Sweet Hampstead and Its AssociationsWhite, Caroline A.
History
Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations
White, Caroline A.
Hampstead (London, England) -- History
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,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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