Fifty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Personal
Brighton, 10, Hanover Crescent, 6th April.
“It does, indeed, seem an age since we encountered, but
we live in the hope that when the summer swallows visit us, you will also take
wing from the great mart of drudgery, intellectual, manual and financial, and
pay us a visit. You will find us still in Hanover Crescent, but in improved
quarters at No. 10, where I need not say that you may always depend upon a
hearty welcome from me and mine. Two of my daughters are on a visit to
H——, and if I go to fetch them back, I will assuredly beat up your
quarters in the chance of half an hour’s chat.
“Upon looking over the letters of Shelley that I have preserved, I find that I
cannot, however anxious to oblige you, comply with your request, for they are
of too confidential and hazardous a nature to be copper-plated. Several are
requests for loans to himself or Godwin;
some make private mention of Byron,
Moore, and Hunt, that it might not be right to promulgate, and almost all
are full of such heterodox notions as might horrify many good folks who might
happen to see them. You shall read these letters when you next visit me, and I
am sure you will yourself concur in the prudence of my withholding them. A mere
fac-simile you might easily get, I should imagine, by applying to
Godwin, Mrs.
Shelley, or Mr. Peacock.
“Hoping to have a ride with you soon over the downs,
and to share a bottle with you afterwards,
“I am, my dear
Redding,
“Yours very truly,
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
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.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
English poet and comic novelist; author of
Headlong Hall (1816),
Melincourt (1817),
Nightmare Abbey
(1818),
Crotchet Castle (1831), and
Gryll
Grange (1860).
Cyrus Redding (1785-1870)
English journalist; he was a founding member of the Plymouth Institute, edited
Galignani's Messenger from 1815-18, and was the effective editor of
the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30) and
The
Metropolitan (1831-33).
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).
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
Horace Smith (1779-1849)
English poet and novelist; with his brother James he wrote
Rejected
Addresses (1812) and
Horace in London (1813). Among his
novels was
Brambletye House (1826).
