Hemstede

Those places in the city that remain untamed and uncivilized (though not unsullied) after the passing of years are always the most interesting. We experience them as little rebellions, even though the city sometimes preserves them precisely because of this impression.

Take Hampstead Heath, that wilderness smack dab in the posh residential order that is northwest London. Famed by day for its role in inspiring many a Romantic poem and some excellent studies of trees, as well as providing a lovely backdrop for Marx's Sunday picnics with his family, one's first associations with it are utterly respectable. But eventually one learns that it is no less notorious by night as a cruising ground (this history is equally absorbing, although not nearly as well documented). That it is a pleasure ground in more than one sense is established sometime during the first meander- one is far more likely to tread upon an empty condom packet than some discarded verse.

Those who despair the Heath's duplicitousness seem to do so not for moralistic reasons, but on the grounds that the knowledge of its night life somehow infringes upon the sanctity and peace of the grand trees and the tall grasses during the day. What they neglect to remember is that even before the discovery of that first discarded remnant of passion (only the 20th century allows us to describe it in this fashion) there was something suspicious, something (exhilarating?) in the air that the glory of the landscape did not quite account for.

So perhaps Keats did only wander peacefully around the meadows of the Heath and contemplate Fanny in the shade provided by the great chestnut trees. Then, again, who are we to say that she didn't accompany him?