An American in Paradise

Yesterday Hope and I took taxis and trains, trains and taxis before finally arriving in London. This is a city that I love, and love returning to again and again. Samuel Johnson said it best when in 1777 he purportedly exclaimed "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” Happily, I am neither tired of life, nor tired of London. 

We are staying in an airbnb in Kentish Town, close to shops and restaurants but not so very touristy.

Last night Hope and I wandered into a little restaurant called Nandos-- a chain, actually, because I remember eating at Nandos in Salisbury back in 2015 -- where we had some really great food, including sweet potato burger and quinoa salad. I make this point because, while I really loved Belgium, I really disliked the food. So this was the first meal I enjoyed in several weeks.

At another little shop, we also got a new sim card for Hope's iPhone and some fresh pencil lead and note cards. We felt productive.

This morning I located a laundry to drop my clothes. This was necessary because we have been hand washing things for about a month now and we were ripe for a real machine wash. The man at the laundry was gracious and kind. He was also quick, as he had our things washed and dried within two hours. This alone made today a major score.

John Constable
Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow, 1836
oil on canvas
20 x 30 inches
Tate Britain

After dropping off the clothes I headed up the hill to Hampstead Heath. Two hundred years ago it was a rural area outside the city of London.

To give you an idea, here's an image of it by John Constable from 1836. Constable is one of my favorite English painters, with his mastery of light and shadow to produce sublime atmospheric effects. Here the rainbow slices across the storm clouds, which are not unlike the clouds outside our window right now. While the neighborhood might have changed, clearly the weather has not.

Today Hampstead Heath is a fashionable neighborhood north of Hyde Park. There I found a very good little bakehouse called Karma Bread which served up a large bowl of sweet potato soup and big chunks of bread with a cup of cappuccino to wash it down.

I also found the Keats House, what was formerly known as Wentworth House and which now acts as a museum containing books and other objects about the life of John Keats. The grounds and the house were the location where Keats lived when he wrote some of his most famous poems, including "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to a Grecian Urn". It's also the location where he fell in love with Fanny Brawne, and where he learned he was dying of tuberculosis.

Joseph Severn
John Keats, 1819
oil on ivory miniature
105 x 79 mm
National Portrait Gallery

When I arrived at the museum a group of volunteers were gardening around the grounds.

Apparently they call themselves the Heath Hands, working to maintain the garden with plants Keats encountered while he lived there. Small placards explain to visitors the names of plants and the ways in which those plants might have been used two hundred years ago.

It's a sweet and peaceful place. Unfortunately I have no photos because I left the camera at home. You'll just have to make a trip there yourself some time.

After he became ill but before he died in 1821, at the very young age of 25, Keats traveled to Italy upon the advice of his doctors. It was believed at the time that consumption -- the 19th century term for tuberculosis -- was curable in warmer climates.

Sadly, this remedy did not work for Keats and he passed away in Rome with only his friend Joseph Severn by his side. He is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. I think I'd like to go there, too, for Keats is one of my favorite poets.

Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"

Before he died, Keats worried that his poetry would be forgotten. Life circumstances and a romantic spirit laid the idea of mortality heavy on his mind. He hastily wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" as a rumination on these themes while sitting in the garden one afternoon.

It was only after he died that Keats' friend Charles Brown discovered the notes stuffed into the back of a book that this masterful poem got published.

In the paradox, it is poetry and his early demise that leads to his immortality, as suggested in this rich poem, written in May 1819 while he was still at Wentworth House:



"Ode to a Nightingale"

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South! 15

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night, 35

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod. 60

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? 80