At page 98 of the late Mr. Howitt’s Northern Heights of London,[63] it is said of Keats:—
“From this time till 1820, when he left—in the last stage of consumption—for Italy, he resided principally at Hampstead. During most of this time, he lived with his very dear friend Mr. Charles Brown, a Russia merchant, at Wentworth Place, Downshire Hill, by Pond Street, Hampstead. Previously, he and his brother Thomas had occupied apartments at the next house to Mr. Brown’s, at a Mrs. ——’s whose name his biographers have carefully omitted. With the daughter of this lady Keats was deeply in love—a passion which deepened to the last.”
No authority is given for the statement that John and Tom Keats lodged with the mother of the lady to whom John was attached; and I think it must have arisen from a misapprehension of something communicated to Mr. Howitt, perhaps in such ambiguous terms as every investigator has experienced in his time. At all events I must contradict the statement positively; nor is there any doubt where the brothers did lodge, namely in Well Walk, with the family of the local postman, Benjamin Bentley. Charles Cowden Clarke mentions in his Recollections that the lodging was “in the first or second house on the right hand, going up to the Heath”; and the rate books show that Bentley was rated from 1814 to 1824 for the house which, in 1838, was numbered 1, the house next to the public house formerly called the “Green Man,” but now known as the “Wells” Tavern. At page 102, Mr. Howitt says:—
“It is to be regretted that Wentworth Place, where Keats lodged, and wrote some of his finest poetry, either no longer exists or no longer bears that name. At the bottom of John Street, on the left hand in descending, is a villa called Wentworth House; but no Wentworth Place exists between Downshire Hill and Pond Street, the locality assigned to it. I made the most rigorous search in that quarter, inquiring of the tradesmen daily supplying the houses there, and of two residents of forty and fifty years. None of them had any knowledge or recollection of a Wentworth Place. Possibly Keats’s friend, Mr. Brown, lived at Wentworth House, and that the three cottages standing in a line with it and facing South-End Road, but at a little distance from the road in a garden, might then bear the name of Wentworth Place. The end cottage would then, as stated in the lines of Keats, be next door to Mr. Brown’s. These cottages still have apartments to let, and in all other respects accord with the assigned locality.”
Mr. Howitt seems to have meant that Wentworth House with the cottages may possibly have borne the name of Wentworth Place; and he should have said that the house was on the right hand in descending John Street. But the fact of the case is correctly stated in Mr. Thorne’s Handbook to the Environs of London,[64] Part I, page 291, where a bolder and more explicit localization is given:
“The House in which he [Keats] lodged for the greater part of the time, then called Wentworth Place, is now called Lawn Bank, and is the end house but one on the rt. side of John Street, next Wentworth House.”
Mr. Thorne adduces no authority for the statement; and it must be assumed that it is based on some of the private communications which he acknowledges generally in his preface. He may possibly have been biassed by the plane-tree which Mr. Howitt, at page 101 of Northern Heights, substitutes for the traditional plum-tree in quoting Lord Houghton’s account of the composition of the Ode to a Nightingale. Certainly there is a fine old plane-tree in front of the house at Lawn Bank; and there is a local tradition of a nightingale and a poet connected with that tree; but this dim tradition may be merely a misty repetition, from mouth to mouth, of Mr. Howitt’s extract from Lord Houghton’s volumes. Primâ facie, a plane-tree might seem to be a very much more likely shelter than a plum-tree for Keats to have chosen to place his chair beneath; and yet one would think that, had Mr. Howitt purposely substituted the plane-tree for the plum-tree, it would have been because he found it by the house which he supposed to be Brown’s. This however is not the case; and it should also be mentioned that at the western end of Lawn Bank, among some shrubs &c., there is an old and dilapidated plum-tree which grows so as to form a kind of leafy roof.
Eleven years ago, when I attempted to identify Wentworth Place beyond a doubt by local and other enquiries, the gardener at Wentworth House assured me very positively that, some fifteen or twenty years before, when Lawn Bank (then called Lawn Cottage) was in bad repair, and the rain had washed nearly all the colour off the front, he used to read the words “Wentworth Place,” painted in large letters beside the top window at the extreme left of the old part of the house as one faces it; and I have since had the pleasure of reading the words there myself; for the colour got washed thin enough again some time afterwards. After a great deal of enquiry among older inhabitants of Hampstead than this gardener, I found a musician, born there in 1801, and resident there ever since, a most intelligent and clear-headed man, who had been in the habit of playing at various houses in Hampstead from the year 1812 onwards. When asked, simply and without any “leading” remark, what he could tell about a group of houses formerly known as Wentworth Place, he replied without hesitation that Lawn Bank, when he was a youth, certainly bore that name, that it was two houses, with entrances at the sides, in one of which he played as early as 1824, and that subsequently the two houses were converted into one, at very great expense, to form a residence for Miss Chester,[65] who called the place Lawn Cottage. This informant did not remember the names of the persons occupying the two houses. A surgeon of repute, among the oldest inhabitants of Hampstead, told me, as an absolute certainty, that he was there as early as 1827, knew the Brawne family, and attended them professionally at Wentworth Place, in the house forming the western half of Lawn Bank. Of Charles Brown, however, this gentleman had no knowledge.
Not perfectly satisfied with the local evidence, I forwarded to Mr. Severn a sketch-plan of the immediate locality, in order that he might identify the houses in which he visited Keats and Brown and the Brawne family: he replied that it was in Lawn Bank that Brown and Mrs. Brawne had their respective residences; and he also mentioned side entrances; but Sir Charles Dilke says his grandfather’s house had the entrance in front, and only Brown’s had a side entrance. Two relatives of Mrs. Brawne’s who were still living in 1877, and were formerly residents in the house, also identified this block as that in which she resided, and so did the late Mr. William Dilke of Chichester, by whose instructions, during the absence of his brother, the name was first painted upon the house. It is hard to see what further evidence can be wanted on the subject. The recollection of one person may readily be distrusted; but where so many memories converge in one result, their evidence must be accepted; and I leave these details on record here, mainly on the ground that doubts may possibly arise again. At present it does not seem as if there could be any possible question that, in Lawn Bank, we have the immortalized Wentworth Place where Keats spent so much time, first as co-inmate with Brown in the eastern half of the block, and at last when he went to be nursed by Mrs. and Miss Brawne in the western half.
It should perhaps be pointed out, in regard to Mr. Thorne’s expression that Keats lodged there, that this was not a case of lodging in the ordinary sense: he was a sharing inmate; and his share of the expenses was duly acquitted, as recorded by Mr. Dilke. In the hope of identifying the houses by some documentary evidence, I had the parish rate-books searched; in these there is no mention of John Street; but that part of Hampstead is described as the Lower Heath Quarter: no names of houses are given; and the only evidence to the purpose is that, among the ratepayers of the Lower Heath Quarter, very few in number, were Charles Wentworth Dilk (without the final e) and Charles Brown. The name of Mrs. Brawne does not appear; but, as she rented the house in Wentworth Place of Mr. Dilke, it may perhaps be assumed that it was he who paid the rates.