Leigh Hunt letter to Elizabeth Kent, January 8, 1824

              [Florence] Jan. 8, 1824. 
Dearest Bebs, 
  The enclosed is a picture of our neighbourhood, taken out of Baldelli's Life of Boccaccio, which you may remember.[1] The objects in general are rather exaggerated, & instead of the variety of trees implied in the picture, there are scarcely any but olives & vines.  But it is a representation rather of [w]ha[t][2] the place was than what it is, & "the greedy cultivator of the soil," to use the words of Baldelli, has swallowed up the lake with his vineyards.  However, it is still very like. There are worlds of olives and vines; & though the lake has v[anishe]d, the little stream called the Affrico which formed it, & which Boccaccio has celebrated in a poem,[3] still exists, & runs at the foot of our hill.  I have marked where Fiesole & Maiano stand.  I look right across to Fiesole out of m[y s]tudy [window], taking a full view of the Doccia by the way; which is the name of that arcaded house you see up aloft, so called from a water-spout, which is the origin of the little rivulet just mentioned.  The hill in the [b]ack[ground] (a part of the Apennines) which has unfortunately been stripped of it's trees, /by/ in process of time for firewood (though not quite so barely as in the picture) ought to send it's line further on-ward to meet the line which I have form[ed outside] the plate.  On this slope of it, which is full of green lanes, & olive-trees [& vin]es, our house stands.  It is a sort of large farm-house, though the ground floor, which is occupied by another family in summer time, & is locked up in winter, partakes more of the villa.  The remainder, which we occupy, we have never taken kindly to, on account of a certain dreariness & inconvenience; & this is the reason why I have never sent you the particulars of it, our rooms having been changed several times.  In spring & summer however I hope to occupy sometimes a room more retired from the rest of the family than my present study, & sometimes a most cheerful little summer-house at the very top of the house in a turret.  But at present I can sit in neither for good, as there are no fire-places in them; & the winter here, though very fine over head, is colder than we expected.  They say however that it is perfect spring in March, & I verily I believe that the sharp winds which are now blustering, answer to the winds of February & March with you.  I wish you were well through them.  You must bring me the picture when you come.  If you can find a Baldelli at any of the booksellers, you will see other scenes in our neighbourhood. My favorite walk is to the Doccia, sometimes across the higher grounds, sometimes dipping across that glen there beyond the old lake,—a beautiful little spot with the brook in it.  Winter here does not render it unpassable.  The Doccia was a convent, but is now private property.  I was going to take rooms in it, but it was farther from Florence than our present house, & I thought would be too solitary for Marianne.  The great good of our house /is/, besides being at such a convenient distance from town, is it's being pitched in the very place, which the doctor said would suit her health, and also very cheap.  
And now I would scold you if I had the heart, & if I had not really been several weeks without /answering/ writing. But why did you send me such a peevish letter as the one before this late one?  I was never so long without writing as I have been this time, & I should not have been so long now, had I not waited from post to post for a letter of remuneration.  Yet I find you seem to think you have done nothing, so accustomed are you, you rogue, to— --no, not accustomed, now: I will not say that.  I quarrel with you /now/ this time, not because it is a custom, but because I will not have you remind me, in any one thing, of which you ought not.  You have been a swan to me now for these two years at least, & must never be a goose again, no, not for a moment. You do not do justice to the swanlike things, that were always in you.  I have now been accustomed to look for a perfect affection from you, & I must have it for all our sakes.  /.../ Next to your sister, you are my great good; & you ought, on that account only, to be above all disconcertments from others, & to warrant, prove, keep, & be eternally sure that you can afford to do so, by so doing, & by doing it calmly & good-naturedly, because you can afford it.  As to shewing your letters, I never shewed but one of them in my life to any body except Marianne, & that /was/ one was at Pisa to Lord B. [Byron].  I did it to do you honour, because the letter was a nice one, & because to tell /the/ you the truth, I did not know in what manner to return an excess of confidence which he had been heaping upon me all the morning, & which excess of confidence, it seems, he heaps upon every body.  If he made any ill use of it, it was out of his own levity & injustice; but he never saw any more.  I had too soon reason to learn better.  /-----/  So no more of this, unless you send me one word of regret, which I shall be glad of, & I give you 20 kisses for it beforehand.  You would never feel a movement of impatience against me once more in your life, if you knew all I expected of you, & all the comfort which I am prepared to receive as well as to give.  So again no more of this.  As soon as these cold winds cease, I am going to transport some book-shelves & the little sofa I had in my study at Albaro, into the summer-house in the turret, & see if it will be warm enough to begin to sit there.  The sun here is at all times very warm when uninterrupted, & the turret basks in it.  But I shall have green blinds, & so get what warmth I please.  
I hope you are aware of my goodness in writing this unintelligible little hand.  I do it to save you the expense of another half-sheet, as there is in it an enclosure, & in England letters pay by weight.  Your sister has longer respites now from the spitting-of blood, than for a great while past; & the vessel is undoubtedly closing again,— blessed circumstance to which our better prospects will no doubt contribute.  She sends her love to you, & will be very glad of another letter, which she will answer, though you must say nothing in a certain quarter about it.  She would get over the horror of writing, which you are good enough to be so charitable about, & write to that quarter also; but she literally is at a loss how to frame her speech to one who has treated her in such an extraordinary manner, & whose affection is evidently all for herself, neither ascending, nor descending.  We will consult still however how it can be managed.  Oh—that mysterious letter of yours!  I thought you were playing some joke /at/ upon me, /---/ & had read almost all through before I found that it was addressed to another person.  But how came you to be ignorant what letter it was?  Really, Miss Kent, if you go on in this mysterious manner with young gentlemen who are agreeable, & whose visits it is a pity to discontinue,--& above all, if you read their vast edifying lectures upon closed doors, we shall begin to think that you are more philosophic than you seem.  Marianne laughed ready to split her poor sides at the thought of the gentleman's opening my letter, & being welcomed in so very closed-door a style. But it seems you did not send him that.  Do not imagine there was any ill-nature in her laugh.  It was very much the reverse.  She never felt more kindly disposed towards you than she does now, though she still jokes about your closed doors, & thinks you grow wonderfully prudent.  For my part, I like your improvement in that matter, though I think you carry it somewhat too far in /being afraid to/ preferring to hide a little Sunday sewing, rather than explain the matter to the maid-servant.  I have not sent back your letter on account of the expense.  What shall I do with it?  God bless you. You know what I said to you before about another young gentleman & philosophy.  I do not mean to imply that there is any thing more of it in this than in that; though God knows, if there were, not one jot of /the/ affection the less, or one embrace the less in thought or in deed would you have from a friend like me.  It is the height of affection to allow all good & all comfort to another, provided nothing of the old affection is lost; & I do not see how it can be, where it is founded on a generosity like this, & is prepared if necessary to go hand in hand with that other through all trials,—it's indulgence being great because it's affection is so.  God bless you.  My temples begin to beat: & one of the reasons for my not having written sooner, is that during my waiting for your letter, I wrote tremendously.  /I sent/ My Bacco is sent off to England, notes & all.  You should not have told me all the regrets which I know you must feel about the Ultra-Crepidarius.  You should have tried to reconcile me to myself in it; for when I directed it to be published, I was not sure, during that dispute with my brother, whether my children would have bread to eat.  But I am not angry. I am nothing but /---/ affectionate.  
10000000 kisses.  
L.H.   
	[Continued at top of page at right]    Pray send your sister a good gossiping letter.  It is a feast for both of us.  I dare say the irregularity of the post is owing to the contrary winds of autumn & winter across the Channel.
   
[continued at top of page at left]   A happy New Year to you!  It is a happier one to me, on many accounts.  One of them you know, & the other is that I am in a fair way of settling comfortably the unpleasant business between my brother & myself, as Mrs. S.  [Shelley] or Novello will explain to you.   
[Continued in first box]    Novello & Mr. Clarke (whom I will thank about your book) talk of coming to see me this year.  I shall certainly hold them to their promise very seriously, and if they come in good time, why cannot you come with them?  It would be an excellent opportunity on every account, /-------/ But remember you speak of it as a visit.  You need not say for how long.   
[Continued in second box]    I am getting up a selection & translation of French songs.  /------/ & if you cannot get other means of coming, we may see if we cannot sell that, & bring you up on the strength of it.  They are chiefly love songs, & of course will do.   
[Continued in third box]    You said just the thing to the gentleman about the Examiner.  I am going to write regularly in it again, upon all sorts of subjects, & romance directly. You will see in a few weeks the first No. of a new series of papers in it, entitled the Wishing-Cap.  Is not that a good title?