A Tale of Two Johns

His name? John Hamilton Reynolds. He was an English poet, satirist, critic, and playwright.



WOW! Hello hot stuff. Dreamy hair. Warm, thoughtful eyes. Snappy dresser. (Hello!? Cravat!) Nice mouth. Deathly pale pallor. Just lovely.

This is literally the only picture that I could find of him. It was the same one with every single search. Is he obscure? Eh. A little, maybe. But not any more obscure than any other second tier poet of that era.The main problem here is...he was friends with someone named...



John Keats. (Who, incidentally, is NOT a Historical Hot Guy.)

They were all BFF and shit. (Reynolds MUST have been the Wingman.) There is lots of correspondence between the two that has survived. Keats even wrote a poem about him called (duh) "To John Hamilton Reynolds." Here's a piece...

O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day's journey in oblivious haze
To serve our joys would
lengthen and dilate.

Remember when guys could write stuff like that about each other and no one called anyone a "homo?"

Anyway, Hamilton started out working in an insurance office, (Get this. It was called: "The Amicable Society for Perpetual Assurance." That rules so hard.) but he grew restless and started writing. He got some stuff published and wouldn't ya know it...the ol' boy got some fans. Lord Byron. Wordsworth. Keats. (You know. The gang.) The problem was...critics kept saying J. Ham was a bit of a hack. ("Despite the fact that Reynolds had a habit of imitating either Lord Byron or William Wordsworth and many critics noted this lack of originality...")

So always the bridesmaid, never the bride. You get the idea. It's kind of a tough crowd to hang around with. Poor guy never had a chance.

Yadda yadda yadda, he did a bunch of stuff in his life. He became a lawyer. Got married. Wrote an opera. Was an Editor at London Magazine. Published some books of poetry. And died a bankrupt alcoholic. And the final indignity...here's his tombstone on the Isle of Wight:



If you can't make out that inscription:

IN MEMORY OF JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS
who died
November 15th 1852
Aged 58 Years.
THE FRIEND OF KEATS

Their caps, not mine. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down. Damn. Dude couldn't even get his own tombstone without the mention of you-know-who.

It's cool, baby. You may not have been the better writer but you were definitely hotter and really...that's all that matters.