A Month of Keats: Keats and Hampstead Heath

Our Keats Walk in Hampstead in north London, led by guide Anita Miller, has brought us to Hampstead Heath. Our first time on the Heath was a week before, when we visited Kenwood House. Kenwood is on the north side of the Heath, the place occupied by the various earls of Mansfield (and the setting for the 2013 movie “Belle,” which is well worth seeing). The house includes an incredibly fine art collection, including a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, some Constables, a Gainsborough or two, a Van Dyck, and many others.

John Keats by Joseph Severn, 1819

Today we’re on the south side of the Heath (and it’s a big heath). We have just crossed the street from Well Walk and entered what is a forested part of the area.

This is a place John Keats knew well. He would often walk from where he lived on Well Walk across part of the heath to Wentworth House, where his good friend Charles Armitage Brown lived. Brown was the companion who spent 48 days hiking Scotland with Keats, and the friend who would offer Keats a place to live after his brother Tom died in late 1818.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: A forested part of Hampstead Heath.

A Month with Keats: Poetry, Religion and Politics

We’re standing on Church Row in Hampstead, in north London. Church Row is the oldest street in Hampstead, a longish block of attached townhomes lining both sides of the street from the shopping area to the Parish Church of St. John at Hampstead.

Portrait of John Keat by William Hilton, National Portrait Gallery, London

Anita Miller, our guide for this Saturday “Keats Walk,” stops our group of 12 in front of one of the homes in the middle of the block. “This has nothing to do with Keats,” she says, “but notice the windows above each of the doors. Each one is different, because before the era of numbered addresses, that’s how you told people to find your house.”

The houses date from the 1700s, as does the church at the end of the street – 1747, to be exact, although there’s been a church on the property here for more than 1,000 years. It’s the church most associated with John Keats, because it contains a bust of the poet donated by an American admirer in the 1890s. Fanny Brawne, the young woman Keats was engaged to at the time of his death in 1821, was baptized here and attended the church with her family. But Keats, apparently, never set foot inside the building. He was an atheist, after all.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Church Row in Hampstead in north London.

A Month with Keats: A Walk into His Life

We’re standing on the sidewalk outside the Hampstead tube station north London, right on the southern edge of Hampstead Heath. We’ve taken the tube from near our hotel in Westminster to the Embankment station, and changed to the Northern line. We find ourselves this busy Saturday morning at the major crossroads of Hampstead – the intersection of Hampstead High Street and Rosslyn Hill.

We’re waiting for John Keats.

Portrait of John Keats by Joseph Severn, 1816.

More precisely, we’re waiting for Anita Miller, our guide for the monthly Keats Walk in Hampstead. We booked our tickets online through what is today the John Keats House (also known as the Wentworth House) in Hampstead. The tour will end at the house, but we have about two hours of walking, stopping and listening before we arrive at the house. My wife would want me to point out that it’s less a walk and more a hike – Hampstead and the Heath are hilly, and some areas are more suitable for mountain goats.

Our group is eclectic, with one exception – most of the 12 of us are female. I’m one of two men, and the other looks like he’s come along at his girlfriend’s request. Our ages range from high school to Baby Boomer.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Hampstead Tube Station in north London.