Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (11 page)

On 5 February 1815, readers of
The Examiner
picked up their Sunday papers to learn of the ‘Departure of the proprietors of this paper from prison’. ‘The first draught of free air’, Hunt told his readers, ‘may be allowed to make one a little giddy . . . there is a feeling of space and airy clearness about every thing, which is alternately delightful and painful.’
¹⁷
John Keats, an apothecary’s apprentice and a friend of Charles Cowden Clarke, was moved by the release of Hunt (whom he had never met) to produce a sonnet, ‘Written on the Day That Mr Leigh Hunt Left Prison’, which imagined its subject ‘free/ As the sky-searching lark, and as elate’ straying ‘In Spencer’s halls . . . and bowers fair’.
¹⁸

Keats was not the only aspiring poet to celebrate the end of the Hunt brothers’ incarceration, and Hunt emerged from his prison cell a hero for a new generation of thinkers and writers. He had survived a vindictive punishment, and had ensured that his newspaper survived too. In fact, his newspaper not only survived but thrived and grew, as its editor’s imprisonment brought it new readers and new writers eager to be part of its success. Nor was the continuation of
The Examiner
Hunt’s only achievement during his stay in Surrey Gaol. He had completed
The Descent of Liberty
, embarked on a new long poem and consolidated his position as one of the country’s leading liberal commentators.

There is no doubt that for Hunt the public man – editor, poet and friend of the liberal great and good – the months following his release in 1815 were a vindication.
The Examiner
became ever more self-consciously collegiate, with poems by Charles Lamb celebrating the beauty of Hunt’s children, as well as articles by Hazlitt, Haydon and other Hunt admirers. Hunt’s political writing was injected with a new level of urgency by Napoleon’s escape from Elba, which also proved how right he had been to query the merits of sending him there in the first place.
The Descent of Liberty
was applauded in the press. Hazlitt arranged for the publication of
The Round Table
, a collection of essays co-authored with Hunt. Letters and volumes of poetry were exchanged with Wordsworth, who was both fourteen years older than the thirty year old Hunt and far more famous than any of Hunt’s friends. Wordsworth called on Hunt in the summer of 1815 in the company of Benjamin Haydon, who was a fascinated witness to a meeting in which Hunt paid Wordsworth ‘the highest compliments, & told him that as he grew wiser & got older he found his respect for his powers & enthusiasm for his genius encrease . . . I never saw him so eloquent as today.’
¹⁹
 Haydon was himself a regular visitor, and he and Hunt spent long evenings arguing about the conduct of Napoleon and Wellington.

But in private the story was different. For two years, Hunt had been immured in a contained, even cosy space. His food and books were procured for him, his friends came to him, tradesmen’s bills languished unpaid (after all, when one was already in prison, the consequences of debt were not so very serious). But on his release, he was expected to fend for himself and his family once more. The first step was to find somewhere to live. Hunt spent the first few days of his freedom staying with a friend near Surrey Gaol, but by the end of February the whole family were ensconced in lodgings in Maida Vale, a new development in west London.  These lodgings were just round the corner from the house where John Hunt had installed his family, and Hunt movingly described his reunion with his brother in
The Examiner
. But the transition from Surrey Gaol to Maida Vale brought with it its own problems. The fine which both Hunts were required to pay proved crippling, and plunged Leigh into a spiral of debt on his release. As a result he now found himself living in cramped quarters (the fine made it impossible for him to rent a house) with his wife, his sister-in-law Bess, and his three children, Thornton, John and Mary. Marianne and Bess’s cousin, Virtue Kent, also stayed with them intermittently.

Lack of space, however, was the least of Hunt’s worries. For two years his world had consisted of two rooms and a small garden. On his release from prison he was overcome by agoraphobia. The crowded London streets terrified him. The sheer density of human bodies was shocking, and the cacophony of carriages and shouting barrow boys was as strange and dissonant as the sound of keys turning in locks had been two years before. The roads of Maida Vale were at least quieter than those of Southwark, but this didn’t make it any easier for him to venture into central London and he was unable to resume his theatrical reviews or to visit his friends.

Agoraphobia narrowed Hunt’s perspective on the world, which led in its turn to a shrinking of his ambition and his professional prospects. He seemed to age in the period following his release, and to lose some of the youthful fearlessness and optimism which characterised his earlier writing. The confidence he had gained from his triumphant imprisonment gave way to a new degree of vulnerability, which hampered his rhetorical and literary abilities. Since his family’s financial survival depended on his ability to make
The Examiner
a success, this turn of events was particularly worrying.

Hunt set about re-establishing himself outside of prison by creating a space in which to work. Just as he had turned his cell in Surrey Gaol into a refuge from the horrors of prison life, he transformed one room in his new lodgings into a study which bore a startling resemblance to his prison bower. The books, busts, flowers and the piano were transported across London and installed in Hunt’s new cocoon. He had the walls draped with green and white wallpaper and the furniture reupholstered to match. His new room was lily- rather than rose-themed, but in all other respects it was similar to his prison accommodation. His friends gathered around him, as he maintained the stillness of the previous two years. Everybody was remarkably understanding about the need to travel up to Maida Vale to help Hunt through his recovery – even Wordsworth, who by rights should have been visited by Hunt, as befitted his superior reputation, age and social status. Hunt sat in his green and white room drinking tea, entertaining his friends and writing his
Examiner
editorials. Nestled in a small, colourful space it was almost possible to trick himself into believing that he remained in prison, immured from the responsibilities and demands of freedom.

Hunt’s study allowed him to maintain an illusion of continuity and safety, but the extensive redecoration inflated the housekeeping bills. Tucked away from the frightening outside world, he tried to focus on his writing rather than on domestic problems. But his fine made this impossible, as money worries now began to sour his relationships with people who had previously been supportive. His publishers, Gale and Fenner, tried to call in a loan, and received a stern rebuff. He was forced to make humiliating requests for money. Henry Brougham received a rather tortured letter in which Hunt conceded, ‘You have seen me in the character of a lofty refuser of money: – I now come to you in a very different one.’ He was indeed in an unenviable situation: in order to raise the funds to pay his fine and secure his release from prison, he had taken out a loan against the profits of
The Story of Rimini
, the long poem on which he was now working. But worries about money and the near breakdown which seems to have followed his release stopped him from finishing
Rimini
, and thus prevented him from realising the sums he had borrowed. Little wonder that he confessed to Brougham, ‘when I was in prison, [I] longed for liberty; & now I am at liberty, it has almost renewed my prison.’
²⁰

Marianne was not a competent housekeeper but she was now operating in difficult circumstances. On the one hand, every new purchase and every food bill plunged the household further into debt. On the other, there were at least three adults and three children to feed, and the constant need to entertain friends exacerbated the problem. But the presence of friends was crucial to Hunt’s rehabilitation, and to his ability to make any kind of living. Imprisoned in the house by his own mental fragility, he relied on visitors to bring him news of European events, to report on the theatre and parliamentary gossip. Hunt depended on his friends in less tangible, more creative ways too. It was their encouragement which had led to the completion of
The Descent of Liberty
while he was in prison, and he needed supportive friends to help him overcome the difficulties of finishing and publishing
The Story of Rimini
. In this instance, the necessary aid was provided by Byron, who was a faithful and regular visitor throughout the spring and summer of 1815. Indeed, Byron seemed to find Hunt’s flowery study more appealing than his own grand home. Visitors to Maida Vale would find him in Hunt’s lodgings – flirting with Bess, drinking tea in a green and white chair, riding Thornton’s magnificent rocking horse – while his new wife waited for him in the carriage outside.

It was evident to all who saw them that the Byrons’ marriage had soured quickly. What was less obvious to casual acquaintances was that it started badly too. Byron and Annabella were married on 1 January (the same day on which Mary and Hogg embarked on their wooing of each other) in the drawing room at Seaham, Annabella Milbanke’s parental home. Annabella wanted a large wedding, but her bridegroom insisted on a private service and the only guests were the bride’s parents and governess, the vicar of Seaham and Byron’s best man, John Cam Hobhouse.  Hobhouse was relieved that the wedding had gone off smoothly, since Byron’s demeanour on the journey north was hardly that of an eager lover. Once the service was over, bride and groom departed for their honeymoon at Ralph Milbanke’s Yorkshire estate, Halnaby Hall. There were no independent witnesses to their first journey together, and they later gave distinctly different accounts of their conversation.

When Annabella came to record her version of events, a little over a year later, she recalled how ‘as soon as we got into the carriage [Byron’s] countenance changed to gloom & defiance . . . He also told me that one of his great objects in marrying me “though I said nothing of this before” was to triumph over those who had pretended to my hand, adding that there was no glory in gaining a mere woman of the world, but “to
outwit
such a woman as you is something”.’
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According to Annabella, the journey got worse and worse. At an inn on the road her new husband ‘turned to me with a bitter look & said, “I wonder how much longer I shall be able to keep up
the part I have been
playing.”’
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By the time they reached Halnaby he was abusing her mother and attacking the size of his new bride’s dowry.
²³

Byron would later fiercely rebut Annabella’s version of events, claiming that he was ‘put in the sulks’ by the presence of Annabella’s maid in the carriage,
²⁴
although both Hobhouse and Annabella insisted that no one else travelled with them.  Annabella’s memoirs are, however, not much more reliable, since they had a specific function: to discredit Byron and to force him into agreeing to a separation and into relinquishing his claim on their daughter. But, regardless of which account one chooses to believe, it is clear that the start of the Byrons’ marriage was anything but happy.

For this, both parties were to blame. In marrying Annabella, Byron allowed himself to be drawn into a relationship with a woman who fascinated him, but to whom he had little emotional attachment. His marriage to Annabella was a way of legitimising his position, of fending off the attentions of Lady Caroline Lamb, and of fulfilling his responsibilities to his name. He and Augusta had reached an impasse: she would not leave her husband, and neither of them was able to announce their relationship to the world. Perhaps Byron thought that with a wife established in his home, Augusta would be able to visit more easily; or perhaps he thought that his marriage would provide both him and Augusta with the opportunity they needed to end a relationship which, no matter how loving, could only be destructive and dangerous. Whatever the reason, he knelt in the drawing room at Seaham as a reluctant bridegroom, who had told Hunt just after his engagement that he was ‘in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness’.
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It was not, however, as if he was marrying a woman who was head-over-heels in love with him. Annabella was the eldest daughter of Ralph and Judith Milbanke, and she met Byron during her second London season. Her decision to invite and to accept a second proposal of marriage from him in the autumn of 1814 seems to have stemmed from a variety of factors. She had not received other suitable offers; Byron was an aristocrat (and a mysterious poetic one to boot) and she thought she could reform the elements in his character which she found objectionable. But she was nevertheless uneasy about her engagement, telling a friend that she hoped ‘you will rely more on the opinion which we have had
reason
to form than on the vague prejudices of the world.’
²⁶
Her confident assumption that Byron would prove reformable was disastrous. Even allowing for exaggeration on her part, it is evident that the weeks spent at Halnaby for what Byron termed their ‘treaclemoon’
²⁷
were nightmarish for both of them. Annabella claimed that Byron refused to share the marital bed with her, that he greeted her the morning after their wedding night ‘repellently, and uttered words of blighting irony: It is too late now.  It is done and cannot be undone.’ She described him pacing up and down the gallery at night with his dagger drawn, threatening suicide and cursing their marriage.
²⁸
And she claimed he spent their time together dropping mysterious hints about the infamy of his past behaviour and in extravagant praise of Augusta.