Lake of Geneva John Keats Geneva Poster

During the period of 1818 and 1819, the letters by John Keats to his young sister Keats’s are full of charm. He lets her perceive nothing of his anxieties and is full of brotherly tenderness and careful advice. Here, for example, he advises her against keeping live birds or fishes, and in this Letter is found his famous quote on Geneva Lake: "They are better in the trees and the water,—though I must confess even now a partiality for a handsome globe of gold-fish—then I would have it hold ten pails of water and be fed continually fresh through a cool pipe with another pipe to let through the floor—well ventilated they would preserve all their beautiful silver and crimson. Then I would put it before a handsome painted window and shade it all round with Myrtles and Japonicas. I should like the window to open on to the Lake of Geneva—and there I’d sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading."