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Thornton Leigh Hunt letter to S.C. Hall, January 4, 1865

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Title	Thornton Leigh Hunt letter to S.C. Hall, January 4, 1865
Creator	Hunt, Thornton Leigh, 1810-1873
Date Original	1865-01-04
Description	Concerning his reading of Hall's Memory of Leigh Hunt, and his statement of some facts about his father for Hall's consideration, including comments regarding his father's dealings with the Prince Regent, his finances, and his simplicity, temperance, religious views, and passions. The body of the letter is followed by a list of errata.
Note	Pages 1-3 measures 20.0 cm x 12.4 cm; page 4 measures 22.7 cm x 13.8 cm.
Personal Name Subject	Hunt, Thornton Leigh, 1810-1873 Hall, S. C. (Samuel Carter), 1800-1889 Hunt, Leigh, 1784-1859 Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599
Geographic Subject	England -- London
Chronological Subject	1860-1870
Type (DCMIType)	Text
Type (AAT)	Correspondence
Type (IMT)	jpeg
Digital Collection	Leigh Hunt Letters
Contributing Institution	Wellesley College Library, Special Collections
Archival Collection	Wellesley College Library, Special Collections
Collection Guide	http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/resources/Brewer-LeighHunt.html
Location	contributed wc-hunt-003
Rights Management	Educational use only, no other permissions given. This letter is owned by Wellesley College Special Collections, and is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of Wellesley College Special Collections.
Contact Information	Contact The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department: lib-spec@uiowa.edu
Height (cm)	20.0
Width (cm)	12.4
Number of Pages	8 + 2 blank
Number of Sheets of Paper	5
Digitization Specifications	Photographed with Canon E0S 30D camera at 300 dpi.
Date Digital	2009-02-04
Transcript	I send the MS by Parcels Company . 4, Euston Square N. W. Jan. 4 1865. My dear Sir, I have read your Memory of my dear father, & I trace in it the hand of a friendly & sympathetic man. I donot suggest the slightest alteration in it; but I am sure you will understand my motives in stating one or two facts for your consideration. You will remember that the Prince Regent was what my father states of him; that my father was fighting a severe political battle; & that the Prince, to a degree which could not be thought impossible, /participated lent his countenance/ lent his countenance to party attacks. My father himself was the object of far worse /---/ attacks by the organs of the court party S. C. Hall, Esq. and more false. The whole style of controversy in those days was more rancorous, but against any private person, I know, my father would not have used the kind of incrimination that he levelled [sic] at the man whom he deemed to challenge public censure by his high position & his unconstitutional conduct. I am not inviting your concurrence in these views, but solely pointing to a context which modifies my father's act. Again, with regard to his embarrassments, I will simply state a few facts. He was inclined to speak more emphatically than most men: & thus he may be said to have exaggerated the frequency of his applications. He was a very industrious man. He was very generous-his bank always open to any friend who was in need. Generous, you may say, "with other people's money." Not at all. I refer to times when he was earning a bare subsistence, but when he was ready to share that with others, & live more hardly that they might live at all. He was very scrupulous in concealing such acts on his own part. The degree of his incompetency to comprehend business matters I have stated in the Cornhill Magazine [1]: he was only excelled in that by a friend who was a jest with us all, since he literally hardly knew whether he was in bed or out, visiting or at home, married or unmarried-I mean in the sense of the most innocent forgetfulness of facts. My father remembered facts; but, over estimating a born incapacity,- real but exaggerated in his own mind - he was literally "floored" by the simplest problems of /arithmetic/ calculation. He trusted to others, & not happily; for though there was no lack of faithful intent, there was no judgment. Traits on which you donot touch were, my father's extreme simplicity of life, & his temperance. His food was often nothing more than bread. You allude to his "passions" and there was one incident in his life which lent a sort of colour to that idea, but it was, /---/ I know, of the most imperfect & shadowy kind. His own scrupulousness exaggerated everything of that sort, /---/, & he did, in all sincerity and earnestness almost what Boccaccio's Ciappelletto [2] did in cynical hypocrisy; /---/ he actually regarded as portentous and [?alarming] any the most trifling deviation of the right or fancy. But in very deed never was a man more strict than my father, more the rightly what is called "pure." Theoretically he was "free"; in fancy he sympathized with Ariosto, who was, I think, even above Spenser, his favourite among poets, as Ovid was, for his greater life & tenderness, among the Latins, but he looked in at their fairy gardens with a sort of boyish delight I fear; and in real life shrank with a curious fastidiousness from the material aspects of all licence . I think I have touched on all this in the Cornhill. The difficulty is to make the words bear sufficient force to express the reality. I have said what I have said, my dear Sir, exclusively for your use. I would rather not be considered as intruding my own views on your attention; & have, as may be gathered from his Religion of the Heart. I donot myself abide by the book, I may therefore refer to it the more impartially. He followed Schiller in his estimate of Moses as a grand reformer, he was constantly referring to Scripture, with which he was familiar, especially the New Testament; in opinion he was very near the Unitarians, he had a perfect confidence in a future existence, often citing an English Bishop who said that "Heaven is first a temper, and then a place" [4] and dwelled with great sympathy on the sayings of St Francis de Sales. But the authority to his mind was Christ himself, whose example & teaching he continually held up as the one most neglected yet most to be followed. Errata Page 3 For Sewell read Shewell. 3 For John Edward r. James Henry: the name was James Henry Leigh Hunt. 5. Thornton Hunt never had any connexion with the Examiner. [He was for years connected with the Spectator, & hence probably Mr Hall's mistake. On the other hand Leigh Hunt had no connexion with the Spectator; which he disliked, as drily "utilitarian.] 6. Was Talfourd [3] a visitor at the prison? I doubt it. I do not remember him, but fancy that we first knew him considerably later, probably about /1810/ 1820 or '25; that is, just before or after the visit to Italy. 9 For Edwards Square read Edwardes Square [named after the Kensington family.] 14 For Wolstoncroft read Wolstonecraft. John Forster's name is on one occasion wrongly spelled as Foster, without the r. [I donot scruple to mention these more copyist's errors; as they might stray into print.]
Transcript Notes	1. Thornton Leigh Hunt's account of his father appeared as "A Man of Letters of the Last Generation" in Cornhill Magazine 1 (Jan. 1860): 85-94. 2. From 'Ser Ciapelletto", Story One in The Decameron. 3. Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), writer and politician. 4. Quote is from Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683)
Transcript By	Ragaz, Sharon
Transcript Location	University of Iowa. Libraries. Special Collections Dept.

Title	Page1
Relation - Is Part Of	Thornton Leigh Hunt letter to S.G. Hall, Jan. 4, 1865
Digital Collection	Leigh Hunt Letters
File Name	wc-hunt-003_Page1.jpg
Transcript	I send the MS by Parcels Company . 4, Euston Square N. W. Jan. 4 1865. My dear Sir, I have read your Memory of my dear father, & I trace in it the hand of a friendly & sympathetic man. I donot suggest the slightest alteration in it; but I am sure you will understand my motives in stating one or two facts for your consideration. You will remember that the Prince Regent was what my father states of him; that my father was fighting a severe political battle; & that the Prince, to a degree which could not be thought impossible, /participated lent his countenance/ lent his countenance to party attacks. My father himself was the object of far worse /---/ attacks by the organs of the court party S. C. Hall, Esq.

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Thornton Leigh Hunt letter to S.C. Hall, January 4, 1865

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Thornton Leigh Hunt letter to S.C. Hall, January 4, 1865

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