The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb

by Stanley Plumly

The author of the highly acclaimed Posthumous Keats, praised as “full of… those fleeting moments we call genius” (Washington Post), now provides a window into the lives of Keats and his contemporaries in this brilliant new work.

On December 28, 1817, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon hosted what he referred to in his diaries and autobiography as the “immortal dinner.” He wanted to introduce his young friend John Keats to the great William Wordsworth and to celebrate with his friends his most important historical painting thus far, “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” in which Keats, Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb (also a guest at the party) appeared. After thoughtful and entertaining discussions of poetry and art and their relation to Enlightenment science, the party evolved into a lively, raucous evening. This legendary event would prove to be a highlight in the lives of these immortals.

A beautiful and profound work of extraordinary brilliance, The Immortal Evening regards the dinner as a lens through which to understand the lives and work of these legendary artists and to contemplate the immortality of genius.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Art, Books About Books, Romanticism

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2014

About the author

On May 23, 1939, Stanley Plumly was born to Herman and Esther Plumly in Barnesville, Ohio. Following Stanley's birth, the family moved from farm work to carpentry jobs and back to farm work in Virginia and Ohio. Plumly graduated from Wilmington College, a small work-study school in Ohio, in 1962. While he was in college, his writing talents were recognized and encouraged by the playwright-poet-teacher Joel Climenhaga. Plumly received his MA from Ohio University in 1968 and did course work toward a PhD at the same school.

The writer's father, who died at the age of fifty-six of a heart attack brought on by his chronic alcoholism, dominates the poet's work: "I can hardly think of a poem I've written that at some point in its history did not implicate, or figure, my father" (Iowa Review, Fall 1973). His mother also figures prominently as the silent, helpless witness of her husband's self-destruction.

Plumly's books of poetry include Old Heart (W. W. Norton, 2007); The Marriage in the Trees (Ecco Press, 1997); Boy on the Step (1989); Summer Celestial (1983); Out-of-the-Body Travel (1977), which won the William Carlos Williams Award and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Giraffe (1973); In the Outer Dark (1970), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (W. W. Norton, 2008); Argument & Song: Sources & Silences in Poetry (Other Press, 2003).

He edited the Ohio Review from 1970 to 1975 and the Iowa Review from 1976 to 1978. He has taught at numerous institutions including Louisiana State University, Ohio University, Princeton, Columbia, and the Universities of Iowa, Michigan, and Houston, as well as at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1978 and 1979.

His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (Plumly's father died while the poet was in Europe on this grant in 1973), an Ingram-Merrill Foundation Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. He is a professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently, he is Maryland's poet laureate.

Reviews

[Belinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book. I thought it would be a slim volume about an evening of food and talk by a group of talented men. It turns out to be about Haydon, the artist.

While Plumly gives many pages to the genius of Keats and Wordsworth, the relationships between men like Coleridge and Haydon, the art of contemporaries such as Turner and Constable, it is about the failure of Haydon to understand men and art.

Dickens describes Haydon's art as bad, but perhaps it is simply old, his ideas no longer original, the influence (Greek art e.g.: Elgin marbles) are not as important. Haydon misses this, his eyes are fixed on some ideal that belongs in the past, his life is lived in debt as he pursues it, his relationships based mostly on what he could get out of them (so they have an impermanence), which is mostly money, and his inability to step away from himself. He is, essentially, a tragic figure even though he fights so hard to be otherwise.

This is all well and good, but isn't the premise of the book "a legendary dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb" all about a marvellous meal? Sure, it can't be JUST about the dinner, it would need more to it than that. I was hoping it might have been like "The Invention of Dr Cake" by Motion, but the fiction aspect of it never occurred, it was, despite the category of dramatic fiction, a biography.

What was the point of it? To discuss how Keats, Wordsworth, etc, ended up in Haydon's paintings? I guess so. And I'm sure it's an interesting account of Haydon, if you want to read all about him, which I didn't.

Despite the big tick from NPR's Corrigan, this didn't do it for me. I was bored by the repetitive nature of the book.I read about 140 pages, skipped to the end, read the last few chapters, and that was that.

[Julie Bozza · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, this was brilliant. This is the book to read about the "Immortal Dinner" and about the host, artist B.R. Haydon.

Choosing the Immortal Dinner as the subject of a full-length book reminds me of Keats' wary reflection on beginning his epic "Endymion": that he must make 4000 lines of poetry out of one bare circumstance. As with other tomes exploring this gathering on 28 December 1817, there is a lot of other content covered before, during and after the dinner and supper, focussing mainly on the strangely problematic Haydon, his own worst enemy for sure.

Plumly's book is beautifully written, which helps. There is also a lot about Keats, which also helps. For the first time, I was made to understand why the "Elgin Marbles" had such an impact on Haydon, Keats, and other Romantic creatives.

And then, towards the end when I was beginning to flag, there are a few short chapters about large matters in art; about Turner and Constable; about Haydon in the context of the modern art movements he almost completely failed to get on board with. I will have to go back and re-read those chapters, as I learned too much to take in at once.

If you're at all interested in this subject, this artist, or the Romantics, then this book is highly recommended.

[Tom]

Good review on Fresh Air this week by Maureen Corrigan(sp?). (though I couldn't help arching an eyebrow when she referred to Charles Lamb as a "minor" figure -- well, maybe she meant at time of these events. I hope so.)

[Taylor]

How does this book differ from The Immortal Dinner by Penelope Hughes-Hallett, which was published in 2000?

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A splendid account of the night that multiple personas from the era of Romanticism met at artist Benjamin Haydon's place in central London. Plumly covers the backgrounds of the major personas: Wordsworth, Lamb, Keats, and Haydon as well as their circles of friends (Coleridge and other missing people at this event). As with his other work of biography mixed with literary criticism, Posthumous Keats, Plumly excels at analyzing the poetry and its impact, and also does a great job explaining Haydon's artistic career but also why he was never great.

A great book for those who are interested in these subjects, their era, and especially if you have a read a biography where this evening is mentioned over the course of a page or two. Illuminating.

[Jim Krotzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Immortal Evening is a biographical or memoirist look into the life of Benjamin Haydon, an Historical artist in the early 19th century. On December 28, 1817, he gives a dinner party for three of his best friends, John Keats, Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth, all writers. The purposes of the dinner are to introduce John Keats and William Wordsworth, at the time the most imminent poet in Britain. In monetary terms, Haydon is not a successful painter, but he is a fine writer who keeps a daily journal and later writes an autobiography. Besides getting insight into the life and character of Haydon, the reader also learns much about Keats, Lamb, and Wordsworth, their writings and Haydon's paintings. My greatest criticism of the book is that it is highly repetitious. It seems to jump around allowing the repetition, but the jumping around doesn't distract the reader. The work does flow. I highly recommend a book in which a small dinner party becomes the highlight of the host's, Haydon's, life.

[Robert Knox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this largely entertaining peek into the lives of creative artists in the early 19th century by Stanley Plumly, ambitiously titled “The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb,” mentions the names of three literary worthies likely to stir up interest in lovers of poetry. Particularly those of us enamored the great age of English Romantic poetry. The title does not include the name of another artistic figure, Benjamin Robert Haydon — a painter, not a poet — who was the host for the “immortal evening” of the title. While he is not remembered the way the three writers are, at one time paid public exhibitions of his ambitious historical paintings drew thousands of visitors in London and other sites during the early 19th century.

The “immortals” Haydon summoned to a particular Sunday dinner are clearly the three writers, especially the poets Keats and Wordsworth. Harold Lamb was most successful as a storyteller and informal essayist, popular in his time and for generations after, though not so widely read today.

But Haydon has been largely forgotten. His genre, “historical painting,” has been entirely superseded, first by photography and then by film. The painting he was working on (and would take six years to complete) when he invited his literary friends for Sunday dinner, followed by a late supper, and apparently a good deal of wine throughout, was titled “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.” The particular reason for inviting the three writers (and a few other guests) was that all three had posed for Haydon. Their faces, bodies clothed in period dress, appear distinctly among the crowd of observers witnessing the momentous arrival of the great religious teacher.

I find it hard to warm up to this painting. Plumly makes no case for it as great art either, despite his sympathy for and detailed attention to the struggles of the artist. The book turns repeatedly to dissect what was wrong with Haydon’s view of his vocation and his art, and with Haydon himself — what keeps him, that is, despite his out-sized confidence in his own genius from being among the true ‘immortals’ at his own party. Rather than his painting, it’s his obsessive journal-keeping about his life and times that interests us today. His record of the memorable ‘evening’ of the dinner party serves as the book’s lens into the characters of the literary figures and leads to his reflections about them at other times.

But much of “The Immortal Evening” focuses on Haydon’s “unsuccessful” life, and this is the limitation of Plumly’s approach. I kept feeling tempted to leaf ahead to see when the names of the people I was interested in, Wordsworth or Keats — or Coleridge, who though unavailable for the feast or to pose for the painting gets a lot of ink here — turn up next.

So the book’s hook — three important writers (two of them true immortals) who know each other more by reputation than by personal contact get invited to dinner by a guy who appears to be a better host than he is an artist — and I would read anything Plumly, himself a poet, has to tell us about Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge or their period. The author of “Posthumous Keats,” which I read enthusiastically a few years ago, Plumly might be regarded as the high chef of literary biographical slices. His book on Keats concentrates on how the ending of the Keats’s short life has fixed our notion of a young man of genius who best resembles a figure from his own “Ode to a Grecian Urn”:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal…

Keats won’t age, won’t decline, won’t disappoint his fans, can never be accused of “failing to live up” to expectation of his early brilliance. And in return all he gives up is his life.

In “Immortal Evening” Plumly quotes this judgment by the ill-fated painter Haydon on his young friend: “Keats is the only man I ever met with who is conscious of a high calling… except Wordsworth.”

Ah, the inevitably troubling subject of Wordsworth’s artistic biography, which takes a path opposite to Keats’s. A ground-breaking poet of the highest order, he does his best work in his early years. By the time Haydon and Keats, and most English speakers, become acquainted with his great poetry (and Haydon’s ‘immortal’ gathering takes place), Wordsworth is at the peak of his fame, but the nadir of his inspiration. He lives a long life, but his increasing conservatism deeply disappoints those who who loved his great work.

As for Lamb, his biography is also a cautionary tale. Despite the popularity of his essay’s — Plumly calls him Victorian England’s “favorite storyteller” — he spends most of his life as a clerk in a civil service office, supporting a troubled family. He takes long rambles through his beloved London and becomes amusingly, and provocatively drunk, at Haydon’s dinner party.

Slices of life from period letters, diaries and poems woven together by an author who is the master of his material provide the highlights in what might be called the biography of an accidental crossing in time and place. Keats, we learn, knew who he was, and it is interesting that an artist in a different medium who misjudged his own destiny knew his young friend better than he did himself. Haydon’s use of his three writer friends’ portraits in his would-be masterpiece as figures among a watching crowd is also provoking. As Christ on a donkey (wearing a tiara of heavenly glow) pushes past the crowd into the holy city, Wordsworth’s face droops downward with heavy thoughts. Lamb looks abashed at divinity’s approach, while Keats passionately argues his own line of thought.

Plumly’s fascinating book, perhaps unavoidably since it relies so heavily on Haydon’s journal and memoirs, puts the forgotten painter in the center of the picture. But our eyes, and thoughts, are on the guys in the corner.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a disappointment, though not entirely the author's fault. I expected the book to be about Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb but it is instead focused on painter Benjamin Robert Haydon who I do not find nearly as fascinating as Plumly obviously does. It's a bit overwritten and repetitive but the right audience should find it an interesting work of criticism and literary history.

[Karina Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 This book ignited a true passion for literature and its history for me. Even though it's centered around a painter, one of Plumly's arguments is that Benjamin Haydon's mark on history is made more through his connection with writers and his own writing than the paintings that he suffers throughout his life for. I read this right after reading the Picture of Dorian Gray, and I would highly recommend that other readers of this book take the same path. I'm not sure how I would've felt for this book if I hadn't read Dorian Gray first. The novel features many philosophical conversations about art, and takes place in London of the romantic era, which is vividly described in The Immortal Evening. These two books gave me an appreciation for the era and the art of studying art, whatever form it comes in. My only complaints were that a few things were over-repeated, and the writing style is pretty dense and can be hard to get into. Overall, though, this book has affected the way I'll perceive literature of this era from now on.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5? I’m not sure.... There were some fantastic insights here and real moments for me as at the beginning when each person begins his walk to the dinner from different places in London and also the pieces of diaries, letters, and biographies that Plumly recounts with care....But. ? The writing style felt repetitive and at times confusing. Plumly has a way of circling around his subject and returning to it, retracing his steps, reimagining. Sometimes I found this pretty interesting and at times, dare I say it? I felt like: just get on with it! Still, worth reading for its thinking about Keats and Lamb and Haydon and Wordsworth and Coleridge (not at dinner but part of the book—among others) and for its thinking about art and friendship and different kinds of people that make both—and sometimes unmake both!

[The Atlantic]

"It’s a compelling, accessible introduction to the highly flawed personalities behind an artistic movement that continues to exercise broad influence, and it finds a way to movingly humanize its characters. In both their achievements and their personal failings, the Romantics tend to stand larger than life. In Plumly’s vision, they are simply people whose attunement to the world and one another created a filigreed intimacy—intricate, beautiful, and liable to break." — Talya Zax

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

[Ela B · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an interesting read as I hadn't heard much about the poets and nothing about the painter this book talks about, albeit I would have prefered the chronological order being a bit tighter and less jumping around and repetition.

[Helena · Rating 2 out of 5]

not nearly enough gossip!!!
(also you can really tell my celibate has been broken because i havent logged in anything on goodreads in like two weeks)

[Emelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Where have they all gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she dies and left me,
Died prematurely in a day of horrors—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have had playmates, I have had companions
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.” (Charles Lamb, The Old Familiar Faces)

Den 28 december 1817 bjuder Benjamin Robert Haydon in flera tongivande personer till sin våning i centrala London för vad han skulle komma att kalla “the immortal dinner”. Och det är just denna tillställning som ligger som grund för detta verk. Stanley Plumly leder in läsaren i romantikens blomstrande år och ger en närgående skildring av såväl Haydon själv, men också hans välkända gäster såsom John Keats, William Wordsworth och Charles Lamb. Verket fungerar såväl som en biografi över dessa personligheter, men också som en slags litteraturkritik där Plumly analyserar deras verksamhet och inverkan på den romantiska erans litterära och konstnärliga landskap. Kort och gott ges en fascinerande vy över denna samling av intellektuella och konstnärliga personligheter (och deras kopplingar mellan varandra) från en svunnen tid!

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The two-star rating is because this is a well written and thoroughly researched book. If it were titled the biography of haydon and if I read it because that's who I wanted to know about then I would rate it more highly. But the title is misleading. It's exciting to know that these great gentlemen were in one room at the same time. But the idea is all we really have. The content about the evening might be sufficient for a magazine article, not for a book. So the author drifts here and there and back again. The repetition is astounding and boring. He revisits people dead for 20 years and even reuses quotes. But there is no organization into theses for the same facts to be repeated. Then Turner and Constable are included. Where did this come from?! Just more name dropping. Also, I've been fortunate to have seen the art he writes about. Still I needed to pull them up online to augment my reading. The book needs plates to understand the works.

[Marianne Meyers · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating topic, however written like a doctoral dissertation. I didn't come to love these people and I wanted to, I wanted to feel a connection. While the facts are covered well and we have everyone's diary, it didn't happen for me. The beginning was interesting, where everyone lived and how far they had to walk to get to Haydon's house, what kind of discussions they had at the dinner, a special moment caught in time. Charles Lamb really caught my eye, the kind of life he led and taking care of his unstable sister, Mary. The "Legends" themselves are interesting and talented but somehow this book steers it's way into the scholastic information and that's that. I heard about this book on NPR, I think Fresh Air, and I was excited to read it. Really, I ended up skimming through.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating, thoughtful, and, sadly, about sixty pages too long. What may have been better suited to a novella or even a series of discrete essays has a hard time holding up over the course of a couple hundred pages. The author, while insightful, becomes repetitive not only in his analysis, but also in his sometimes artificial and stilted turns of phrase. This is a great book for English majors, and I'm so glad to have read it, but it definitely does not have the broad appeal that some other historians I've read do. Overall still worth it, I just wish that Plumly could have been a little more ruthless in his self editing.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i agree with other reviewers that this reads like a phd dissertation, except it's perhaps wittier than a purely academic publication. the dinner is the centerpiece around which the biographies of haydon, keats, wordsworth, and lamb are told but the actual dinner takes up only a handful of pages and that's somewhat disappointing. otherwise, i enjoyed the book and enjoyed getting better acquainted with these romantic figures, especially charles lamb, on whom i've developed a small crush. what a charmer!

[Christina Dudley · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you love the Romantics and their era, this book is chock-full of anecdotes and analysis. If you're mildly interested, this book will mildly interest you. More illustrations would have been lovely. I found myself most interested in Keats and Lamb and the Elgin Marbles and--just like in college--least interested in Wordsworth and his interminable Prelude.

[Rebecca Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject is interesting--the painter Benjamin Robert Hayden (ambitious and egoistical but not particularly talented)--and his circle of friends: Keats, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb. We learn a lot about these artists' lives and art. But Plumly is incredibly repetitive, and Haydon is not exactly the greatest company. This should have been a long article in a magazine, not an entire book.

[Henry Sienkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging book full of vignettes and historical “factoids.” Well composed and structured, the author clearly knows the subject material and crafted a work that was evocative of the time and place. I read for the Arts Club of Washington's (www.artsclubofwashington.org) Marfield Prize

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing men (yes, no women in this tale) and amazing times.