Recollections of Writers
Leigh Hunt to Mary Sabilla Novello, 23 December [1829?]
Cromwell Lane, Dec. 23rd, Wednesday.
Dear Mary,—By a miraculous chance I
slept from home on Monday night, and did not get your letter till the night
following; so that you must consider this as an answer by return of post. I shall
come with the greatest pleasure to-![]()
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morrow at three and pay my
respects to you all, and to my old friend Bacchus senior. Is
there any Septuor? However, that is not necessary. There will at
all events be a Quatuor (you and Vincent, Charles Clarke and
Victorinella), and any two of you would
make a good duet, to say nothing of a soul-o. I am glad you
like my verses so well. Marianne begs her
love and hopes to see you soon. It is lucky that I had not time to be tempted into
the Requiem, for besides what you say, there are too many
thoughts on certain subjects pass thro’ my mind on these occasions, and put
me into a state unsuitable both to the dignity of my philosophy and the
cheerfulness of my hopes; so there is a pretty sound period for you. I shall
compliment myself by saying that I should have felt the Requiem too much as
Mozart did himself; and greatly for the
same reason; to wit, that my liver is not in good condition. If it be thought too
vain to have even a liver in common with Mozart, tell
Vincent it is owing to his flattery of me in the
postscript. To be serious I never see his hand but it seems to come with a blessing
upon me, like that of one of your Catholic priests,—only sincere:—a
Thais, only not vicious. You remember, I
suppose, whose pleasant passage this last sentence alludes to.
Dear Wilful (for I cannot part with any of my old ways) I am
heartily thine.
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).
Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke [née Novello] (1809-1898)
The daughter of the musician Vincent Novello, she married Charles Cowden Clarke in 1828
and wrote works on Shakespeare, including
The Complete Concordance to
Shakespeare (1845).
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.”
Mary Sabilla Novello [née Hehl] (1789-1854)
English author who married Vincent Novello in 1808 and had a family of eleven children,
among them Mary Cowden Clarke.
Vincent Novello (1781-1861)
English music publisher and friend of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
