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Leigh Hunt letter to Thomas Carlyle, March 7, 9, and 12, 1833

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Title	Leigh Hunt letter to Thomas Carlyle, March 7, 9, and 12, 1833
Creator	Hunt, Leigh, 1784-1859
Date Original	1833-03-07
Description	Concerning comfort from Carlyle's letter; the delay in his packet of books reaching Carlyle; his great desire to be Carlyle's guest; any visit prevented by his large family at home and anxieties over business; his past pleasures in being welcomed to share Shelley's home wherever it was. His visit from Jeffrey from whom he plans to secure franks. His request that he might send his son, Thornton, for a visit; Thornton's illness, intelligence, artistic ability, considerateness; Hunt's request for a portrait of Carlyle by Thornton, and that Carlyle not allude to his own lack of means with reference to Hunt's; his delight in accepting Carlyle's moneyless and scholarly sympathy. Carlyle called 'austere' by the Lord Advocate, i.e. Jeffrey. Hunt's willingness to send Carlyle his copies of True Sun; Hunt's improvement in health.
Personal Name Subject	Hunt, Leigh, 1784-1859 Carlyle, Thomas, 1795-1881 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822 Hunt, Thornton Leigh, 1810-1873 Jeffrey, Francis Jeffrey, Lord, 1773-1850
Geographic Subject	England -- London
Chronological Subject	1830-1840
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 C28g leaf 7 (previous call number MsL C28g 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)	22.7
Width (cm)	18.1
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	2009-05-19
Transcript	5. York Buildings- New Road March 7 . My dear Sir , Great was the comfort your letter gave me yesterday; especially as I had begun to think- not that you were offended with me (for I knew you were too wise & kind for that)- but that out of some subtle intention or other of doing me good, you had resolved not to write to me except at long intervals. I had endeavoured to persuade myself that my packet might have been delayed, but I had no notion of its being delayed so long. I saw Mr. Moxon in the afternoon, & he explained it by a mistake he had made relative to the road it was necessary for it to take: -at least so I understood him during a brief & interrupted interview; but he said he was going to write to you on the subject. Luckily I shall now know what to do in future, & your books shall come accordingly at the beginning of the mouth. Would to heaven that I could come myself! You have no conception how much I desire it, for you do not know from under what a daily & deadly load of cares I should slip away for the time, freshening my wings in your pure northern air, amidst the breath of wild flowers, & the converse of the wise-hearted. Your walks, & your talks, and your music would all be most delightful to me; & the very offer & notion of it is so: -nay if I can at all manage to be master of my time & movement any time within these two years, most certainly will I come to you, and meanwhile I shall look upon it as /I/ a [page break] good thing which I have in a sort of posse,-as a pleasure which I can fly to, if I can fly any where,-a friend’s locale at my service, -an own other-man’s possessions & country-house, which is mine when I can go to it. This is much, believe me; & reminds me of one of the greatest pleasures I had in the world, which was, that wherever Shelley had a roof over his head, there I had a bit of it to put over mine, in case I choose to seek it, -whether he was abroad or at home, in England or Italy, or had gone to China. He once thought of taking a voyage to India; & I immediately felt as if I had a house in Caliant, or the Himalaya mountains . Saturday March 9 . I was obliged to leave off here in order to go to touch upon business: & during my absence, Jeffrey called. Imagine my disappointment, I called upon him however myself yesterday, & found him at home, & most pleasant. He is full of life & evident good heartedness, & is a boy still, /---/ in spite of the bar, & his wig, & the Whig (with an aspirate in it) and criticism, & Lord Advocacy. He finds it hard to Germanize; but loves those that can, & is full of respect for you & yours. I am to see him again, & speedily; so I shall write you further about him for now that we have a Parliament again, there are members in town, & I can get friends. I will make him give me some. He shall be, in all /the/ senses of the word, Frank Jeffrey with me, (I hope, in your universalities, you do not exclude the humanity of a /---/ [?man]. I want you to see that I /also/ have some animal spirits left, especially for my friends when they write me such kind & consolatory letters.) And vow, by way of shewing you the excess to which they will carry me, I have a very imprudent thing to say. Yet imprudence is not at all the heart of it, or I could not propose it. You are kind enough to ask me to come & see you: I cannot do so at present: there are a hundred reasons, connected with a family of eight children, great & small, & all at home, which prevent me; besides matters of business which I must attend to one the spot, on pain of losing both money & good name. I shall hope to come, & shall keep the visit in prospect: & with that I must contend myself. But my eldest boy (man rather, for he is past twenty one) has lately made me anxious about the state of ^his health: the doctor recommends that he should go from home a little, into fresh air; & I am unable to send him; & this gives me remorse, & makes me think it criminal in me to be no richer. Will you allow me, dear Sir, to send him to you for a week or two, as my substitute? I will [page break] make no apology for the proposal, because you will understand my feelings as much as I do myself, & I cannot pretend to suppose that you will think ill of those. All I request is, that if /---/ you are going from home any where, by any new chance of necessity in the interval since you wrote, /that/ you will be ingenuous with me, -or on any other score of hindrance, if such there be. Au reste, I shall take it for granted that you will not be sorry to see him. He is an intelligent youth, indeed of no common order of intelligence (as Lamb prophesied for him when a child, & Hazlitt would have borne witness to you in his riper years); & he is capable of desiring knowledge from you, & I think, of contributing his share of reasonable entertainment as a guest. In the course of a few works, he begins his career as an artist, having had a regular education for it these three years, ^& the greatest encouragement from the critics; and would it not be inconvenient to you to receive him, I have another favour to beg; which is, that you will let him make an essay at taking a portrait of you for his father. He would bring canvas & all appurtenances with him, for that purpose. Of music he is passionately fond; so that he would be enabled to enter into all your pastimes. Finally, he is a good fellow; -& has ever treated his father’s scantiness of means with a considerate & unaffected delicacy, and a descriptiveness of self-denial, which sometimes brings a bitter tear out of my very delight. But I hope all will turn to good account with him ^in the end. Better have his difficulties first, & his pleasures afterward, than the converse. I endeavour to console myself with thought like these; but it is sometimes /---/ hard. Heaven send I may live to see him healthy & strong, & in the dawn of worldly prospect /---/ And now, my dear Sir, never say a word to me again in kind allusion to your own scantiness of means, with reference to myself. I think, & indeed know, I made some good guesses about you, as the letter of your position; and I venture to tell you (without grudging what generosity you might have shewn me had you been as rich in pocket as in nature) that, as far as myself is concerned, I feel an especial delight in a certain moneyless & scholarly sympathy from a man like yourself, and in the refuge I can take in the thought of you from all thoughts of money /---/ & whatsoever belongs to it. I only regret that the want of it will not enable us to do just what we please, to go any where & have what books we like, & shew what an indifference we have for it. Has not your own good faith given me a corner in your heart for belief in mine; and do you not tell me, of tears of sympathy that have come into womanly eyes? I am rich enough, believe me, Scotland-wards . Tuesday March 12 . I have been again hindered from closing my letter, & fear I shall not be able to get it franked till tomorrow. The Lord Advocate has not been here again; but I expect him. I forgot to say, that in the midst of his praises of you, your benevolence indeed, he said you were “Austere!” cried I. “Oh, yes,” cried he: “he is indeed . [page break] he is quite austere.” -I said it was one of the last epithets I should have given you, & that if you were austere, it was like the austere mid of a fruit round the heart of sweetness. So you see, though not a Lord Advocate, I am an advocate fit to talk of you among lords. I suppose /you/ he fancied you not dulcet enough towards those men of the world, with whom he pretends to identify himself . Do you see a newspaper? Would you like to see an evening one, the Time Sun; the most radical of radicals? I have long ceased to write in it, not having been able to go on struggling with it, in addition to my own struggles; but it is making its way; it is still sent me; & I could frequently transmit it to Craigenputtock. Cobbelt’s speeches in [bottom of page] Parliament make the debates quite a new thing. He talks Registers; & keeps up a note, very provoking, about rich & poor, “in which, pray part, I cannot help rejoicing. I like to see people going to the [?elements] of things; & telling the whole truth, instead of agreeing to /get the/ keep the main part of it a convenient secret. But then how much of his humour & will there is in the thing, & how [ ? ] philosophy! for the same man talks against the “blasphemous Jews!,” and asks what is to become of Christianity if we treat them well. However, a sledge-hammer is not a sun-beam! -I must not omit to tell you that I am better than when I wrote last. The subscription has not done what it [right side of back page] was hoped it would; but it has still served me much, & saved me from some most disturbing things which I fear would have gone nigh to bear me down. About six weeks ago I had some new & alarming pains in the fore part & sides of my head, accompanied with a double cloudiness of feeling; but try suddenly disappeared, & instead of being worse, I have ever since been better . Dear Sir, I am most sincerely yours Leigh Hunt London March fourteen 1833 Carlyle Esq 18 [?Corlton St] Stockbridge Edinbro’ Sir Edw Lytton Bulwer
Transcript By	Chen, Lilly
Transcript Location	University of Iowa. Libraries. Special Collections Dept.

Title	Page1
Relation - Is Part Of	Leigh Hunt letter to Thomas Carlyle, Mar. 7, 9, and 12, 1833
Digital Collection	Leigh Hunt Letters
File Name	c28g-7_Page1.jpg
Transcript	5. York Buildings- New Road March 7 . My dear Sir , Great was the comfort your letter gave me yesterday; especially as I had begun to think- not that you were offended with me (for I knew you were too wise & kind for that)- but that out of some subtle intention or other of doing me good, you had resolved not to write to me except at long intervals. I had endeavoured to persuade myself that my packet might have been delayed, but I had no notion of its being delayed so long. I saw Mr. Moxon in the afternoon, & he explained it by a mistake he had made relative to the road it was necessary for it to take: -at least so I understood him during a brief & interrupted interview; but he said he was going to write to you on the subject. Luckily I shall now know what to do in future, & your books shall come accordingly at the beginning of the mouth. Would to heaven that I could come myself! You have no conception how much I desire it, for you do not know from under what a daily & deadly load of cares I should slip away for the time, freshening my wings in your pure northern air, amidst the breath of wild flowers, & the converse of the wise-hearted. Your walks, & your talks, and your music would all be most delightful to me; & the very offer & notion of it is so: -nay if I can at all manage to be master of my time & movement any time within these two years, most certainly will I come to you, and meanwhile I shall look upon it as /I/ a

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