Oluwaseun Eleyinafe
Professor Moy
ENG 350 – 02W
December 6th, 2017
The Life of Frances Mary Keats through “There was a Naughty Boy” (Fanny Keats)
Fanny Keats was the one best known for her marriage to the Spanish author Valentin Llanos Gutierrez. She was the only child overall that outlived him for a long time. She had an only child from Gutierrez, whose name was Don Juan Llanos y Keats. Her brother wrote a poem to her in a letter form called “There was a naughty boy.” She grew up within the Keats’ Livery Stables and never knew her dad very well because he died before she grew up. Her mother had to move her and the rest of the family to her grandmother’s place in Edmonton. When her mom died six years later, Alice Jennings became like a mother to them, later having two guardians to take care of them. Other than that, there does not seem to be anything else that points to what if anything happened with Frances. It is perhaps safe to assume that she traveled with her brothers.
In the poem he wrote to her, he said: “For nothing would he do / But scribble poetry—” He says that about himself because he considers himself a strange boy that is so invested in his poetry. This song he wrote about himself further shows how exactly other people considered him. Because he was poor, he mainly made his living off writing poetry. He may not have known the fact that he could earn money from his dad because her caregivers never did anything to make sure he would be a lot better off. His poem tells her of how he lived his life because she knew that her oldest brother was a prodigy in poetry. When he says: “He took / in his knapsack / a book / full of vowels”, what he is telling her is the fact that he uses imagery to tell her how he is a naughty poet. The fact that he says he is naughty because he scribbles poetry is an indicator to how different her brother was as a poet, compared to the rest of the poets that lived during his time. He told her that with the ink stand he had, he could draw anything that he wanted to draw, from ghosts to fountains. The fact he told her all of this was very important because he directly tells her the type of person he is, without being ashamed about it. He also told her about how he was obsessed over fishes in his early days. Indeed, there is so much about him that he tells her because they are related by blood. It is never like they are separated from each other all the time.
In spite of this, he is ashamed of what he is telling his own sister. He says “My dear Fanny I / am ashamed of / writing you such / stuff,” He says this to her perhaps because he assumes the fact that she already knew that about him from earlier. We wish we knew what he was thinking in his mind when he was writing this poem in verse form. However, there is so much that can be speculated due to the fact of how we do not know his mind, only the fact that he wrote this to his sister. The fact that he was ashamed of telling her all this was the culmination of how he felt he was saying too much to her about himself, when perhaps he should not feel bad about it at all. There is some detail in this poem that is not all that important, but still, being ashamed about what anyone wrote to someone they deeply know is like telling them that should have kept their mouth shut regarding all of this.
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