Lisson Grove, Part Two

On December 28, 1817, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon hosts what he refers to in both his diaries and "Autobiography" as "the immortal dinner." What follows is the second half of the first chapter of a book about that dinner, its guests, and the implied world surrounding it—a moment in cultural and literary history framed by the Regency and Romanticism. The stated reasons for the dinner are, one, that Haydon wants to introduce his young friend John Keats to the great William Wordsworth and, two, that Haydon wishes to celebrate his progress on his most important and largest historical painting so far, "Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." Haydon has invested three years in this work, with three more to go. Keats, Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb (also a dinner guest) appear as spectators in the most vivid quadrant of the painting, along with anachronistic versions of Newton and Voltaire. Later arriving guests include John Landseer, Joseph Ritchie, and John Kingston. After thoughtful and entertaining discussions of poetry and art and their relation to Enlightenment science, the dinner party evolves into a lively, even raucous evening. Haydon also refers to this memorable event as "an immortal evening." The title of the book is The Immortal Evening.