John Keats, who was born in 1795, spent two of the happiest years of his short life in a small Georgian house in Hampstead, at that time an airy village outside London. Tall trees and shadowy greenery surround the white-painted house, now a 10-minute walk from Hampstead Tube station. A mulberry tree - dating back to Stuart times - stands in the centre of the lawn. Lavender grows by the front door and, with the sash windows thrown wide open, only the lace curtains stir in the summer heat.
It was in this garden that Keats, carrying a chair out to sit under the plum tree, spent a morning writing a poem. Returning to the house, he pushed his notes behind some books in the bookcase of his study. Built by a speculative builder in 1815, Keats House - then known as Wentworth Place - was actually two separate dwellings, but cleverly designed to give the impression of being one house. Charles Brown, a man of modest private means and a friend of Keats, lived in one half and in the other half lived an old school friend of Brown's.
After Keats had nursed his brother Tom through his final illness (he died of TB), Charles Brown invited him to share his house with him. Each had his own bedroom and study. Keats's study - a small, neat room with shuttered French windows - has bookcases each side of the fireplace, and it was from behind one of these that Brown retrieved the manuscript of Keats's ode To a Nightingale. In this room, also, are copies of the two chairs which feature in Joseph Severn's painting of Keats, who sits on one reading while resting his elbow on the other. Across the hallway, Brown's study is larger and far less bookish and it was here that the two played cards and got "tipsy" together.
In the summer of 1818, when the two men went on a walking tour which took them across the sea to Antrim, Brown rented his part of the house to a Mrs Brawne: Keats fell in love with her eldest child, Fanny. He was 24 and Fanny 18 and a letter to his brother in America - displayed at Wentworth Place - shows the delight he took in her spirited ways: "She is very graceful. . . her feet tolerable . . . her hands baddish . . . monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions, calling people such names."
The Brawnes subsequently moved into the other half of Wentworth Place and Keats spent Christmas and the New Year with them, enjoying a warmth that had been denied him since his father had died when he was nine and his mother when he was 15.
The only shadow on this happy scene was the need to earn a living. On the wall of Keats's bedroom hangs the certificate, dated 1818, apprenticing him to an apothecary at Guy's. Like poetry, however, this was not a lucrative activity and Keats cast round for something better. Journalism seemed one possibility: "I hope," we read in one of his letters, "I shall be able to shine up an article on anything without much knowledge of the subject . . . "
But money problems paled against his worsening health. Then, in February 1820, taking the stagecoach home from London and riding outside because it was cheaper, he caught a fever and coughed up blood. The following September Keats sailed for Italy, accompanied by Joseph Severn. "Mr Keats left Hampstead," is the sad note we read in Fanny's diary.
When news of his death reached her - he died in February 1821, aged 26 - Fanny went into mourning for eight years. On display is the ring - red almandine set in gold - which the poet gave her. She wore it until her death 44 years later.
Keats House is on Keats Grove, Hampstead in London. Next week: Father Prout - Francis Sylvester Mahony's - Cork.