Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (14 page)

Few of the literary journals concurred. Unkind comparisons between Paulo and Francesca’s relationship and Hunt’s own living arrangements proved irresistible, and Bess’s position in Hunt’s household became the subject of public comment. This made her situation extremely difficult. It was one thing to be living in her sister’s house, with no means of contributing to the household funds other than by providing free childcare. It was quite another matter when her relationship with her brother-in-law became a matter for public discussion. That it did so was partly the result of a misguided intervention by Hunt’s friend Charles Cowden Clarke.  Some of the early reviews of
Rimini
confined themselves to condemning Hunt’s morality and refrained from explicitly linking his ideas with his domestic arrangements. The
British Lady’s Magazine
, which had greeted
The Descent of Liberty
a year earlier with effusive praise for Hunt, merely noted its ‘repugnance’ at his choice of subject. The
Eclectic Review
was worried that the poem would ‘do some hurt to the cause of morality’.
⁷
In response to these early reviews Cowden Clarke published an anonymous pamphlet defending
The Story of Rimini
, in which he alluded to the rumours circulating about Hunt in such a way as to give them further credence.  ‘Suppose’, he asked, ‘Mr. Hunt . . . were a gambler, an adulterer, or a debauchee . . . what would all this have to do with the merits, or demerits of his poem?’
⁸
The pamphlet demonstrated Cowden Clarke’s loyalty to Hunt, but his restatement of the innuendo directed towards his friend did little to damp down public speculation. The rumours rumbled on, until they were given explicit voice in
Blackwood’s
and, bizarrely, in
The Examiner
itself.

Under a guise of concerned morality
Blackwood’s
noted that the publication of
The Story of Rimini
was followed by mysterious accusations about Leigh Hunt’s ‘domestic relations’. Since his readers did not understand his unashamed ‘love of incest’,
Blackwood’s
noted, they started to speculate about his private life, ‘till at last there was something like an identification of Leigh Hunt himself with Paulo, the incestuous hero of Leigh Hunt’s chief Cockney poem.’
⁹
Blackwood’s
reproduced a letter which informed Hunt that he was spoken of as a perfect tyrant, who devoted himself to the sensual gratification of his passions. The worst charge was that ‘a sister of Mrs Hunt’s resides with you, who is the mother of at least one child, of which you are the father.’ Hunt not only printed this letter in
The Examiner
but responded to it in kind:

An assailant of all the women that came in his way!  A tyrant to his wife! And the father of children by her sister! ... the whole of these charges are most malignantly and ridiculously false, so as to make those who are in habits of intercourse with him alternately give way to indignation and laughter.
¹⁰

It was typical of Hunt’s bravado that he should confront the rumours head on, but it did nothing to damp down speculation about Bess’s place in his household, which became so intense over the next two years that she would eventually be obliged to lodge with her brother instead. As public scrutiny intensified, Marianne and Bess argued with increasing seriousness and frequency. Hunt hated their rows and responded by retreating to his study, while his friends attempted to reconcile the sisters to each other. Their efforts met with little success.

The difficulties caused by Bess’s presence in Hunt’s household were exacerbated by the fact that she was much more than an unpaid live-in housekeeper, and her situation was thus more complicated than that of the many unmarried women who lived with siblings at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Bess’s intellectual abilities, her engagement with Hunt’s work and his complex reaction to her presence in his household increased her importance while rendering her position more ambivalent. She was certainly no mere skivvy for her sister. She acted as Hunt’s agent, carrying money to and from his publishers and negotiating with them on his behalf.
¹¹
Notably it was she, rather than Marianne, who accompanied Hunt on the rounds of social visits on which he embarked once he overcame his agoraphobia.   This was surprising, since Hunt and Marianne’s relationship remained close despite Bess’s presence. But Bess and Marianne represented different things for Hunt.  Marianne was the mother of his children, the hostess at his fireside and the companion of his bedroom, and she thus represented the internal, domestic, homely existence which meant so much to him. Bess, in contrast, mediated between Hunt and the outside world, as she dealt with his publishers, discussed politics and literature with him, and accompanied him to the houses of his friends. Both women were therefore essential to Hunt’s happiness, but this did not make their problematic living arrangements – or their own relationship – easier.

It was Bess rather than Marianne who accompanied Hunt on his frequent visits to the home of Vincent and Mary Novello. The Novellos were a hospitable, talented, principled couple, who had been introduced to Hunt by mutual friends around the time of Hunt’s release from prison. Novello was born in 1781, to Italian and English parents. Banned because of his Catholicism from holding official posts, he spent twenty-five years as organist at the Portuguese Embassy Chapel, to where fashionable crowds flocked to hear him play. His playing became so famed that eventually George IV, in spite of his anti-Catholic views, offered him the position of private organist at the Pavilion in Brighton. Novello declined this offer, probably because it did not accord with his deeply held beliefs about the importance of making music accessible.

In 1813, Novello helped to found the London Philharmonic Society to promote the performance of classical music. Later, in 1829, assisted by his son Alfred, he founded the publishing house which still bears his name. The central principle of Novello and Company was that music should be made available to all and not just those who could travel to London to hear it. Novello spent his life working towards this goal, and his scores were arranged and priced so that popular works could be performed by groups of friends in the parlour, as well as by professionals in the concert hall. This represented a radical democratisation of high culture, and demonstrated the strength of Novello’s allegiance to liberal ideals.

Novello’s wife Mary Sabilla Hehl was herself a formidable character.  Nicknamed ‘Wilful Woman’ by Hunt, she gave birth to eleven children, and wrote numerous articles and essays, as well as a full length collection of stories,
A Day at Stowe Gardens
. One of her friends compared her admiringly to Mary Wollstonecraft, and the comparison is apt, since, like Wollstonecraft, she had strongly held views about the best way to bring up her children. Unlike Wollstonecraft, she had the opportunity to put her views into practice. Both Vincent and Mary Novello believed that their children should be treated as friends rather than as subservient dependents and the descriptions of their unorthodox parenting methods feel startlingly contemporary. They were rewarded with great public devotion from their offspring.  Their eldest daughter, another Mary, recalled the delightful mornings following her father’s evening concerts, when all the children piled on to his bed while he read to them and ate his breakfast: ‘First came the “looking at the pictures”; then, the multiplicity of eager enquiry they elicited; then, the explanation, then, the telling of the subject of the book; then, the account of its author; then, the final glory of seeing
V. Novello’s children, 240 Oxford Street
, written in the blank leaf, or cover, at the beginning.’
¹²

The Novello household  was swelled by the presence of Mary Sabilla’s sister, who lived with them for some of the time during the 1810s. The similarity of this arrangement to that of Hunt’s household illustrates that it was not Bess’s presence which infuriated his critics but the idea that the relationship between Hunt and Bess was illicit and immoral. The Novellos, however, were perfectly happy about the fact it was Bess rather than Marianne at Hunt’s side during the evenings they spent together, and it may be that, like Byron before them, they found Bess the more lively and interesting sister. Bess and Hunt passed many evenings in the comfortable Oxford Street sitting room, where, in the company of the friends and temporary lodgers who sought refuge in the Novellos’ happy home, they gathered around the piano to sing and exchanged jokes and literary gossip by the fire.

Congenial evenings at the Novellos’ could not mask the fact that, by mid 1816, the Hunt family finances were in a desperate state. Hunt’s letters during this period show him frantically trying to sell copyrights to his work and searching for somewhere cheaper to live. He even went as far as to suggest that Thomas Moore (the poet who had brought about his meeting with Byron) should lodge with them in an attempt to reduce their household bills. Since the cottage was already overcrowded with three adults and three children (a fourth, Swinburne, would be born to Marianne that August) it was perhaps fortunate that Moore declined Hunt’s offer. It is to Hunt’s credit, however, that despite his own problems he remained alert to the dramas and crises in the lives of his contemporaries. In the spring of 1816, it was Byron who was in difficulty, and in need of support.

In January that year, Annabella Byron left her husband at Piccadilly Terrace and travelled to her parents’ home in Durham. She took with her a baby daughter, just over four weeks old. Annabella undoubtedly suffered a great deal in the year after she married Byron, and her sufferings increased after Augusta’s arrival in London in the early summer of 1815. Although some of the more extravagant claims she subsequently made can be discounted, she was well aware that her husband cared more for his half-sister than he did for her. She dealt with this by convincing herself that Byron was suffering from some kind of mental illness and was not in full possession of his faculties. In the weeks following her arrival in Durham, she told her parents about some of the scenes which had taken place at Piccadilly Terrace and, horrified by what they heard, they instigated separation proceedings.  From the outset they were chiefly concerned that Annabella should retain custody of her daughter. In an era when children were absolutely the property of their father, this necessitated painting Byron as the villain of the piece.

Byron initially refused to believe that Annabella herself had any wish for a separation, and was convinced they would be reconciled. This belief was shattered when Annabella threatened to reveal the true nature of his relationship with Augusta unless he relinquished his claim on both her and baby Ada. In London, the separation proved a fertile topic for scurrilous speculation. News filtered out that Annabella was threatening to reveal the terrible truth of Byron’s crimes to the world. Even though details of these crimes remained scarce, gossip quickly centred around the nature of Byron’s connection with Augusta, and, even more damagingly, around rumours – probably true – about his relationships with young boys. The threat of bailiffs, scandal, and a potential prosecution for homosexual activity made Byron’s continued presence in England untenable, and he made plans for a prolonged stay on the continent. He and Augusta were snubbed at a party and in April the periodical press launched a sustained attack on him following the distribution of ‘Fare Thee Well’, a short poem in which he bid Annabella a bitter and very public goodbye.

Throughout, Hunt provided support in both public and private. In the
Examiner
he condemned those in the press who sought to make titillating gossip from a private tragedy and defended Byron’s honour and reputation.
¹³
Along with Hobhouse, Hunt spent nights at Piccadilly Terrace, providing Byron with bachelor society. Years later, after their friendship had faltered badly, Byron would remember Hunt’s kindness during this period, reportedly telling Thomas Medwin ‘when party feeling ran highest against me, Hunt was the only editor of a paper, the only literary man, who dared say a word in my justification. I shall always be grateful to him for the part he took on that occasion.’
¹⁴
In the torrid days of March and April the easy conviviality of male company suited Byron far better than the whispers and finger pointing of society parties.