The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt by Leigh Hunt

First published: 1850

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: 1784-1850

Locale: England and Italy

Principal Personages:

• Leigh Hunt
• Marianne Kent Hunt, his wife
• Isaac Hunt, his father
• John Hunt, his brother and co-editor of The Examiner
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• John Keats
• William Hazlitt
• Charles Lamb
• Thomas Carlyle

Analysis

Seldom, if ever before or since, has a creative man, notable in his own right, been so fortunate in his association with great men as was Leigh Hunt. To have known intimately all three of the leading “younger generation” English Romantic poets—Byron, Shelley, and Keats—and to have been well acquainted with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, and Carlyle is a social and intellectual privilege not in any sense usual.

The AUTOBIOGRAPHY of James Henry Leigh Hunt, to give him his full name, is far more than a chronological account of the life of an important essayist and minor poet. It is a sorting out of vivid impressions from past experiences and associations, impressions which delineate Hunt’s lifelong passion for human advancement as well as his ability in old age to evaluate objectively the way he has come, the influences he has experienced, and those he has exerted.

Published in 1850, nine years before Hunt’s death, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY was hailed by Thomas Carlyle as the best autobiographical writing in the English language. This opinion was widely shared by reviewers, and the book has become a classic of its kind. Its quality derives largely from its emphasis on human values and on the interactions between the author and his various notable friends. Leigh Hunt, therefore, can afford to be neglectful of mere dates and mundane details; he has matters of present and future value to impart.

The AUTOBIOGRAPHY begins with a survey of the author’s ancestry, largely Anglican ministers with strong Tory leanings. In the seventeenth century the family, seeking to avoid harassment by the Puritans, had moved to the West Indies but had returned to England in the following century. Leigh Hunt’s father, Isaac Hunt, had gone to Philadelphia for an education and had narrowly escaped being tarred and feathered during the American Revolution for the Tory views he expressed in various pamphlets. Having returned to England with his wife and children, he had encountered severe financial difficulties and had abandoned the Tory cause to assume more liberal opinions. With his wife’s enthusiastic support, Isaac Hunt had become a Unitarian minister and strong advocate of political reform.

After the Hunts had settled in the Middlesex village of Southgate, their youngest son Leigh was born on October 19, 1784. With his brothers, he was brought up in an atmosphere pervaded by the newly adopted liberalism of both parents, the general improvidence of his father, and the kindliness and near pacifism of his mother. Yet, despite the appeal of Hunt’s reminiscences about his youth and his schooling at Christ’s Hospital, which Coleridge and Lamb had attended earlier, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY achieves its greatness only in its dealing with the adult life of Leigh Hunt, for it is not in and of itself that Hunt’s life demands this memorial; it is the interaction of this life with others that draws our attention.

Having, through his father’s efforts, had his first volume of poetry published when he was sixteen, Leigh Hunt continued to follow a literary career. His editing of the weekly EXAMINER in collaboration with his politically minded brother John, made of the young Hunt a resolute champion of liberal politics. Not long after THE EXAMINER was founded, Hunt married Marianne Kent, who not only became the devoted mother of a large family but also proved an undaunted partner throughout the difficulties which his open pronouncements for reform brought upon Hunt. Its expression of these liberal views made THE EXAMINER attractive to Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Hazlitt, who all soon published in it and thus made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt.

Its unreserved political criticisms repeatedly involved THE EXAMINER in legal prosecutions by the government. After three acquittals, the Hunt brothers, who had called the Prince Regent “a libertine over head and ears in disgrace . . . the companion of gamblers and demireps,” were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and were each fined five hundred pounds. The chapter in which Hunt describes his strange imprisonment has become something of a classic. Its most excellent features are the humanly humorous character sketch of “honest old Cave,” the jailor; the account of various visitors, including Byron, Lamb, and Hazlitt; and the description of the previously unused rooms of the prison infirmary which Hunt charmingly redecorated for himself and his family and in which one of his daughters was born. Despite such notes of pleasantness, however, the concluding comments on the author’s release from imprisonment in 1815 bear an interesting resemblance to Byron’s account of the freeing of Bonnivard in “The Prisoner of Chillon.”

After regaining their freedom, John and Leigh Hunt gave clear indications in THE EXAMINER that their imprisonment had not mellowed their political enmity toward the Prince Regent. His health having declined during his imprisonment, Leigh Hunt continued to enjoy Byron’s visits and was especially pleased by an unannounced visit from Wordsworth, during which he characteristically drew his visitor’s attention to a volume of Wordsworth and one of Milton side by side on the bookshelf. Although Hunt was frequently critical of Byron, the AUTOBIOGRAPHY gives evidence of a genuine respect for Byron’s poetry and a sincere appreciation of the poet’s attractive qualities.

Byron soon left England, and Hunt did not hear from him again until Byron some years later invited him to Italy. At this point the AUTOBIOGRAPHY takes up the author’s association with Shelley, Keats, Lamb, and Coleridge. Of these, Shelley is singled out as a friend above all friends and as a spirit who, although he professed antagonism to the Established Church, was the most “Christian” of men. Hunt was the most loyal of Shelley’s friends, standing by him without reservation or doubt during the ordeal of Harriet Shelley’s suicide and the government’s subsequent action which deprived Shelley of the custody of his two children. Hunt’s anecdotes and descriptions of Shelley have become valuable portions of the biography.

Hunt declares his love for Keats to have been second only to that for the “heart of hearts,” Shelley. He finds both poets to have had that greatness which renders it delightful to be obliged by them and an equal but not greater delight to oblige them. It is evident that only Hunt’s modesty prevents him from writing freely of the extent to which his friendship was a molding influence on the poetic development of Keats. With Byron and Shelley, Hunt quite mistakenly believes that the vitriolic attack by the Quarterly Review against Endymion was largely responsible for the early death of Keats.

Although Hunt pays little attention to the dates of his various activities and enterprises, he discusses his editorship not only of THE EXAMINER but also of THE INDICATOR and THE LIBERAL. He was co-editor of THE EXAMINER from 1808 to 1822. Meanwhile, from 1819 to 1821, he also edited THE INDICATOR, in which his personal essays drew praise from his close friends, William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. Hunt, in his turn, gives favorable accounts of the personalities of Hazlitt and Lamb. Especially appreciative is his presentation of the latter as a tender-hearted but witty “Lamb-punner.” Coleridge, incidentally, was less well known to Hunt than were the two Romantic essayists; yet Coleridge, especially his trait of talkativeness, receives interesting treatment in the AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

An important event in Hunt’s life was his decision to accept the invitation of Byron and Shelley to move his family to Italy and there, under their sponsorship, edit a new periodical, THE LIBERAL. Hunt soon left THE EXAMINER, now in decline, to accept this new post. He gives a graphic description of the voyage to Italy, a journey which repeatedly tried both the patience and stamina of the Hunt family. A highlight of the AUTOBIOGRAPHY is the narrative of Hunt’s first weeks in Italy. The reunion with Byron, Thomas Moore, and especially Shelley at Leghorn, and the few days he spent with Shelley before the latter’s tragic drowning, are described so as to leave no doubt of Hunt’s selflessness and capacity for genuine friendship. One of the most memorable scenes in biographical prose is that of the gathering of Shelley’s friends, including Trelawney, Byron, and Hunt, for the cremation of Shelley’s body.

After the death of Shelley, Byron’s enthusiasm for THE LIBERAL waned, and the periodical survived for only four numbers, all published in 1822. But the Hunt family, although in difficult financial circumstances, remained in Italy until 1825, when they returned to England and Hunt resumed his literary and editorial profession. The AUTOBIOGRAPHY contains a lengthy account of the more pleasant voyage back to England and concludes with a modest review of the author’s numerous, and now more generally accepted, literary and journalistic endeavors, none of which, except the AUTOBIOGRAPHY itself, has achieved the status of his earlier essays and poems.

The final view Leigh Hunt gives us of himself is that of a man of letters who has come through a storm of struggle and controversy upon which he can look back without either regret or malice. He appears finally as an unselfish friend and a fair evaluator of his important inspirational function among men of generally greater literary talent than his own.