Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (3 page)

After
Juvenilia
, however,
Hunt showed little sign of living up to his early promise, and he drifted aimlessly. His listless progress through late adolescence was marred by some of the curious contradictions in his character. Simultaneously self-confidently precocious and unsure of his own abilities, strong-willed and emotionally fragile, egotistical and selfless, he seemed almost overawed by his own potential. Eventually, his elder brother John, worried that his brilliant sibling was in danger of succumbing to their father’s lackadaisical and irresponsible habits, took a hand in his future. John Hunt was nine years older than Leigh and the contrast in their characters was marked. He was hard-working, diligent, morally upright and an incisive judge of character. A highly responsible man himself, he bitterly resented Isaac’s failures and the strain financial uncertainty placed on his delicate mother. He combined deeply held principles with business acumen and in 1808, when he was thirty-two and Leigh twenty-three, he spotted a gap in the politically polarised periodical market for an independent weekly newspaper. He had started newspapers before, to which Leigh had contributed on a part-time basis, but now John suggested a permanent partnership in which he would act as printer and Leigh as editor.

The resulting newspaper,
The Examiner
, bound the brothers together for almost two decades. Leigh shared his brother’s principled devotion to political independence and to the cause of parliamentary reform and they worked well together, John providing the clear-headed common sense which ensured the newspaper was ready for printing by its Saturday deadline and Leigh the sparkling editorial comment columns which made its reputation. Leigh did not, however, share his austere elder brother’s work ethic, and the carefree way he managed his own financial affairs was a source of considerable strain on their relationship. So too was Leigh’s marriage in 1809 to Mary Anne Kent, which placed additional pressure on
The Examiner
’s resources.  Leigh had met Mary Anne (known also as Marian and, ultimately, as Marianne) in 1802 when, as a directionless eighteen year old, he was introduced to the Kent family by a mutual friend who knew that Marianne’s younger sister, Elizabeth, was eager to meet him. Elizabeth was only eleven in 1802, but she was bright beyond her years, had read and admired an essay by Hunt in the
Monthly Preceptor
and was keen to emulate his literary activities. Hunt was kind to the little girl, probably because he was attracted to her elder sister.

Hunt’s courtship of Marianne was long and stormy, and dominated the adolescent years of both sisters. But by 1813, the year of his imprisonment, Hunt and Marianne were safely married and the parents of two small sons. Their household was chaotic, in marked contrast to that of John and his wife Sally. Leigh and Marianne moved in and out of London, between a series of rented cottages and apartments, scraping money together as they went along. John found his new sister-in-law’s haphazard housekeeping exasperating, but his resistance to the marriage stemmed from more serious concerns. He feared for
The Examiner
’s future under the management of a domestically distracted editor, and doubted that the journal
could support an additional family. He may also have worried that the presence of a flighty, disorganised, emotional wife would exacerbate Leigh’s character flaws, and that Marianne would only make his brother more unreliable. She did not, however, have the detrimental effect on her husband’s industriousness that John anticipated, and within two years of its foundation,
The Examiner
had become one of the most influential newspapers of the day.

From their motto (‘Party is the Madness of the Many for the Gain of a Few’) to their refusal to accept advertisements, the Hunt brothers proclaimed their independence at every turn. The
paper’s political position was liberal; its tone anti-establishment. It blamed the manifold weaknesses of government on the incompetence of those permitted to govern, on the unchecked problems facing the nation and, above all, on endemic corruption. In the first year of its life, the Hunt brothers’ crusade against corruption brought them both widespread respect and a charge for libel when they made reference to a story circulating in London that the Duke of York’s mistress, Mary Anne Clarke, had been selling military commissions. This libel charge only collapsed when the truth of the accusation against the Duke was laid bare by the scurrilous and extremely funny evidence given at the bar of the House of Commons by Mary Anne Clarke herself.  Between 1808 and 1812 the Hunts faced two further libel actions. The first, levelled against an article on the ‘headless state’ of the government, was withdrawn just as the trial started. The second charge was more serious, and related to an article which condemned the practice of military flogging, comparing it unfavourably to the disciplinary methods used by Napoleon. On this occasion the Hunts were only acquitted thanks to the brilliance of their trial lawyer.

The libel cases against
The Examiner
greatly strained the Hunts’ resources but the publicity engendered by legal action also brought the newspaper fame and new readers. Those who picked it up for the first time soon discovered that it was far more than a weekly political gazette. It included theatre reviews, columns on the fine arts, comment on contemporary manners, sketches of leading parliamentarians, and an impressive array of original poetry and literary reviews. It also carried verbatim reports of parliamentary proceedings, national and international intelligence, agricultural, law and police reports, a column on happenings at Court and current fashions, as well as an intriguing summary of ‘Accidents and Offences’, which described, in magnificent detail, some of the week’s more bizarre domestic and local skirmishes. Nonetheless, its centrepiece was the political editorial contributed each week by Leigh Hunt. His columns chronicled the rise and fall of Napoleon, the progress of the British armies from the Spanish Peninsula to the Field of Waterloo, the scandals that enveloped the royal family and the government, the suffering of the labouring poor in the post-war years, and the long battle for parliamentary reform waged by a wide spectrum of reformers and radicals. Hunt kept up a constant attack on the government, his position moving from belligerence to despair.

At the beginning of 1811, King George III was finally declared mentally incapable to rule, and the Prince of Wales was appointed Prince Regent.
The Examiner
, like other reform-minded publications, greeted the prospect of a Regency with cautious enthusiasm, but by February 1811 Hunt was dolefully reporting that the Regent was little more than ‘a mere signing and responding puppet’
⁷
who had failed to dismiss the tired Tory administration of Spencer Perceval and Lord Liverpool,  bestowed sinecures on his friends, and held extravagant parties in a manner quite unsuited to his role as head of state.
The Examiner
’s anger against the Regent finally erupted in an editorial in March 1812. Reading reports of the Prince’s activities in sycophantic journals, Hunt announced, one would never guess ‘that this
delightful
,
blissful
,
wise
,
pleasurable
,
honourable
,
virtuous
,
true and immortal
PRINCE, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity!’
⁸

A fourth libel writ was promptly issued against
The Examiner
by an outraged Attorney General. The Hunts had survived three previous libel actions and this time the trial judge, Lord Ellenborough, was taking no chances. The jury was hand-picked and ‘packed’ with men sympathetic to the Crown, and the result was never in doubt. Both Hunt brothers were sent to prison, Leigh to Surrey Gaol and John to Coldbath Fields in North London.

Lord Liverpool and members of his government may well have assumed that
The Examiner
was unlikely to survive the incarceration of its editor and printer. If so, they were destined to be disappointed.
Instead of isolation, the Hunt brothers’ sentence brought them new, powerful supporters and determined, congenial and interesting friends. In 1813 the circle which gathered around Leigh in prison included some important figures in English arts and letters. His regular callers included William Hazlitt, a painter and journalist beginning to make a name for himself as an essayist and literary commentator; Charles and Mary Lamb, the brother-and-sister co-authors of
Tales from Shakespeare
; and Charles Cowden Clarke, son of a well-known Dissenting schoolmaster.  He was also visited regularly by Thomas Barnes, a Christ’s Hospital friend, the classical scholar Thomas Mitchell and Sir John Swinburne, whose nephew, Algernon, would scandalise Victorian society with the publication of his erotic libertarian poems. Henry Brougham, the lawyer who had unsuccessfully defended the Hunt brothers at their trial, was another frequent visitor, as was the painter Benjamin Haydon, an impetuous, religious, slightly wild-eyed twenty-seven year old. Haydon understood better than most how painful it was for Hunt to be cut off from London’s theatres and exhibitions, and he arranged to have his great historical painting on the Judgement of Solomon transported to Surrey Gaol for Hunt to admire. He was, in 1813, among the most passionately loyal of Hunt’s supporters, noting in his diary that ‘Hunt’s Society is always delightful – I don’t know a purer, a more virtuous character, or a more witty, funny, amusing, enlivening man.’
⁹
Haydon visited Hunt throughout his time in gaol, wrote him long letters during his absences from London, and was a constant source of support and encouragement.

With the aid of such friends, the Hunts managed to keep
The Examiner
going so that it appeared every week of their two year sentence. Though John Hunt was accorded less freedom and his visitors were more restricted, a constant stream of
Examiner
employees scuttled back and forth between the newspaper’s offices, John’s cell at Coldbath Fields and Surrey Gaol, collecting editorials and instructions.  And the group that began to form around Leigh Hunt acquired a life of its own in the pages of
the newspaper. Thomas Barnes contributed a column on ‘Parliamentary Criticism’, and assumed responsibility for Hunt’s theatre column.  Charles Lamb wrote the early editions of ‘Table Talk’, a collaborative meditation on society and manners which appeared regularly from 1813.  In 1814 William Hazlitt published the first of his regular contributions to the newspaper, in the shape of an article on Shakespeare and ‘Posthumous Fame’.  Benjamin Haydon supplied articles under the pseudonym ‘E.S.’.

This cooperative endeavour had far reaching consequences. The act of keeping the paper going provided a focus for a group who were united in sympathy with Hunt and in opposition to his oppressors, and who could now announce their allegiance to him and the causes of free speech and liberty that he espoused in the pages of his journal. The harsh sentence handed down to the Hunts was an act of aggression by a politically motivated judiciary determined to clamp down on an outspoken liberal opposition. In response, the Hunts mobilised their friends to continue the professional activities and the private conversations disrupted by prison life. In the process, they ensured
The Examiner
’s survival. This was in itself an achievement, but it also provided their circle with an example of private lives lived for the public good, and it demonstrated that a group of friends could constitute their friendship and support of each other as an act of political resistance.

Leigh Hunt’s most glamorous prison visitor was Lord Byron, who went to Surrey Gaol for the first time on 20 May 1813.  Byron’s anticipation of this visit has given us one of the most abiding images of the imprisoned Hunt:

To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,

All ready and dress’d for proceeding to spunge on

(According to compact) the wit in the dungeon –