Recollections of Writers
Leigh Hunt to Vincent and Mary Sabilla Novello, 9 January 1824
Florence, January 9th, 1824.
Happy New Years for all of us: and may we all, as we do now,
help to make them happier to one another.
Vincenzo mio, I have at length found out the secret of making you
write a whole letter. It is to set you upon some painful task for your friends; so
having the prospect now before me of getting out of my troubles, I think I must
contrive to fall into some others, purely in order that you may be epistolary. Dear
Novello, how heartily I thank you! I must tell you that I
had written a long letter to my brother in
answer to his second one, in which I had agreed to submit the whole matter to
arbitration, and had called upon your friendship to enter into it, especially in
case you had any fears that you should be obliged in impartiality to be less for me
than you wished. His third letter has done away with the necessity of sending this,
and he will show you the letter I have written to him instead. All will now proceed
amicably; but if you think me a little too inordinate and haggling, I beg you first
of all to count the heads of seven of your children with their mother besides them.
I have no other arithmetic in my calculations. But I will not return to my
melancholy now that you have helped to brighten life for me again. I assure you it
was new-burnished on New Year’s Day, for then I received all your letters at
once. . . . But enough. Judge only from what a load of care you have helped to
relieve me, and take your pride and pleasure accordingly, you, you—you
Vincent, you. Observe, however:—all this is not to
hinder from the absolute necessity and sworn duty of coming to see us as you
promised. It will be sheer inhumanity if you do not; ![]()
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always excepting it would make you ill to be away from home
(Mary Shelley will laugh to hear this);
but then you are to have companions, who will also be very inhuman to all of us, if
they do not do their duty. The cheating of the Italians in
conjunction with all the other circumstances have made us frightened, or rather
agreeably economical (a little difference!). We have taken wood, oil, and every
possible thing out of the hands of the servants, locking it up and doling it out,
and even (oh, new and odd paradise of sensation!) chuckling over the crazie and quattrini that we save. I tell you
this to show you how well we prepare for visitors. But wine, and very pleasant wine
too, and wholesome, is as cheap in this country as small beer; and then there will
be ourselves, and your selves, and beautiful walks and weather, and novelty, and
God knows how many pleasures besides, for all are comprised in the thought of
seeing friends from England. So mind—I will not hear
of the least shadow of the remotest approach to the smallest possible distant hint
of a put-off. All the “Gods in Council” would rise up and say,
“This is a shame!” So in your next tell me when you are coming. I must
only premise that it must be when the snows are well off the mountain road. You see
by this how early, as well as how certainly, I expect you. I must leave off and
rest a little; for I have had much letter-writing after much other writing, and I
am going to have much other writing. But my head and spirits
have both bettered with my prospects; at least the latter have, and I have every
reason to believe the former will, though I shall have more original composition to
do than of late. But I shall work with certainties upon me,
in my old paper, and not be tied down to particular dimensions. As you have seen
all my infirmities, I must tell you of a virtue of mine, which is, that having no
pianoforte at present, I lent, with rage and benevolence in my heart, all the new
music you sent me to a lady who is going to Rome. It is very safe, or you may
believe my benevolence would not have gone so far. Besides, it was to be played and
sung by the Pope’s own musicians. Think of that, thou chorister. I shall have
it back before you come, and shall lay aside a particular hoard to hire an
instrument for your playing it. ![]()
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Thank Charles
Clarke for his letter, and tell him that he will be as welcome in
Italy as he was in my less romantic prison of Horsemonger Gaol. I am truly obliged
to him, also, for his kindness to Miss
Kent’s book, and shall write to tell him so after I have despatched a few
articles for the Examiner—all which articles, observe also, are written to my
friends.
Your affectionate friend,
Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877)
The schoolmate and friend of John Keats; he lectured on Shakespeare and European
literature and published
Recollections of Writers (1878).
John Hunt (1775-1848)
English printer and publisher, the elder brother of Leigh Hunt; he was the publisher of
The Examiner and
The Liberal, in
connection with which he was several times prosecuted for libel.
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Elizbeth Kent (1790-1861)
The younger sister of Marianne, wife of Leigh Hunt, who lived with his family in the
1820s.
Vincent Novello (1781-1861)
English music publisher and friend of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
The Examiner. (1808-1881). Founded by John and Leigh Hunt, this weekly paper divided its attention between literary
matters and radical politics; William Hazlitt was among its regular contributors.
