Frognal in the present day is by no means devoid of literary associations. In the cosy home known as Frognal End resides the well-known and well-regarded Sir Walter Besant, whose unstained pen, powerful as the lamp of Aladdin, has helped to raise a Palace of Delight in the dreary heart of East London, and where the thick ‘darkness of ignorance’ prevailed has let in light and hope, and the love of healthful and intelligent pleasures. When Baines was writing his ‘Records of Hampstead,’ the late well-known artist and novelist, George du Maurier, was living in New Grove House. He had been resident at Hampstead for many years, and, like others of his brotherhood, appears to have found the neighbourhood helpful to his art. A well-known writer[96] tells us ‘that the Hampstead scenery made in _Punch_ his mountains and valleys, his backgrounds and foregrounds ... the group of Scotch firs suggested a deer forest ... and the distant dome of St. Paul’s an always interesting perspective point.’[97] For some time Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect, resided in an adjacent house, afterwards occupied by Mr. Henry Sharpe, after whose name Baines has added the suffix, ‘a good man.’ When I last visited Hampstead, the talented authoress of the ever-popular ‘Schomberg-Cotta Family’ was living in her pleasant home, Combe Edge, Branch Hill, where, in a grove of evergreens, I listened to a blackbird whistling on the third day of the New Year, 1896. Early in this year the kind heart, the active brain, and busy hands of this wholesome writer and benevolent woman ceased their work, to the deep regret of many friends and the great loss of the patients of the North London Hospital for Consumption, to whom she had been a constant visitor and sympathetic friend. Her friends honoured her memory by endowing an additional bed in the hospital. A tablet, upon which is inscribed, ‘The Elizabeth Rundle Charles Memorial bed,’ was unveiled by the Princess Christian (whose sympathy with all charitable work is well known) on December 18, 1896.