YOUR LONDON TOURS CONTINUE WITH A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF JAMES LEIGH HUNT.
DIRECTIONS
Retrace your footsteps, Just before the Elliotson tomb, turn left. Go past the barrier. Turn right and take the second turning right along the grass track where, just before the second tree on the left, is a pedestal memorial to:-
James Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).
James Leigh Hunt was born in Southgate, Middlesex on 19th October 1784. His father was a clergyman who ran into financial difficulties and ended up in a debtor's prison. As a young men Hunt acquired an interest in both politics and poetry and in 1808 - with his brother, John, - he founded The Examiner, a Sunday paper which became one of the most popular publications of the age, and in whose pages Hunt was able to espouse his liberal views, whilst at the same time championing the works of the likes of, amongst others, Keats, Shelley and Byron. The journal also gave support to Parliamentary radicals.
In 1812, the Morning Post published a sycophantic article about the Prince Regent, in which it addressed him as “…the glory of the People...You breathe eloquence, you inspire the Graces—You are an Adonis in loveliness." This loyalist hyperbole (which earned the paper the epithet of the “Fawning Post”) proved too much for the radical sensibilities of the two Hunt brothers, who responded with a blistering attack on the Prince Regent in the pages of The Examiner”. They called him “..a corpulent man of fifty…a violator of his word…a despiser of domestic ties …who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country…” The brothers were called upon to apologise and to refrain from further attacks. They refused to do so and as a consequence were prosecuted for libelling the Prince Regent. Found guilty they were given two year prison sentences and fined the colossal sum of £500 each. Leigh, however, continued to edit The Examiner from his prison cell, which he transformed into a gentleman's parlour, and where he was visited as a hero and martyr by the likes Byron, Moore, Keats, and Lamb.
When Hunt first met Charles Dickens in 1837 he wrote of his impression to John Forster, who at the time was the literary and dramatic critic at The Examiner , ‘What a face is his to meet in a drawing room! It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings’.
In later life Hunt seemed to have followed in his father's footsteps and was prone to perennial financial difficulties, a problem that was partly assuaged when he was awarded a Civil List pension of £200. Dickens also organised two financial benefits to help Hunt with his money problems. However, Dickens could not resists using Hunt as the model for the impecunious Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. At first Hunt didn’t recognize himself in the portrayal, but when it was pointed out to him it caused him a great deal of distress and embarrassment.
