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Leigh Hunt letter to Mrs Swift, May 3, 1851

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              Letters from Leigh Hunt to Mrs Swift - copied from the original.



2 Phillimore Terrace

Kensington (near London)

May 3, 1851



At last, my dear Cousin, after two severe fits of illness, the first of which struck the pen out of my hand, and the second seemed to come on purpose to prevent my resuming it. I write to let you know that I am still in the land of the living, and how heartily and thankfully I rejoice in the relationship that opens its arms thus kindly towards me. I began to fear that after losing the opportunity of repairing my omission to one sister I should be deprived of the power of communicating with the other. How sorry I was to hear of her death! I shall regret it as long as life remains to me; especially as my conscience towards her is not without reproach; for though the bearer of her letter whom she prepared me for seeing posted it in London and never made his appearance, (which was the first cause of my delay) and though I sent the letter itself into some such very safe place as subsequently to baffle my own search for it, yet I ought not to have suffered such obstacles to let /---/ me delay ^further from day to day, till at length she can no longer say she has forgiven me. However, I am a great believer, you must know, in the spiritual /world/ world, and in the final commensurate power of all good things with all good wishes; as I do my best to think that she may be looking upon this sorry paper while I write, and lamenting (as far as beatitude can do so) that the bright and kind heart of which you speak, and which is a

 

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People in America sometimes write to me for autographs, so do not think me vain if I give a few to you to give away, in case anybody cares to have one. - May 24th. I have not yet seen the Exhibition. If you encourage me with a present or two, of the same sort, I will send a lock of my hair.

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Title	Leigh Hunt letter to Mrs Swift, May 3, 1851
Creator	Hunt, Leigh, 1784-1859
Date Original	1851-05-03
Description	Concerning his illnesses; the death of her sister and his delay in answering her last letter; the rebuke from his Aunt Lydia for remarks about his Grandfather Shewell in his Autobiography; his desire to change the notice in the next edition if she will tell him what to write; his struggles in life, owing to reforming thoughts of his parents; the cordiality shown him by Ambassador Abbot Lawrence; no communication from Mr. Goatley; impression among the Hunt family that legal advantage was taken against their obtaining all their share of their mother's property; the Great Exhibition; unable to find a paper of Mr. Poole's; his worries and mortifications caused by the parties who projected his Journal; sends autographs for American friends.
Note	Transcribed in the hand of another. A portion of the original letter is located in bound MsL H94sw.
Personal Name Subject	Hunt, Leigh, 1784-1859 Swift, Mrs Shewell, Lydia, 1776-1865 Shewell, Stephen, 1727-1809 Hunt, Mary Shewell, ca. 1752-1805
Geographic Subject	England -- London -- Kensington and Chelsea -- Kensington
Chronological Subject	1850-1860
Type (DCMIType)	Text
Type (AAT)	Correspondence
Type (IMT)	jpeg
Digital Collection	Leigh Hunt Letters
Contributing Institution	University of Iowa. Libraries. Special Collections Dept.
Archival Collection	Brewer-Leigh Hunt Collection
Collection Guide	http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/resources/Brewer-LeighHunt.html
Location	bound MsL H942s leaf 14 (previous call number MsL H942s no. 4)
Rights Management	Educational use only, no other permissions given. This letter is owned by The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department, and is provided here for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without written permission of the Special Collections Department.
Contact Information	Contact The University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department: lib-spec@uiowa.edu
Height (cm)	25.5
Width (cm)	20.5
Number of Pages	4
Number of Sheets of Paper	1
Digitization Specifications	Scanned with Ricoh Aficio 2335 scanner at 600 ppi, 24-bit color. Archival tiff image available.
Date Digital	2009-04-13
Transcript	Letters from Leigh Hunt to Mrs Swift - copied from the original . 2 Phillimore Terrace Kensington (near London) May 3, 1851 At last, my dear Cousin, after two severe fits of illness, the first of which struck the pen out of my hand, and the second seemed to come on purpose to prevent my resuming it. I write to let you know that I am still in the land of the living, and how heartily and thankfully I rejoice in the relationship that opens its arms thus kindly towards me. I began to fear that after losing the opportunity of repairing my omission to one sister I should be deprived of the power of communicating with the other. How sorry I was to hear of her death! I shall regret it as long as life remains to me; especially as my conscience towards her is not without reproach; for though the bearer of her letter whom she prepared me for seeing posted it in London and never made his appearance, (which was the first cause of my delay) and though I sent the letter itself into some such very safe place as subsequently to baffle my own search for it, yet I ought not to have suffered such obstacles to let /---/ me delay ^further from day to day, till at length she can no longer say she has forgiven me. However, I am a great believer, you must know, in the spiritual /world/ world, and in the final commensurate power of all good things with all good wishes; as I do my best to think that she may be looking upon this sorry paper while I write, and lamenting (as far as beatitude can do so) that the bright and kind heart of which you speak, and which is a [page break] a thing so fit for Heaven, can no longer whisper to us with an /earthy/ earthy tongue. You must be charitable enough to consider in my behalf that in spite of my own naturally good spirits, I have been in such a bad state of health, for the greater part of my life as to make over-writing very painful, and apparently hazardous to me, even when not so ill as I have been lately; and this constant tenderness of brain (for I never write anything, so to speak /)/ without some emotion, and a tendency to a flushed face and a quickened pulse) has aggravated a bad and otherwise inexcusable habit of delay, which haunts me to this moment, and still makes me, I fear, too often think that I cannot do till tomorrow what would cost me no greater sensitiveness to-day . [The flushed face makes me leave off now, as it has done before while writing this letter. I shall resume again in a few hours.] I looked with reverence upon the handwriting of my Aunt Lydia and am very sorry (or ought I /---/ not rather to say glad?) that she thought me so worthy of rebuke in what I said /---/ ^of my grandfather. But why did she not tell me so at first? I would have recreated with pleasure in a second edition; -- will unsay it now, in the next edition, on her authority, if she will give me exactly to understand what she would desire me to say /---/ instead, especially as I never heard my mother or my father either, speak a word against him, though there was a strong feeling somehow to that effect in the family. I beg you to present my duty to her and to say that tears of respect and loving kindness came into my eyes at sight of her name, as they did also at what you said of your own likeness to her sister. I should like much to see those letters of mine of which she speaks, though, far more letters from her and from yourself; and I would promise to be short in my replies rather than delay writing (for I must say for myself that I have often, perhaps always /)/ delayed writing to certain persons - when I have done so at all /)/ out of the wish to say a great deal. By the way, can [page break] can that excellent handwriting of hers, be her own, at her time of life? or has she not an amanuensis? My own you see will not remain so sharp, fairly enough as I begin . I resume after a little rest. - I have no brother now alas! surviving. Mine is the sole family name left in England with whom any Americans have any link of association, but my wife and children and greatly interested in hearing from you, and dear Anne Gliddon will have told you particulars respecting ourselves. We have had a hard struggle of it in life, owing to the reforming thoughts which my dear parents, my beloved mother especially, put into my head; but we do not regret them, believing they have done good; and I have survived a world of contest and enmity, and never was in the receipt of a fairer fame, or I believe, a more universal good will than at this moment, from the cottage to the throne. /Tho/ To complete it on your side of the water, or rather to save it (?) from the consequence of any Anglicisms, you must know that your ambassador here gave me most cordial greeting one evening at the Prince Minister’s home, inviting me to his /home/ own; and though illness & ^other circumstances have hitherto prevented my going there, Mrs Lawrence has since repeated the cordiality notwithstanding the appearance of my book and seemed generously bent on shewing me that it had not altered her goodwill. She left me to find her husband for me in a great crowd; (he had walked off with Miss Burdett Coutts) but the pressure was too strong /ever for an/ to be conquered /---/ even /for/ by an ambassadress; and she playfully said to me, with no unpleasant allusion to the different fortunes of poets & great Americans, “I think it is you & not my husband, who ought to have run away with Miss Burdett Coutts.” - Alas! my face has been flushing this hour past, & I must write little more. - I never saw, commissioned, or had the least communication with the Mr Goatley of whom your sister spoke. I believe that a relation of ours sent him out, but I doubt whether it was one of my [page break] brothers. There was an impression among us that we had not been handsomely treated in America; that legal advantage had been taken on some delay on our parts in claiming what we had been given, to understand we had a right to claim and of which a portion had been sent us, as earnest money, but I believe that some of us ever thought our female relations concerned in the transaction. We attributed it to some unmentioned male connexion (thought we had no notion who he was) or to some legal adviser. Pray tell me how the case really stood. You will see by the tone of my letter, how completely I, for one, had forgotten all about it in the delight of renewing affectionate intercourse with the kindred of my beloved mother. Nor do I now conceive for a moment that persons who can write as you do, and my Aunt Lydia, could have done us the smallest wrong. Pray believe that I feel everything which is the reverse and only long to reciprocate with you the most thorough tenderness. - Of course you know by this time all about the “Great Exhibition” here. It is not a mile from my door, and yet, I have not seen a particle of it, since it opened, having been too ill in consequence of making a premature evening visit. I have seen neither queen, nor goods nor crowd, nor indeed have crossed the threshold; though I trust to do my duty to it before it is over, like a proper citizen of the world. - May 22. From something which our good friend Mr Poole said when I last saw him, which was the day before we moved to this house, I had fancied that among some papers which he brought me I missed one, that in the hurry of the moment I had laid apart without looking at (for I was in the act, ill as I was, of going out of doors to look for a new abode at the twelfth hour, -- having to quit house the next day, which had injured our health, on pain of being forced to stop me of another year). After many days anxious search, fearful that I should again have to apologize for a lost paper which would have been monstrous, I find (though I have not seen Mr Poole again) that I was certainly mistaken in my supposition, and that no such paper was brought me. - So I breathe again, in spite of this new delay. - You may have heard of a journal here under my name which has hardly risen ere it has dropped. I incautiously stood godfather to it, without making proper inquiries into the resources (pecuniary or literary) of the parties who projected it, and they worried & mortified me so extremely from first to last ^with the uncongenial consequences sure as not paying the friends to whom I had applied to [continued on top of page 1] People in America sometimes write to me for autographs, so do not think me vain if I give a few to you to give away, in case anybody cares to have one. - May 24th. I have not yet seen the Exhibition. If you encourage me with a present or two, of the same sort, I will send a lock of my hair.
Transcript By	Covell, Anne
Transcript Location	University of Iowa. Libraries. Special Collections Dept.

Title	Page1
Relation - Is Part Of	Leigh Hunt letter to Mrs Swift, May 3, 1851
Digital Collection	Leigh Hunt Letters
File Name	h942s-14_Page1.jpg
Transcript	Letters from Leigh Hunt to Mrs Swift - copied from the original . 2 Phillimore Terrace Kensington (near London) May 3, 1851 At last, my dear Cousin, after two severe fits of illness, the first of which struck the pen out of my hand, and the second seemed to come on purpose to prevent my resuming it. I write to let you know that I am still in the land of the living, and how heartily and thankfully I rejoice in the relationship that opens its arms thus kindly towards me. I began to fear that after losing the opportunity of repairing my omission to one sister I should be deprived of the power of communicating with the other. How sorry I was to hear of her death! I shall regret it as long as life remains to me; especially as my conscience towards her is not without reproach; for though the bearer of her letter whom she prepared me for seeing posted it in London and never made his appearance, (which was the first cause of my delay) and though I sent the letter itself into some such very safe place as subsequently to baffle my own search for it, yet I ought not to have suffered such obstacles to let /---/ me delay ^further from day to day, till at length she can no longer say she has forgiven me. However, I am a great believer, you must know, in the spiritual /world/ world, and in the final commensurate power of all good things with all good wishes; as I do my best to think that she may be looking upon this sorry paper while I write, and lamenting (as far as beatitude can do so) that the bright and kind heart of which you speak, and which is a [page break] [continued from page 4] People in America sometimes write to me for autographs, so do not think me vain if I give a few to you to give away, in case anybody cares to have one. - May 24th. I have not yet seen the Exhibition. If you encourage me with a present or two, of the same sort, I will send a lock of my hair.

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Leigh Hunt letter to Mrs Swift, May 3, 1851

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