Joseph Severn, Consul in Rome, 1861-1871
Noel Blakiston describes the actions of an ebullient British Consul in the Papal State during the final stages of Italian unification.
Forty years, almost to a day, after Keats had died in his arms in that house at the foot of the Spanish Steps, Joseph Severn, on March 5th, 1861, entered upon his duties as British Consul in Rome. How, it may be asked, was an unsuccessful painter of sixty-seven ever appointed to such a post?
On the score of age he wrote to a friend that there was only one obstacle to his candidature, a Foreign Office rule that each Consul on his first appointment should not be aged more than fifty, and he was ‘just on the wrong side of it’. He had the advantage, however, of looking a good deal younger than his years.
A visitor to Rome in the sixties would sometimes ask him whether he was the son of the Severn who had known Keats. Yet the Foreign Office would hardly have made the appointment if the recommendations had not been of great authority.
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