March 9, 2012

Chilling outside John Keat's house

Class trip to John Keat’s house!  This is the house he wrote a lot of his poetry and fell in love with Fanny Brawne in.  I did a project on Keat’s in my British Literary History class last semester so I fancy myself somewhat of an expert on Keats.  The house was a tiny little thing, and it was divided into two sides, one where the Brawne family lived and the other where Keats and his friend lived.  If you’ve seen Bright Star you should know that the layout of the house is completely different.  In the movie, Fanny (what an awful name) and John’s rooms are right next door to each other, so they can knock on the wall romantically to one another.  This is not how their rooms really were at all – more lies Hollywood feeds us.  But overall it was a great house and we even got to see a death mask of Keats.  Pretty neat stuff.

Death mask.  For the record, I don't want one of these for me.

Living room with a very lounge-able sofa

Fancy red room complete with large windows for pondering out of artistically

Spring is coming!!  Stop and smell the tree blossoms!

Keat's house

Trees in bloom finally!

                We headed out to go walking through Hampstead Heath to get to Kenwood House, a private mansion with a great art collection, and happened on a cute little free museum on our way – the Burgh House and Hampstead Museum and that gave us a brief history of the heath.  Funny little side note – my apartment complex in Provo is called “Hampstead” too!  Thinking back on it though, I’m not sure how they came up with that name…it does not resemble its namesake in ANY way at all…

Burgh House and Hampstead Museum 

Our professor had told us that we’d probably get lost walking through the heath, because it’s 790 acres big.  So at least we were prepared for the imminent getting lost.  The park was beautiful and had hundreds of trees and dogs.  British people really love their dogs.  Every park I got to has at least just as many dogs as people.  Anyways, the heath (it really should be called a forest) was great and we got to climb some trees, squelch through mud, and climbed Boudicca’s Mound (where the great Boudicca is said to have been buried).  

Playing at Hampstead

Tree climbing in the heath

Winter leaves

Boudicca's Mound...more like 'Boudicca's Elevated Grass Area'

We finally found our way to Kenwood House and got to go explore its many rooms.  It had a couple better known artists, such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, and was overall a very interesting house.  Upstairs it had a room filled with shoe buckles – every Victorian man’s dream.  They had gold ones, silver ones, ones with rubies and diamonds, and hundreds of other ones.  I learned that you could tell a person’s wealth by just looking at their shoe buckles.  Ah, if only it was as easy nowadays.

Kenwood House

Cool bridge reflection outside the house

Onto the house!

Path leading up to the house