Yes, that's Brown's room Raphael.
And I believe that clock actually belonged to Brown, as well.
I don't remember the clock working while I was there, Raphael. There was also a small table in the house that belonged to Brown and a watercolor that he drew (he was quite skilled!).
I didn't notice everything that Brown owned as I spent much of the time musing and feeling a little melancholy about the fact that there was so *little* there that belonged to Keats. He had few possessions.
I think Keats's lack of possessions had more to do with his being poor than being non-materialistic.
Where did you read that Keats had 100 books? I've never come across that before. My understanding was that he had a handful (maybe 25-30?) and that he borrowed quite a bit from friends.
Montmorenci wrote:In regard to his lack of possessions, yes, he was poor, but he was also always on the move. It seemed that he was always staying in someone else's house or room, etc. and so he probably didn't have very many possessions that he carried around with him. It seems that his books, pen, ink, paper and his Shakespear picture were his most prized possessions.
Also, most people at that time, and indeed for most of human history, apart from the very rich didn't have material possessions in the same way, or in the same quantity as we have today in the post-industrial revolution consumerist materialistic society.
Until even my parents generation, it was not uncommon for people to live [as my father did in the 1950s and 60s] in a tiny 3 bedroom terrace house with 7 or more children and half their possessions in and out of the pawn shop.
I think [no offence to our Transatlantic readers] it is hard for Americans to imagine how far below the standard of living is, or was in some working class areas in the UK, now, in previous generations and in Keats' day.
Saturn wrote:Indeed, my late Grandmother [born 1910] used to relate her childhood, going to work in the cotton mills very young in the 1920s it was like listening to someone talking about the third world now, and in terms of poverty and illness and destitution that world was every bit as horrific then as it must have been in Keats time too, very little would have changed even in 100 years.
Malia wrote:My grandmother was born and raised in Mayo, Ireland at around the turn of the century (she was born in 1902). I remember her telling me that she and her siblings considered it to be a big treat to have a bowl of mashed potatoes with butter before going to bed. No candy at her house--she came from a very poor family. It is interesting to think that mashed potatoes would have been such a wonderful memory for my grandma. It reminds me of just how much I have in my life--and how much I take it all for granted!
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