Recollections of Writers
Leigh Hunt to Charles Cowden Clarke, 13 July 1813
Surrey Jail, Tuesday, July 13th, 1813.
Dear Sir,—I shall be truly happy to see yourself
and your friend to dinner next Thursday, and can answer for the mutton, if not for
the “cordials” of which you speak. However, when you and I are together
there can be no want, I trust, of cordial hearts, and those are much better.
Remember, we dine at three! Mrs. Hunt begs
her respects, but will hear of no introduction, as she has reckoned you an old
acquaintance ever since you made your appearance before us by proxy in a
basket.—Very sincerely yours,
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.
Marianne Hunt [née Kent] (1787-1857)
The daughter of Anne Kent and wife of Leigh Hunt; they were married in 1809. Charles
MacFarlane, who knew her in the 1830s, described her as “his mismanaging, unthrifty
wife, the most barefaced, persevering, pertinacious of mendicants.”
