Brawne.
He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in the south of the city with the words
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water” engraved on his tombstone.
On hearing of his friend’s death, Shelley penned the eulogy, Adonais,
then he too died the following year, drowning in a boating accident off the
Gulf of Spezia. The house where Keats died quickly became an unofficial shrine
to both poets and a century ago it was established as a museum and study centre
devoted to the Romantic poets, a haven of bookish tranquillity beside the busy
Spanish Steps.
Today the Spanish Steps throng night and day with young people and tourists,
sitting, chatting and enjoying gelati exactly as they did when Keats was here.
The Piazza is still full of the horse drawn carriages and flower sellers that
he liked to watch from his window. In spring bright pink azaleas in full bloom
drip down the white marble steps, exquisite against the terracotta tint of the
Keats-Shelley Memorial House.
When I climbed the steep stairs inside the house to the museum on the second
floor I was delighted to find that, despite recent renovations, it retains the
delightfully quirky atmosphere I recall from my first visit nearly twenty years
ago. The polished brass plaques and Victorian umbrella stand by the door are
still there. So, too, the heavily laden bookcases around the walls, deep red
velvet curtains, white marble busts and mahogany cabinets packed with curious
exhibits including locks of the poet’s hair, fragments of Shelley’s
jaw bone, faded letters and the manuscript of a moving poem by Oscar Wilde about
visiting Keats’s grave. The original fittings in Keats’s bedroom
were destroyed immediately after his death to avoid contagion but an authentic
boat shaped bed, rather like the boat shaped Bernini fountain outside in the
square and a desk beneath the window have recently been added to make the room
look as it did when Keats was here.
Standing in the room where Keats died is sobering but where better to revive
the spirits than with plumcake and muffins at Babington’s Tea Rooms immediately
across the Spanish Steps. A portrait of Miss Babington, who set up the English
tea rooms in 1893, still hangs beside the entrance ensuring the decorum necessary
for serving such teas as Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearl or Imperial Oolong Silvertip
is properly preserved. Many a literary pilgrim before me will have fortified
themselves here before striking out to the Protestant Cemetery the other side
of town to pay their respects to Keats and other foreigners who have ended their
days in Rome.
Limited as the city’s metro is, its construction appears to have had this
expedition in mind since you can travel with only one change of train to the
imposing white marble pyramid of Caius Cestius, built in 12 BC, behind which
Keats is buried. The cemetery entrance is tucked down an unlikely back street,
where visitors press a buzzer beside a black gate to gain admittance from the
resident caretaker. Keats’s grave is in a quiet corner of the walled gardens
while a memorial to Shelley can be found in a section crammed with fascinating
later graves. Neither poet penned odes to cats which is a shame as the Anglo-Italian
Society for the Protection of Animals maintains an extensive cat sanctuary here
and there is a touching little collection box near the entrance labelled “For
the Cats”. No wonder, as a poetry and animal lover, Queen Victoria once
intervened personally to prevent a tramway going through this peaceful spot
in the heart of a bustling city.
Fact file:
Charlotte Cory stayed at the Hotel de
Russie, Rome. She travelled with Exclusive
Italy (0208 256 0231).
The Keats-Shelley Memorial House,
26 Piazza di Spagna