Some Hampstead Memories. By Mary Adams. (Priory Press, Hampstead. 2s.
fal. net.)—Miss Adams finds no lack of memories which we are glad to have recalled, and Mr. Adcock, who illus- trates the volume, has a choice of good subjects. Every suburb of London, and every street, at least in the older town, has associations, but Hampstead is peculiarly rich in them. Gay, Samuel Johnson, Leigh Hunt, George Cra.bbe, Shelley, Keats, Dickens, and R. L. Stevenson are some of the literary names; and in art we have Constable and Romney. Perhaps the most person- ally interesting recollections are those that concern Leigh Hunt and the Shelley and Keats circle. It was here that Keats saw Fanny Brawne. In pathetic contrast with this we have the story of how Coleridge, after shaking hands with Keats, whispered to Hunt : "There is death in that hand." Another Hampstead celebrity was Joanna Bernie, who came to the place in 1802, and lived there for more than fifty years. There are some strange diversities in the accounts which her contemporaries give of her personality. Crabb Robinson says that she "was small in figure and her gait mean and shuffling," while the author of "Memories of Great Men" describes her as "impressive in look and manner," with a "queenly air," tall in figure, and such as might have stepped out of a Vandyke picture.
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