Parish Church, Hampstead.
Within the church lies Incledon, the exquisite sweetness of whose voice, and wonderful power of expression, drew from the stately Sarah Siddons the graceful compliment that in singing two lines he could produce as much emotion as she could by the elaborate representation of the highest passion. (This delighted him and did not hurt herself.)
A white marble tablet at the west end of the church marks the resting-place of Dr. Askew, and at the east end of the south gallery we find the handsome mural monument to the memory of Lady Erskine, whose burial-place is in a vault at the west end of the church. Other memorials of persons of ‘mark and likelihood’ appear in the church and churchyard, but we have only pointed the way to a few of them.
Since the foregoing pages were written, a very interesting addition, which we owe to America, has been made to the local memorials in St. John’s Church, in the delicately sculptured but idealized bust of Keats, which we almost touch on entering. It presents itself in profile, bracketed in the vicinity of the Communion-table—a graceful offering to the genius of the poet, and recognition of the undying charm of his poetry, which is as deeply felt in the land of Longfellow as at home. We are certainly not an enthusiastic people, and seldom memorize our literary men or women—never in any public way till a century or so of years have given proof of the abidingness of their deserts. The time has therefore not yet arrived for a public acknowledgment of our national appreciation of the writer of ‘Endymion’ and ‘Hyperion’; but it will come, and I should not wonder if this charming reminder on the part of our Transatlantic kinsfolk should lead the sooner to the honour of a niche for him in Poets’ Corner.
In wandering through this, the only graveyard in Hampstead, one notices the absence of those doggerel lines and absurd inscriptions once so frequently seen in country churchyards, and which were wont to introduce a sense of the ridiculous into these solemn places. There is still remaining an inscription on a tombstone in the churchyard that for complacent egotism is ludicrously noticeable:
Here lie the Ashes of
MR. JOHN HINDLEY,
Of Stanhope Street, Mayfair, London;
Originally of King Street, Liverpool; who, under peculiar disadvantages,
Which to common minds would have been
A bar to any exertion,
Raised himself from all obscured situations
Of Birth and Fortune by his own Industry and frugality
To the enjoyment of a moderate competency.
He attained a peculiar excellence in penmanship and drawing
Without the Instruction of a Master,
And to eminence in Arithmetic, the useful and higher
Branches of the Mathematics,
By going to School only a year and eight months.
He died a Bachelor
On the 24th day of October, 1807,
In the 55th year of his age,
And without forgetting Relations, Friends, or acquaintances,
He bequeathed one-fifth of his Property
To Public Charities.
Reader, the world is open to thee.
Go thou and do likewise![72]
The author of ‘A Walking Tour in Normandy’ states that in the church of Avranches there is a marble slab erected by the Marquis de Belbœuf in 1844 to the memory of his predecessor of that name, the late Bishop of Avranches, who, it is stated, died, and was buried at Hampstead, in England. Is anything known of the Bishop or his grave?
On March 30, 1797, the remains of Lord Southampton were conveyed in great funeral pomp from his late residence in Stanhope Street for interment in the family vault at Hampstead.