BLUNDEN'S LEIGH HUNT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 71, 20 September 1930, Page 21

BLUNDEN'S LEIGH HUNT

RELATIONS WITH KEATS AND SHELLEY

"iycy.RBEL OVER SHELLEY'S HEAKT"

(By '"Ajax.")

** Leigh Hunt: A Biography." By JSdnuii>d Blund&n. London: Cobdcn' Sanderson.

[Concluding Notice.]

Accojding to Sir Sidney Colvin, Keats first met Leigh Hunt iii the spring of ISI6. But Mr. Blunden establishes Sunday, the Ist December in that year, as the date with a near approach to certainty. It was- on that day that Leigh Hunt's article on "Young Poets" appeared in the "Ex-j aminer." Cowden Clarke saj's that f.his article induced Keats to call on Hunt at Hampstead on the day of its appearance, and that he himself accompanied Keats. Clarke also identifies Keats's sonnet beginning Keen fitful gusts arc whispering here and there as referring to his reception at Hunt's home, and the date, "Ist December, 1516, " was written on the MS. of the sonnet by Keats himself. Finally, as Mr. Blunden says, the poem "plainly speaks of a new experience, and of win-ter-time. ''

Intrinsically a day in spring would have been just as suitable for the meeting as a day in winter, but it is surely good to have the article which was the first to recognise the genius of Keats and Shelley, the call which Keats made on the writer to show his gratitude, and the sonnet in which he commemorated the kindness of his reception, all fixed on the one day. The setting which Miv Blunden thus provides, and the knowledge that at the close of a happy and thrilling day Keats started on a. cold winter's night to make his way back from ilampstead to his lodgings in Cheapside on foot impart a reality to the sonnet which ,was lacking before:

Keen fitful gusts are whisperiug here and there Among the bushes, half leafless and dry; The stars look very cold about the sky, !And I have many miles on foot to fare; Yet feel I little o£ the cool bleak air, Or of the dead leaves rustling' drearily, Or of those silver lamps that burn on high, Or of the distance from home's pleasant • lair:

For I am brimfull of the friendliness That in a little cottage I have fouud; Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress, And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.

Mr. .. Elunde.u suggests that, "fairhaired Milton" possibly sounds a note of gratitude to Huut for showing Keats his lock of Milton's hair, and what would otherwise be the glaring otiosity of the epithet'makes the conjecture a happy one. Hunt's collection of locks o£ hair was, Mr. Blundeii tells us, "the principal show-pieco of Hunt's study in later life." The catalogue prepared by Hunt himself, and a magazine article which he wrote about the collection, are both given in. an appendix. Milton at the top of the list and Lucretia Borgia at the bottom make an odd collocation, especially in the light of Hunt's statement that, having obtained the Milton lock and two others, he was set-upon collecting "as many as were not unworthy to keep them company." But if Milton and Lucretia had to travel in the same galley, some concession is made to the fitness of things by putting them at opposite ends. ■ . '

Against 'the Lueretia Borgia relic in the catalogue Hunt notes "From Byron or Trelawny?" as though he were in doubt. The epithet which he applies tn the donor might fit either of them. It was, he says,

given me by a wild acquaintance, who stole it from a lock of hair preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. On the envelope he put a happy motto: "And Beauty draws us with a single hair." If ever hair was golden, it was this.

If ever quotation was golden, it was this. One might have supposed the line to have been cooked for the occasion if it had not been written- by Pope a hundred years previously. I should be much prouder to have ina,de that golden quotation than to possess that golden hair.

As I mentioned last t week, Shelley was drawn, to Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hainpstead by the same article which attracted Keats, but having had some difficulty in finding the paper was slower in getting there. It was about the 6th December—not, as I said, on the 6th December, and the day was not a Thursday but a Friday—that Shelley went to Hampstead, and "was accepted," says Mr. Blunden, "as a member of Hunt's household." It was a time when Shelley, who before they had met had been very generous in financial help he had given to Hunt, was badly in need of help of another kind himself.

Harriet, as Mr. Blunden puts it, had found _ the way out of prostitution by drowning herself in the Serpentine.

Shelley's needs at that time were greater than those of Keats.

Consolation and benediction, says Mr. Blunden, in the hour of his wretchedness were assured to Shelley at Hunt's cottage that December, as often as he could reach it; and Keats gladly frequented the same unconventional, musical fireside. The two immortals met, as is fitting to historical design, in the room of their first and best critic. Horace Smith describes them there: Shelley with his blue eyes, the stooping tallncss, the earnest unmusical voice; Keats shy, embarrassed as unused to society, speaking little. Keats was not entirely at his best with Shelley, whether the cause was different birth and aspect, or that their creeds of poetic purpose clashed, or accidental misapprehension. Hunt was aware of a subdued dissatisfaction on the part of Keats, but his owu talented amiability prevailed, and Hie meetings of the three were marked by •pleasant discussion. Sometimes the cottage was the scene of poetical competitions, one of the indoor recreations of Hunt, much sneered at by those who cheer their leisure in other pastimes. Shelley was prevented, by the fact that he was marrying Mary the same day, from joining in the contest of sonnet-making on "lue Grasshopper and the Cricket," December 30th, 1816. Both Keats and Hunt wrote impromptus of lively spirit, and each thought the other's lines excellent. '

At the beginning of 1817 Hunt is eta scribed by Mr. Blunden as

a man in some respects incomparably happy, with the simultaneous affection and even veneration of the two young poets whose abundant genius he perceived, Shelley and Keats.

Before (<fie end of the year Keats'? admiration for Hunt suffered a. considerable dsdrxie, a. result to wiilftk.Hunt's

extravagant, and intemperate wife and his' unruly, family materially contributed. .

What, a very pleasant fellow he is, wrote Keats to Reynolds in September, ISI7, if he would give up the sovereignty of a room "pro bono." What evenings we might pass with him, could we have him from Mrs. H.

But on the 4th February, ISIS, notwithstanding some differences of opinion about "Undymion," Keats was at Hunt's cottage taking part with him and Shelley in that memorable sonnet competition on "The Nile." And in IS2O Hunt dedicated his translation of Tasso's "Amyntas" to Keats,

who during the summer . . . manifested his victorious acceptance of Leigh Hunt with all his faults, and all his female relations, by coming to them, to be nursed at 13, Mortimer Terrace.

Before the end of the year Keats had left England for Italy, and Hunt did not see him again.

Hunt's relations with Whelley seem to have been undisturbed by any serious misunderstanding.

Undoubtedly, Mr. Blmiilen writes, limit would have gone to prison or the scaffold for . Shelley's sake. A friendship more sensitive, more intrepid, has not existed. From the slightest details to the most serious human problems—from the pleasure of dropping down on a wayside to eat a dry crust ov two, to the principles of love, and faith, and life, and death—in giving and in receiving, iv proposal and in counter-proposal, there was a radiant agreement.

Early in ISIS Shelley sailed for Italy, where Hunt joined him about four years later. Thornton Hunt remembered Shelley's rushing into his father's arms and

crying out that he was "so inexpressibly delighted! You cannot think how inexpressibly happy it makes me."

The Sunday afternoon of the 7th July, 1822, was spent by Shelley and Leigh Hunt in moro inexpressible happiness among the towers and the churches and the pictures of Pisa. On the following day Shelley's yacht was sunk in a. squall on her way from Leghorn to his seaside home, and he was drowned. There followed that strange cremation on the Italian shore, and a less known but far more astonishing quarrel.

Trelawny, the master of the ceremony, had rescued the heart of Shelley from the flames, and at Hunt's request had given it to him. Mrs. Shelley claimed it, and appealed to Byron to support her claim. But Hunt replied in what Mr. Blunden calls

as singular a letter, if it is read without the contest of Hunt's life, as was ever written.

So far as my experience goes, il might have- been so described withoul any qualification.

It is not that my self-love is hurt, for that I could have given up, as I have long learnt to do, but it is my love, —my love for my friend; .and for this to make way for the claims of 'any other love, man's or woman's, I must have great reasons indeed brought me. 1 do not say it is iin r possible for such reasons to be brought, but-I'say that they must be great, unequivocal, and undeniable. In his case above all other human beiugs, no ordinary appearance of rights, even yours, can affect me. With regard to Ld 8., he has no right to bestow the heart, and I am sure pretends' to ■ none. If he told you that you should' have it, it could only have been from his thinking I could more easily part with it than I cau.

Presently, however, Leigh Hunt, as Mr. Blunden says, "gave up the 'cor eordium,' as it was to him; that was relinquished, but he never gave up his instinct that Shelley was his."