LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
Recollections of Writers
Leigh Hunt to Vincent Novello, [1826?]
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Contents
Preface
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX
John Keats
Charles Lamb
Mary Lamb
Leigh Hunt
Douglas Jerrold
Charles Dickens
Index
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[No date.]

My dear Novello,—As I am not sure that you were at Mrs. Shelley’s last night, I write this to let you know that a violent cold, which I am afraid of tampering with any longer, has kept me at home the two last evenings, and will do the same on this. I defied it for some nights, but found myself
232 RECOLLECTIONS OF WRITERS  
under the necessity, on every account, of doing so no longer. You know how bad it was on Wednesday; but Wednesday night’s return home made it worse. I repent this the more, because I wish to see you very much. I want to chat with you on the musical and other matters, and to assent to my privilege of a friend in doing all I can to make you adopt certain measures I have in view equally useful to both of us, for the recovery of your health. I said equally pleasant, and I trust and feel certain they would be so in the long-run; but undoubtedly in the first instance you might find them painful. However, as I never yet found an obstacle like this stand in your way when a friend was to be obliged, I give you notice that you have spoilt me in that matter, and that I shall not expect it now.

“Hunt, you are very kind, but—” Novello, so are you; and therefore I do not expect to be put off with words. Besides, did I not have a long conversation the other evening with Mary? And did she not promise me, like a good wife as she was, not to listen to a word you had to say? I mean, against putting yourself in the best possible position for recovering your health. Or rather, did she not say, with good wifely tears in her eyes, that she would let you do all you pleased, which of course ties up your hands—only she hoped you would think as I did, if it was really as much for your good as I supposed—which of course ties them up more? And does not all that she has said, and all that I have said, and all that I mean to say, (which is quite convincing, I assure you, in case you are not convinced already, as you ought to be,) prove to you that you must leave that dirty Shacklewell, that wet Shacklewell, that flat, floundering and foggy Shacklewell, that distant, out-of-the-way, dreary, unfriendly, unheard-of, melancholy, moping, unsocial, unmusical, unmeeting, uneveningy, un-Hunt-helping, unimproper, un-Gliddony, un-Kentish-towny, un-Hampsteady, un-Hadlowincial, far, foolish, faint, fantastical, sloppy, hoppy, moppy, brickfieldy, bothery, mothery, misty, muddling, meagre, megrim, Muggletonian, dim, dosy, booty, cold-arboury, plashy, mashy, squashy, Old-Street-Roady, Balls-Pondy, Hoxtony, hurtful, horrid, lowering, lax, languid, musty, sepulchral, shameful,
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washy, dim, cold, sulky, subterraneous, sub-and-supralapsarian, whity-brown, clammy, sick, silent, cheap, expensive, blameable, gritty, hot, cold, wheezy, vapourish, inconsequential, what-next?-y, go-to-beddy, lumpish, glumpish, mumpish, frumpish, pumpish, odd, thievish, coining, close-keeping, chandlering, drizzling, mizzling, duck-weedy, rotting, perjured, forsaking, flitting, bad, objected-to, false, cold-potatoey, inoperative, dabby, draggle-tailed, shambling, huddling, indifferent, spiteful, meek, milk-and-watery, inconvenient, lopsided, dull, doleful, damnable Shacklewell. Come, “I think here be proofs.”

Ever dear N.’s affectionate
L. H.

P.S.—I know not what Holmes thinks of Shacklewell; but he can hardly have an opinion in favour of it after this Rabelais argument. Clarke is bound to side with all friends at a distance.