We shall conclude with a short notice of an individual who, in the cast of his mind and in political principle, bears no very remote resemblance to the patriot and wit just spoken of [Thomas Moore], and on whose merits we should descant at greater length, but that personal intimacy might be supposed to render us partial. It is well when personal intimacy produces this effect; and when the light, that dazzled us at a distance, does not on a closer inspection turn out an opaque substance.
This is a charge that none of his friends will bring against Mr Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance. The author translates admirably into the man. Indeed, the very faults of his style are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and sprightliness of manner, his high animal spirits, and the vinous quality of his mind, produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those who come in contact with him, and carry of insociety whatever in his writings may to some seem flat and impertinent. From great sanguiness of temper, from great quickness and unsuspecting simplicity, he runs on to the public as he does at his own fire-side, and talks about himself, forgetting that he is not always among friends. His look, his tone are required to point many things that he says: his frank, cordial manner reconciles you instantly to a little over-bearing, over-weening self-complacency. To be admired, he needs but to be seen’: but perhaps he ought to be seen to be fully appreciated. No one ever sought his society who did not come away with a more favourable opinion of him: no one was ever disappointed, except those who had entertained idle prejudices against him. He sometimes trifles with his readers, or tires of a subject (from not being urged on by the stimulus of immediate sympathy); but in conversation he is all life and animation, combining the vivacity of the school-boy with the resources of the wit and the taste of the scholar. The personal character, the spontaneous impulses, do not appear to excuse the author, unless you are acquainted with his situation and habits: like some great beauty who gives herself what we think strange airs and graces under a mask, but who is instantly forgiven when she shews her face.
The Spirit of the Age
1825
…Hunt is always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me, to all lengths, if I want him: he comes in some once a week (when invited, for he is very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing, in his brisk fanciful way, till supper-time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge (to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his supper of at home. He is a man of thoroughly London make, such as you could not find elsewhere, and I think about the best possible to be made of his sort. An airy, crotchetty, most copious, clever Talker, with an honest undercurrent of reason too, but unfortunately not the deepest, not the most practical; or rather is the most impractical ever man dealt in., His hair is grizzled, eyes black-hazel, complexion of the clearest dusky-brown; a thin glimmer of smile plays over a face of cast-iron gravity; giving him a singular, discrepant air. He never laughs, can only titter; which I think indicates his worst deficiency. In figure and complexion he somewhat reminds me of our late Uncle Sandy: there is the same honest cheerful look, tho’ so differently expressed. I reckon Hunt a thoroughly sincere man; and find him entertaining by a time. His House here excels all you have ever read of; a ‘poetical Tinkerdom’ without parallel even in Literature. In his family-room, where are a sickly large Wife and a whole shoal of well-conditioned wild children, you will find half a dozen old rickety chairs gathered from half a dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe; on these, and around them, and over the dusty table and ragged carpet, lie all kinds of litter; books, papers, egg-shells, pil[lows?] and, last night when I was there, the torn heart of a half quartern loaf! His own room above stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps cleaner; it has only two chairs, a book-case and a writing-table: yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom with the spirit of a King; apologizes for nothing; places you in the best seat; takes a window-sill himself, if there is no other, and then folding closer his loose-flowing ‘muslin-cloud’ of a printed night-gown (in which he always writes), commences the liveliest dialogue on Philosophy and the Prospects of Man (who is to be beyond measure ‘happy’ yet), which again he will courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting, pitiable, loveable man; to be used kindly, but with discretion.
Letter to Alexander Carlyle
27 June 1834
Our commonest evening sitter, for a good while, was Leigh Hunt, who lived close by, and delighted to sit talking with us (free, cheery, idly melodious as bird on bough) or listening, with real feeling to her [Mrs Carlyle's] old Scotch tunes on the piano, and winding up with a frugal morsel of Scotch porridge (endlessly admirable to Hunt)… Hunt was always accurately dressed these evenings, and had a fine chivalrous gentlemanly carriage, polite, affectionate, respectful (especially to her) and yet so free and natural… His household, while at 4 Upper Cheyne Row, within a few steps of us here, almost at once disclosed itself to be hugger-mugger, unthrift and sordid collapse, once for all; and had to be associated with on cautious terms, while he himself emerged out of it in the chivalrous figure I describe. Dark complexion (a trace of the African, I believe), copious clean strong black hair, beautifully-shaped head, fine beaming serious hazel eyes; serious and intellect the main expression of the face (to our surprise at first), – he would lean on his elbow against the mantelpiece (fine clean, elastic figure too he had, five feet ten or more), and look round him nearly in silence, before taking leave for the night, ‘as if I were a Lar,’ said he once, ‘or permanent Household God here!’ (such his polite, Ariel-like way). Another time, rising from this Lar attitude, he repeated (voice very fine) as if in sport of parody, yet with something of very sad perceptible: ‘While I to sulphurous and penal fire’ – as the last thing before vanishing.
Carlyle, Reminiscences,
ed. Charles Eliot Norton, 1887, vol. I
Leigh Hunt was then (1855) at Hammersmith occupying a very plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful environment inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in an old black dresscoat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study, or parlour, or both – a very forlorn room, with poor paper-hangings, and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty for enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them, as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men.
Our Old Home
1863
Harold Skimpole is introduced:
He was a little bright creature, with a large head; but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and spontaneous, and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was fascinating to hear him talk… There was an easy negligence in his manner, and even in his dress (his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint their own portrait) which I could not separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some unique process of depreciation….
He must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which, he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! (Chapter VI)
Harold Skimpole at home:
(His room] was dingy enough, and not at all clean; but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered and watered over; but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cake, and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa, in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup – it was then about midday – and looking at a collection of wall-flowers on the balcony. (Chapter XLIII)
Harold Skimpole speaks for himself:
… speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but still had claims too, which were the general business of the community and must not to be slighted….
‘I covet nothing… Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it, and alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient possession of it, and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility… having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other, like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!… It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy… I envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences? I don't regret it therefore.’ (Chapter VI)
Bleak House
1853
Harold Skimpole, recognisable for Leigh Hunt, led to much remark; the difference being, that ludicrous traits were employed in the first to enrich without impairing an attractive person in the tale, whereas to the last was assigned a part in the plot which no fascinating foibles or gaieties of speech could redeem from contempt. Though a want of consideration was thus shown to the friend whom the character would be likely to recall to many readers, it is nevertheless very certain that the intention of Dickens was not at first, or at any time, an unkind one. He erred from thoughtlessness only. What led him to the subject at all, he has himself stated. Hunt's philosophy of moneyed obligations, always, though loudly, half jocosely proclaimed, and his ostentatious wilfulness in the humouring of that or any other theme on which he cared for the time to expatiate, had so often seemed to Dickens to be whimsical and attractive that, wanting an ‘airy quality’ for the man to be invented, this of Hunt occurred to him…
The Life of Charles Dickens
1872–4, vol. II, chap. VII
As it gives you so much pain, I take it at its worst, and say I am deeply sorry, and that I feel I did wrong in doing it, but I maintain that there is nothing it that should have given you pain … When I felt it was going too close I stopped myself, and the most blotted parts of my MS are those in which I have been striving hard to make the impression I was writing from UNlike you. The character is not you, for there are traits in it common to fifty thousand people besides, and I did not fancy you would ever recognize it.
28 June 1855