The reader will perceive that I have of late very seldom mentioned the name of Mrs. Hunt. The fact is, that I did not at this period enjoy that domestic felicity, of which I had heretofore partaken. I was, as I have more than once stated, gay, thoughtless, and dissipated. I seldom ever spent a retired, quiet evening at home, enjoying the rational amusements of my own domestic fireside. We bad always company at home, or I was one of a party abroad; myself and Mrs. Hunt were living a true fashionable life, and we entered into all its levities and follies. This course of life had drawn us into more fashionable, more accomplished society; and I own that to me polished manners were a great attraction, and that those who possessed them, possessed superior powers to fascinate. Amongst this number I frequently met a lady, who had been bred up and educated in the highest and most fashionable circles; she was tall, fair, and graceful, and, as far as my judgment went, every charm and accomplishment, both corporeal and mental, that could adorn an elegant and beautiful female, appeared to be centered in her. At first sight I was struck with her superior air and graceful form, but I soon began to admire the beauties of her mind more than I had at first sight been captivated by her person. We were, as if by accident, frequently thrown into each other's society—a circumstance with which I was very much delighted; and, as it never occurred to me that there could, by any possibility, be any harm in admiring and paying respectful attention to a lovely, elegant, and accomplished female, I never concealed in the smallest degree the pleasure which I felt in her society. Though for upwards of twelve months, which was ever since we had become first acquainted, my attentions had been very marked, yet they had not attracted any particular notice. I thought, alas! and I professed what I thought, that I felt the most pure platonic affection for this lady, and that I was blessed with her friendship in return. My wife had watched the progress of this attachment with anxiety and pain; she mentioned her fears, and expostulated in becoming terms against the imprudence of my conduct, which might give occasion to the world for ill-natured remarks; and she represented to me that, although my attentions were open and undisguised, they were very pointed and visible to every one, and that people would and did talk about it. I professed to set at defiance the malignant opinions of the envious and the ill-natured, and, as I was conscious of the purity and honour of my intentions, I was the last man living that would be likely to forego any pleasure, merely because the censorious world chose to make their remarks upon it. I saw that my wife had not the slightest suspicion of any thing criminal, neither was there the least reason for any such suspicion; but I saw also, that she dreaded the consequence of such incessant—such devoted attention on my part, which, although it was received with politeness, and the strictest propriety, she nevertheless perceived to be not at all disagreeable. Though this attachment was as pure and disinterested as platonic affection could possibly be, and although I should quite as soon have indulged an improper thought towards my own sister, yet the society of this lady was now become absolutely necessary to my comfort; we were, therefore, frequently together, and I was miserable if three or four days passed without our meeting—a circumstance which seldom happened, notwithstanding we lived at a distance of ten miles from each other.
It will be asked, what said the husband of the lady? for she was a married woman. It would ill-become me to say more than is absolutely necessary upon that subject; but, unfortunately he was careless and inattentive, and knew not how to prize the treasure that he possessed; and besides, as he never entertained, nor ever had any reason to entertain, a shadow of doubt respecting his wife, we were constantly left together. This intimacy had now continued nearly two years, and as the lady was going to stay with her family in a distant county, I was invited (almost of course) to pay her a visit while she was there. I scarcely need say, that the invitation was accepted. Instead of staying a week or ten days, I remained a month. During the whole of the time, my attention was incessant; I could not join in any scheme of pleasure or amusement, unless she was one of the party. Unluckily, too, there was no one to controul us. Her word was a law, which I resolutely carried into effect. At length the gentleman getting quite tired of my visit, which was never intended or professed by me to be to him, but to the lady, he left us, and went to London. Whenever he was asked by his friends or acquaintance, if I would not make one of a party to walk, to ride, to drive, or any other amusement, he invariably answered, "you must ask my wife, by G—; Hunt is no visitor of mine he is Mrs. ———'s visitor;" and I, without any ceremony, admitted this, by saying it was perfectly true, if the lady chose to go I should accompany her, and if she chose to remain at home, I should remain with her; and this determination I invariably followed.
Business, however, called me home, a few days after the gentleman left us, and I went into Wiltshire, about the middle of May, having made a promise to return in July, to attend the races at Brighton. This was the longest and most tedious six weeks of my life. I thought of nothing but my intended visit to Brighton races; and such was the anxiety of my mind, that it brought on a serious, and, indeed, alarming fever. In the fits of delirium I raved for the lady who was the object of my solicitude, and at one period the paroxysms were so violent, that Mrs. Hunt actually thought that I should have been bereaved of my senses; and to calm me, she seriously proposed to send an express for the lady. In a few days the strength of my constitution overcame the disease, and I recovered. But I found my life was quite a blank; my very soul was absorbed in thinking and longing for the society of one dear object. I took not the least interest in the political occurrences of the day; and, for the first time in my life, I grew careless, and totally neglected my business. Peace had been proclaimed: such an event, at any other time, I should have considered a matter of the highest importance, but that event scarcely excited my attention. Buonaparte was made first consul for life, and the Legion of Honour was established; this occasioned a great sensation throughout the country, but the discussion of these matters created no lively emotions in my breast; my mind was totally absorbed in contemplating another object. I now began to feel the fatal effects of indulging such a passion as that of platonic affection. Though there had never been the slightest variation from the strict line of virtuous friendship, yet, such was its power over me, that I found it irresistible. I struggled to break the spell, but I found it impossible; every effort that I made, only served to wind it more closely round my heart. I confessed my weakness to Mrs. Hunt; and, indeed, it was already too visible to her to require any confession on my part. At length the time arrived for my departure, and the manner of taking leave between myself and Mrs. Hunt, was very different from what it had ever been before; it was distressing to both, and appeared to be clouded with an ominous aspect.
Without dwelling any longer upon this painful subject, suffice it to say, that notwithstanding it was the very eve of harvest, I proceeded on my journey. I drove my old friend Robert Clare, in my curricle, and our servants followed us on horseback. We arrived in the neighborhood of Brighton, where we were received with great politeness. Clare went to visit the gentleman, I, the lady. We remained a few days before we departed for Brighton, where we had taken lodgings for the race-week. Instead of being diminished, my attentions to the lady increased every day, and as they became more pointed, and excited the notice of every one, the husband remonstrated, and threatened to take the lady home. In fact, he was urged on to do this by some of the lady's family. I expostulated, but never relaxed my assiduities, and he was indecisive. A storm was, however, gathering round us, which threatened to burst every moment; and dreading that separation which appeared worse than death, at the thoughts of which I was almost frantic, we took the desperate resolution to put it out of the power of any one to part us. Brighton was a dangerous place for persons in our situation; there was the Prince of Wales, our present King, living with Mrs. Fitzherbert, in the most open and public manner; this was an example too likely to have a baneful effect upon two persons so doatingly fond of each other, that the very idea of being parted, produced almost a momentary madness. Such was the result of platonic affection. Without ever having made the slightest approach to any thing criminal, our attachment was so riveted, that to cease to exist would have been ten thousand times preferable to such a separation, as would have finally deprived us of the power of enjoying each other's society. The die was cast—my curricle was brought to the door about one o'clock in the middle of the day; and I prevailed on her to take a seat, which she did almost in a lifeless state, without knowing where I was going to drive her. This did not excite the particular observation of our friends who were of the party, as I was in the habit of driving her out almost every day. As soon as we were seated, I drove off to Lewes. Upon the road we met the Prince, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Sir John and Lady Lade, in a barouche, returning from the races. The moment that we arrived at Lewes, I ordered four horses to a post-chaise, and having written a short letter back to my friend Clare, to explain the cause of our absence, we proceeded to London with all possible speed. The friends of the lady followed her the next day, and every offer was made to induce her to return; but the fatal step being once taken, there was no retreating, and all entreaties were in vain, though every inducement was offered and repeated for six or eight months. I shall only add, that though there can be no justification for such a rash step, yet if ever there was a female that had received cause, which greatly palliated, almost to justification, she was that person. The circumstances were so peculiar and so distressing, that no legal proceedings were ever taken either against her or myself; but, on the contrary, amicable arrangements were made.
Perhaps, and no doubt, it will be said by some, that I am an unfeeling, barefaced offender, thus publicly to blazon forth my own errors. But I claim the indulgence of my readers to recollect that I have undertaken to write my own history, and, as I have promised to do it faithfully, no consideration upon earth shall induce me to conceal from the public my faults. They, and particularly the Reformers, shall, if I live, know my character such as it is. It is a duty I owe to them as well as to myself, and though this is a most painful duty, yet I am determined not to shrink from the task of performing it with a rigid fidelity. Millions of the most amiable and the most virtuous, if they cannot altogether pardon, will know how to make a generous and liberal allowance for the frailties of human nature. I have a much more difficult labour yet to accomplish, in narrating the separation that took place between myself and my wife, in consequence of this fatal step. But as I am quite sure nothing I ever did in my life can make me appear half so bad as I have been represented to be, by the venal public press of the country, I shall proceed deliberately and resolutely to disclose the whole.
The circumstance of our departure from so public a place as Brighton soon got into all the newspapers, and the intelligence had reached my home at Chisenbury, long before I got there, whither I was obliged to return, as it was just in the middle of harvest. I had written to a friend to meet me there, and to prepare Mrs. Hunt for the interview. Our meeting I will not attempt to describe; it was most painful for all parties; I concealed nothing from my wife, and, when she knew the extent of the evil, with a becoming spirit, she declared her determination not to share a divided heart. Without going into a detail here, it will be sufficient to say, that a separation was mutually agreed on, and her relations were appointed to meet my attorney, to make the necessary arrangements for carrying it into effect. I disclosed to my attorney my circumstances as to property, and intrusted him to accede to the most liberal settlement.
How many times, when I have come before the public, have I been taunted by the hireling press, and its still baser agents, that I had turned my wife out of doors to starve! How incessantly was this falsehood bawled out, repeated, and reiterated, by the dirty hireling agents of the contemptible Westminster Junto, so properly denominated by Mr. Cobbett the Rump Committee! How often was this lie vomited forth upon the hustings, by the paid tools of the opposing candidates at the Bristol and Westminster elections! Whenever I have argued for the right of every Englishman to be free, for Universal Suffrage, or have pleaded the cause of the poor, instead of answering my arguments, or controverting my principles of justice and humanity, the answer has been, "you have turned your wife out of doors, to starve, Hunt, therefore we will not listen to your doctrine." This has been particularly the language of that hypocritical faction the Whigs, or Burdettites; those pretended sham friends of liberty, who, within the last seven years, have done more to palsy public opinion, than all the Tories that ever lived could have done. This Rump, this fag-end of a committee of Westminster electors, that was once formed to support the freedom of election in that city, but the members of which have, since the management of it got into their hands, converted the power that they have assumed into an engine of the basest corruption, and have proved themselves the most tyrannical suppressors of public opinion, as well as the most determined brutal destroyers of every thing like fair discussion; who, at all their public meetings, whether held in Palace Yard or the Crown and Anchor, have systematically put down, and forcibly prevented from delivering his sentiments, every person that was not one of their own gang; who, with coarse, vulgar, beastly hootings and yellings, have driven every honest public man from their bacchanalian carousals at the Crown and Anchor; this set of dirty underlings I have most narrowly watched, year after year, during a long period; and, as I know all their tricks and shufflings, I will faithfully lay them before the public, as I proceed in my Memoirs. The ramifications of the mischief they have done, have spread far and near. They have kept up a correspondence with some of the most patriotic individuals in every principal town and city in the kingdom; by which means they have frequently exercised the power which they thus acquire, of stifling those sparks of popular fervour, that would have long since kindled into an irrepressible blaze of patriotism, had it not been for the sinister exertions of this foul extinguisher of every particle of generous public liberty, that did not tend to promote their own base and selfish ends; always acting, as they have done, under the direction and immediate influence of their Grand Lama, or principal juggler, Sir Francis Burdett, in whose pay they have most of them been, directly or indirectly, for many years past. Unable to answer my arguments, and dreading the exposure of their hero's trickery, this gang, with a broad faced, impudent individual, of the name of Adams, a currier, in Drury Lane, at their head, whenever I offered to address them in public, have been always foremost in the cry of, "Hunt, you turned your wife out of doors to starve;" and not satisfied with this, these despicable wretches have worn the heels of their shoes off, in running from door to door, and from pot-house to pot-house, to vilify me behind my back, propagating the most bare-faced falsehoods, all of their own fabrication. I will, by-and-bye, give the reader a specimen of one of the stories invented by this Adams, and related to Mr. Cobbett by the man himself, when he was confined in Newgate, in the year 1812; all their lies ending with the usual burthen of the song, that "I had turned my wife out of doors to starve." This man, Adams, was a witness in the trial of Wright v. Cobbett, in the Court of King's Bench, some time since, for a libel; and if he swore that which was attributed to him, Mr. Cobbett neither did justice to himself nor to the public, by declining to prosecute him for perjury.
But I will now proceed to detail the particulars of the settlement which I made upon my wife at the time of our separation; and I have no doubt that any statement, at the same time that it gives the lie direct to the base assertions of the foregoing scoundrels, will convince every unprejudiced, as well as every liberal and rational person in the country, of the dastardly conduct of mine and my country's greatest enemies, the hypocritical false friends of liberty. It will be recollected by those who have done me the honour to read my Memoirs, that when I married I received one thousand pounds as a fortune with my wife; five hundred of which I lent immediately to one of her brothers, without ever having taken it out of the house of my wife's father; which five hundred pounds still remained, and continued to remain in his hands, for several years after my being parted from his sister. I mention this fact, here, to shew in what light her brothers and family considered this separation. They looked upon it as a misfortune which all lamented; but it is evident, from this circumstance, that they did not look upon it in a criminal light; for, if they had done so, they would not have continued a moment under such a pecuniary 61
HENRY HUNT.
obligation to me, which by them could have been so easily removed, as they were all by this time in very good circumstances; and the brother, James, who held this sum, was now in partnership with his elder brother, John, the banker at Marlborough. My wife's fortune was, as I have said before, one thousand pounds. The consideration then was, what sum I should secure annually to Mrs. Hunt. I had given my attorney authority to consent to, nay, to propose, the most liberal allowance; having made him fully acquainted with my property and income, which I authorised him to lay before her brother, who was acting in her behalf. After a conference, my attorney informed me that he had proposed to allow Mrs. Hunt an annuity of two hundred pounds, and secure it as a rent charge upon my freehold and leasehold estates in Wiltshire and Somersetshire, which he had no doubt would be accepted if I approved of it. My answer was, "although this may be considered a liberal and handsome annuity to my wife, when compared with the fortune I received with her, and as a fair allowance, when taking all my property and prospects into consideration, yet, as I am the _aggressor,/I>, I will, as far as I have the power, make at least a pecuniary compensation. I shall not be satisfied with what might be considered as fair; but I will make her a liberal and generous allowance. I have now the means, and while I have the means and the will to do her justice, I will put it out of my own power to act otherwise. Go, and settle the annuity, draw up the deed, and insert therein three hundred pounds a year, and I will sign it immediately, for fear of any accident."