Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt's Political and Occasional Essays

Ed. L. and C. Houtchens. Columbia University Press, 1962.

In a series of essays for the Weekly True Sun, reprinted here, the author, writing as The Townsman, described a 'Ramble Through Marylebone', and reminisced about 'the dear old fields that once occupied the site of Regent's Park, where we made verses, and saw visions of mythological beauty, from morning till night...In those fields we speak of was Willan's Farm, where we have eaten "creams and other country messes". There it was that the path ran from the New-road [Marylebone Road] all the way to Hampstead through beautiful meadows'.

In a second essay, 'Mr. Nash is a better layer-out of grounds than architect, and the public has reason to thank him for what he has done for Regent's Park. Our gratitude on that point induces us to say as little as we can of the houses there...It is at all events a park, and has trees and grass, and is a breathing-space between town and country'

Hunt had previously edited his own highly regarded journal, The Examiner, which had first brought Keats and Shelley to public attention. As a poet he is perhaps best remembered for Rondeau ('Jenny kissed me when we met') but he was also an outspoken political reformer. In 1812 he was prosecuted for libelling the Prince Regent, in an article attacking him as 'a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity', and jailed for two years. Not surprising that he had mixed feelings about Regent's Park.

Primrose Hill

In The Idler, and Breakfast-Table Companion, Saturday, May 27, 1837.

There is talk of enclosing Primrose hill, and converting it into a cemetery! Primrose hill! The first green step, north-westward, for the pavement-and-shop-tired-foot of this great metropolis; the first pleasant-sounding word one meets with, that way, better even than "Regent's Park"; a place that once had primroses, and doubtless trees, of which latter there are three or four remaining, or were lately; a hill that plays the part of footstool and introducer to the beautiful hill of Hampstead, first bit of the country outside the town; a spot, in short, beloved by all cockneys, illustrious and obscure, from the times of Geoffrey Chaucer (whose field and daisy-loving eye of course it could not escape), to those of Charles Lamb...

Pleasant indeed...to feel that in this green altitude of Primrose hill, higher than Ludgate, they can enjoy, as it were, home and country together - the sight of their great hive, full of action at least, if not of greater sweets - and at the same time the consciousness of the Sabbath flower, from which they may bear back to it a little sweeter sweet, something like the honey of health, or the notion of it; at least a passing breath of it; a glimpse of the country, if they can go no further; a hovering on the borders of a sensation of ease and retirement