The Secret Victorianist at Keats House |
John Keats didn’t live at the house which was then known as
Wentworth Place for long (only from 1818 until 1820), but the period was an important
one for the poet. It was here, in Hampstead, that Keats wrote some of his most
famous poems, including his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘La Belle Dame sans
Merci’, and fell in love with Fanny Brawne, whose family occupied the smaller ‘half’
of the then divided dwelling.
Today Keats House is a single property which has been
restored with décor the man himself might have recognised and completed with
period furnishings and artefacts from Keats’s life.
The Chester Room |
The house is beautiful, set
among tranquil gardens on a serene side street in a leafy residential area, and
at times it’s hard to believe you’re in London at all (which of course you
wouldn’t have been in the early 1800s!).
It is this feel of the place and the chance to see a well
restored Regency property which is the attraction of visiting, rather than the
items which are here from Keats’s life. It’s a lovely setting in which to read
a little Keats or learn about his acquaintances, and, since your ticket remains
valid for a year, I’d recommend visiting as something of an introduction to the
poet, before returning a few weeks or months later, having got stuck into his
poems in a little more detail.
Fanny Brawne's Room |
The house was also later home to actress Eliza
Jane Chester, so there are also prints and portraits in the room she added which
might be of interest to lovers of nineteenth-century theatre. If you're in London with an afternoon to spare I'd heartily recommend visiting the museum.
Do you know of any other attractions from nineteenth-century
London the Secret Victorianist should visit before she moves to the US? Let me
know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
Keats's Parlour |
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
How about Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton? Or perhaps the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth? Both would be worthy of pilgrimages, I think! :)
ReplyDeleteI've reached the point in my literary journey through classical literature and poetry that it's practically impossible to read the first lines of "La Dame" and almost every one of his Odes without - as Emily St. Aubert, my love, perfected so well - weeping! Or, to be well-enough versed in Greek literature and lore in order to become a weeping mess on the floor simply from the opening lines of his “Hyperion”: Deep in the shady sadness of a vale / Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, / Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, / Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone. < sniff >
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