The immortal evening A legendary dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb

ON DEC. 28, 1817, Benjamin Robert Haydon, then England's pre-eminent history painter, hosted a dinner party to celebrate his progress on his latest work, "Christ's Entry Into Jerusalem." He invited, among others, three men anachronistically pictured in that painting: John Keats, William Wordsworth and the essayist Charles Lamb. In "The Immortal Evening" (the phrase is from Haydon's letters and diaries), the poet and biographer Stanley Plumly offers an idiosyncratic, heartfelt, at once sinuous and expansive exploration of the dinner, its "aesthetic context and the larger worlds of the individual guests, particularly the three 'immortal' writers, Keats, Wordsworth and Lamb." Plumly begins the story strikingly, elliptically, in the present tense: "Keats has the most ground to cover." What the walk to the dinner was like for each of its major participants, the look and feel of Regency London, what kind of food they would have eaten, all come to vivid life in Plumly's evocative rendering. But if it presents a historical place and moment with immediacy and "presenttense personal intensity" (as Plumly says of Romantic art), "The Immortal Evening" also tackles timeless questions: "How does a living moment in time become 'immortal'? What are a painting's terms of immortality?" (Or, for that matter, a poem's?) Why are some artists remembered and some forgotten? Haydon is one of those who have not been remembered, and as the book progresses, Plumly's attention increasingly and surprisingly focuses on him: both to exalt him as worthy of memorialization and to explain why he never attained it. Plumly wants us to appreciate Haydon's "genius as a personality" and his poignancy as a thwarted artist whose "work did not sell," who never achieved the glory he craved. While the book suggests that Haydon had a profound influence on all three major artists (especially Keats), it also makes clear he was always "the facilitator rather than the innovator, the catalyst rather than the creator." Plumly repeatedly marks out "the difference between Haydon's outsized sense of his large-scale ambitions ... and the reality of the size of his actual talent," and ruefully concedes that Haydon was "his own worst enemy." Haydon's lack of success is the context for his guests' great accomplishments. But there is a further background to his failure, one that not only tips Haydon's ambitions persistently down a trapdoor, but also threatens to swallow up all the attendees of his dinner: the remarkably dark, oppressive, real-life world of grinding necessity that Plumly shows to be fall of tragedy. Keats and Wordsworth were orphans, Lamb's sister murdered their mother, Wordsworth and Haydon lost several children. "Practical money worries" dogged all of them. Haydon went to debtor's prison four times, while Wordsworth, "desperate for something that will guarantee a steady income," took a government position and was mercilessly denounced for it. (Plumly mounts a staunch defense of what was after all a pragmatic choice: Wordsworth needed to put food on the table.) Most know of Keats's early death from tuberculosis, but Haydon's violent suicide after years of stress and suffering and Lamb's ignominious demise are almost as shattering. Against such devastation, "The Immortal Evening" presents conviviality, friendship and art as sustenance and balm. Plumly probes and replicates the conversational style of Lamb's essays and Wordsworth's poetry, and as Haydon did with his dinner parties, gives us "small talk and big talk, with one's hair down." He reminds us that friendship is often the spur of art (as in Coleridge's "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," addressed to Lamb), and that art, like the urn in Keats's ode, can be "a friend to man." In Plumly's graceful prose and propulsive storytelling, the Romantics come alive for us as creative forces and, perhaps more remarkably, as endearing, complex, authentic individuals. Their human hearts, their tenderness, joys and fears, may provoke thoughts too deep for tears. PRISCILLA GILMAN, who has taught English literature at Yale University and Vassar College, is the author of "The Anti-Romantic Child: A Memoir of Unexpected Joy."

Written with great eloquence and insight, this meticulously detailed historical recreation from Plumly (Immortal Yeats) breathes life into a pivotal moment in the British Romantic era. On December 28, 1817, Benjamin Haydon, a painter of historical canvases, hosted a small dinner for his friends William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Charles Lamb, all on the cusp of literary immortality. The purpose of the "immortal dinner,"¿ as Haydon later referred to it, was to show off his three years of progress on Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, a massive painting into which he had incorporated the faces of all three friends. By 1820, when the canvas was finally finished, Wordsworth was recognized as England's greatest living poet, Keats had written his most memorable verse, Lamb was a renowned essayist, and Haydon was himself enjoying a brief spurt of the fame that eluded him most of his career. Although Plumly devotes little more than a chapter to the raucous, lively dinner itself, it allows him to delve into events leading up to it and resulting from it, and to offer astute assessments of the principals' worldviews and aesthetics. The colorful portrait he paints is that of a select artistic fraternity, frequently contrary in their opinions and attitudes, who nevertheless knew that they were making a significant impact on the spirit of their age. Agent: Rob McQuilken, Massie, McQuilken. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Picture William Wordsworth in his mid-40s wearing a dressing gown, face covered with the accoutrements of a life mask while painter Benjamin Robert Haydon and editor John Scott secretly snigger at the poet who is oblivious to their reverential gaze. This is one of many intimate moments poetically layered into Plumly's (English, Univ. of Maryland; Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography) work. The author explores the themes of immortality and genius by weaving biographical information with the personal correspondence and the creative works of Haydon, Wordsworth, John Keats, and Charles Lamb surrounding their attendance of Haydon's December 28, 1817 dinner party to celebrate his progress on their portraits within the painting Christ's Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem. Plumly's volume joins Penelope Hughes-Hallett's The Immortal Dinner: A Famous Evening of Genius and Laughter in Literary London, 1817. VERDICT The title is highly recommended for students of poetry. Readers with an interest in art history will also find Plumly's interdisciplinary approach relevant to the study of 18th- and 19th-century English painters.-Nerissa Kuebrich, Chicago (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A re-creation of a famous 1817 dinner party hosted by painter Benjamin Haydon for his friends John Keats, William Wordsworth and Charles Lamb serves as a way of exploring the lives, artistic sentiments and world views of some of the most influential literary figures of England's Romantic period. When Haydon invited his friends to dinner and tea on Dec. 28th, 1817a night he would later refer to in his autobiography and diary entries as "the immortal dinner"he did so for two reasons. The first was to introduce the young emerging poet Keats to Wordsworth, already considered a great Romantic poet. The second was to share his progress on his most important historical painting to that point, Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. A massive work that incorporated the faces of Keats, Wordsworth and Lamb, Haydon had spent three years on the painting by 1817 and would spend another three on it before it was completed. Although poet Plumly (Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography, 2009) does not spend significant time describing the "lively, even raucous evening" itself, he uses it as a way to ambitiously chronicle the events before and after the meal in each of the artist's lives. The author also adopts a speculative tone when discussing the meale.g., after delving into their work to compare their differing views on poetry form: "You have to wonder if any of these issues were discussed or brought up at the immortal dinner." In this exhaustively researched but occasionally digressive book, Plumly uses diary entries, autobiographies, historical accounts and excerpts of the artists' works to explore a key time period in artistic and literary history. Eloquent at times and rambling at others, this colorful historical narrative will be of interest to academics of the Romantic era, but the disorienting chronology and critical jargon may deter some general readers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.