30 August: Boreham on Leigh Hunt

A Lovable Oddity
Many people will recall the circumstance that this week, on the 28th August, marks the anniversary of the death of Leigh Hunt. They will embrace a welcome excuse for stealing a furtive glance at one of the most eccentric personalities, and one of the most variegated careers, in our literary history. In his bewildering faculty for self-contradiction, Leigh Hunt stands absolutely without a peer. He is wise, he is stupid; he is virtuous, he unprincipled; he is kind, he is cruel; he is staunch, he is fickle; he is learned, he is ignorant; he is noble, he is petty; he is gay, he is morbid; he is admirable, he is despicable; he is heroic, he is selfish; he is attractive, he is revolting; and he is each and all of these things at one and the same time.

He was the beloved and honoured friend of Keats and Shelley and Byron and Hazlitt and Lamb, and, in later years, of Dickens, Tennyson and Carlyle. In defence of the oddities of Leigh Hunt, it must be admitted that some of them, at least, were inherited. His father could never make up his mind about anything. Left to himself, he would have embraced all the professions rather than endure the ordeal of making a choice, and would have become engaged to every pretty girl he met rather than propose to any one to the exclusion of all the others.

Like his father, Leigh found his sentimental propensities a trifle wayward. His friend Robertson thoughtlessly introduced him to two sisters, Bessy and Marianne Kent. Hunt, of course, would have liked to bag the brace. Everybody expected him to choose Bessy, so, with characteristic perversity, he married Marianne.

A Poet ln Prison Is A Poet Still
In his early twenties he set himself up as a literary critic, and, sharing the fate of all those who, from the house-tops, shout their denunciations of other people's behaviour, he soon found himself in hot water. Not satisfied with aiming his darts at small fry, he audaciously turned his attention to the Prince Regent, George the Fourth, and was promptly clapped into prison.

It was the best thing that could have happened to him. Everybody knew that all that he had said was true; everybody admired his extraordinary courage in saying it; and everybody was eager to know more about him and to see more of his work. In one of his whimsical moods he converted his cell into a kind of glorified grotto. He had the walls beautifully papered; he sent for a piano, a lute, the busts of the poets and a set of richly-furnished bookcases.

He boasted that he had transformed his dismal dungeon into the most handsome apartment on that side of the Thames. Under his window, during his hours of exercise, he planted roses, pansies, and scarlet-runners. All London roared at Leigh Hunt's delicious jest.

Strangely enough, the greatest damage to the good name of Leigh Hunt was inflicted by one of his most sincere admirers. In the pages of "Bleak House," Dickens has given us two unforgettable personages—Laurence Boythorn and Harold Skimpole. Laurence Boythorn is a kindly soul who pretends that he is as savage as a tiger; Harold Skimpole is a scoundrel who pretends that he is an arrant simpleton. It soon became whispered in the London clubs, taverns and drawingrooms that these two figures were drawn from life, Laurence Boythorn being Walter Savage Landor and Harold Skimpole being Leigh Hunt.

Hunt and his admirers were deeply wounded. Dickens was often pressed to deny the suggestion, or, admitting it, to vindicate himself. It was not until after Leigh Hunt's death, however, that he dealt with the matter at any length. He then admitted that, having been fascinated by the gay and ostentatious wilfulness of his old friend, he had deliberately transferred Hunt's oddities, so whimsical and yet so attractive, to the personality that, in his novel, he was creating. But he assured Leigh Hunt's son that it never for a moment occurred to him that the esteemed original of his Harold Skimpole would ever be charged with the vices that he had attached to the fictitious figure of his fancy.

An Intense Humanness The Secret Of His Inspiration
Hunt would have valued such a declaration. For no man ever loved appreciation more than he. It was a great day in his life when, at the age of 63, he was given a Civil List pension of £200 a year. He was touched almost to tears when distinguished visitors from overseas, such as Emerson and Hawthorne, sought him out to pay him their reverent homage; and as evidence that he could be generous in the bestowal of the recognition that he liked to receive, it stands to his everlasting credit that when, in 1850, Wordsworth died, and Leigh Hunt's name was everywhere mentioned as the name of his natural successor, it was Leigh Hunt himself who urged that Tennyson should be called to be the nation's Laureate.

Altogether, the story of Leigh Hunt provides for us a curious and captivating study. His work, both in prose and in poetry, is scarcely to be classified as sublime or super-excellent; yet he is always readable, always instructive and always diverting. He reminds us of his own Abou Ben Adhem who, when he saw the angel inscribing on a scroll the names of "those who love the Lord," asked if his own name appeared in the exalted list.

". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nay, not so,
Replied the angel. Abou
spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, 'I pray thee then,
Write me
as one that loves his fellowmen.

But when afterwards the angel
" . . showed the names whom love of God had
blessed
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest."

If ever there was a man who dearly loved his fellowmen that man was Leigh Hunt.

F W Boreham

Image: Leigh Hunt