Hunt, Leigh
(Southgate 1785-1859 Putney) : Schriftsteller
Name Alternative(s)
Hunt, James Henry Leigh
Subjects
Index of Names : Occident
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Literature : Occident : Great Britain
Chronology Entries (3)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
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| 1 | 1812-1848 |
Hunt, Leigh. Works. Hunt, Leigh. A day by the fire. In : The Reflector (1812). With tea or coffee. … The eulogies pronounced on his favourite beverage by Dr. Johnson are too well known to be repeated here, and the commendatory description of the Emperor Kien Long, to an European taste at least, is somewhat too dul, unless his Majesty's teapot has been shamefully translated… Besides, I never see it but I reminds me of the Turks, and their Arabian tales, an association infinitely preferable to any Chinese ideas ; and, like the king who put his head into the tub, I am transported to distant lands the moment I dip into the coffee-cup… "For lo ! the board with cups and spoons are crowned, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; On shining altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ; From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide ; And China's earth receives the smoking tide… Hunt, Leigh. The old lady. In : The round table (1817). … In the sitting-room is rather a spare assortment of shining old mahogany furniture, or carved armchairs equally old, with chintz drperies down to the ground ; a folding or other screen, with Chinese figures, their round, little-eyed, meek fraces perking sideways… Hunt, Leigh. Far countries. In : The Indicator ; Dec. 8 (1819). … At the time when the French had this fit upon them of praising the English (which was nevertheless the honester one of the two), they took to praising the Chinese for numberless unknown qualities. This seems a contradiction to the near-sightedness we speak of : but the reason they praised them was, that the Chinese had the merit of unbounded religious toleration ; a great and extraordinary one, certainly, and not the less so for having been, to all appearance, the work of one man. All the romance of China, such as it was – anything in which they differed from the French – their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great Wall – was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the philosophers. It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contemptuous of others ; or at least more self-satisfied and unimaginative. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious, and have a great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit them. But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their general character that they should pay strangers even this equivocal compliment ; for, under a prodigious mask of politeness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in us most is that of gun-making, and of the East Indian passage. When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they inquired for China ; and, on finding that it only made a little piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They thought that it was the main territory in the middle – the apple of the world's eye. Hunt, Leigh. Hats, new and ancient. In : The Indicator ; March 8 (1820). … The Chinese, who carry their records farther back than any other people, are a hatted race, both narrow-brimmel and broad… Hunt, Leigh. Seamen on shore. In : The Indicator ; March 15 (1820). … He will tell you how the Chinese drink and the NEGURS dance, and the monkeys pelt you with cocoa-nuts ; and how King Domy would have built him a mud hut and made him a peer of the realm, if he would have stopped with him and taught him to make trousers… Hunt, Leigh. An earth upon heaven. In : The Companion ; April 2 (1828). … We cannot well fancy a celestial ancient Briton delighting himself with painting his skin, or a Chinese angel hobbling a mile up the Milky Way in order to show herself to advantage. For breakfast we must have a tea beyond anything Chinese… Hunt, Leigh. The world of books. In : Hunt, Leigh. Men, women, and books. (London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1847). …China, is a very unknown place to us, - in one sense oft he word unknown ; but who is not intimate with it as the land of tea, and china, and ko-tous, and pagodas, and mandarins, and Confucius, and conical caps, and people with little names, little eyes, and little feet, who sit in little bowers, drinking litte cups of tea, and writing little odes ? The Jesuits, and the teacups, and the novel of Iu-Kiao-Li, have made us well acquainted with it ; better, a great deal, than millions of its inhabitants are acquainted – fellows who think it in the middle of the world, and know nothing of themselves. With one China they are totally unacquainted, to wit, the great China of the poet and old travellers, Cathy, "seat of Cathian Can ", the country of which Ariosto's "Angelica" was princess-royal ; yes, she was a Chinese, "the fairest of her sex, Angelica"… Hunt, Leigh. The town : its memorable characters and events : St. Paul's to St. James's. (London : Smith, Elder, and Co., 1848). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42060/42060-h/42060-h.htm. … In this court are the premises of the eminent tea-dealers, Messrs. Twining, the front of which, surmounted with its stone figures of Chinese, has an elegant appearance in the Strand… Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is supposed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), was a man of wit; but so vain, that he is described as being the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances… |
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| 2 | 1828 |
Hunt, Leigh. Domestic news from China [ID D31309]. A curiosity has arrived in town, of a nature more interesting to those who consider the world at large, and the prospects of it, than twenty more obvious phenomena. We mean, the first three numbers of an English newspaper, printed in China. It is called the Canton Register; and is to give us as much information as possible relative to the manners and proceedings of that very populous, cunning, twinkle-eyed, tea-drinking, pettitoed, and out-of-the-way country; which has so long contrived to keep its monotony to itself. When an ambassador arrives in China, he is had up to town (as we should say) by the most secret possible conveyance ; suffered to look about him as little as may be ; and dispatched as fast as he can be turned out, with a toy for his master, and none of his objects gained. Furthermore, Canton is the Yarmouth or Portsmouth of China ; and from that quarter an occasional decree has transpired from the Emperor, just as a Chinese might have carried off one of our king's proclamations from a wall at a sea-port. In this manner, all the information hitherto afforded us has been brought away. We know something of the rabble of Canton, and the rabble of the Court; but respecting the great mass of the people, travellers have been able to tell us little or nothing. We suspect, however, that the world has been enabled to form a better judgment of the Chinese than they fancy. We might believe the account of the Jesuits, or not, as we pleased ; but those reverend gentlemen, besides the history of their own praises and progress, furnished us with some Chinese dramas and novels, which have turned out to be genuine. The number of these has latterly been increased ; Sir George Staunton has added a translation of their chief book of the law ; and thus, from the evidences afforded by books (books, ever the great enlighteners of the earth !) we have been enabled to form at least some good probable guesses at the state of society and knowledge among all the classes of our little-eyed friends ; the upshot of which appears to be this ; that they are a people naturally intelligent, humane, and fanciful, who, by reason of an excess of veneration paid to their fathers and forefathers, have been kept for an extraordinary period of time in a state of profound submission to their " paternal government ;" and the consequence has been, that their gentleness has been converted into effeminacy, their intelligence into cunning and trickery, and the whole popular mind rendered stationary for centuries. It is impossible not to be sensible of the miniature scale upon which everything proceeds in their novels. They take little sups of wine, little cups of tea; have little feet and eyes ; write little poems, and get on in the world by dint of very little tricks. One cannot but fancy them writing with crow-quills, and speaking at the tip of their voice. At the same time, there is something not unamiable, nor even undignified or unprofound, in that universal sense of the filial duties, of which the government has taken so much advantage. And this has kept alive certain virtues and humanities among them, which would have gone out under any other despotism. A Chinese is taught to have a sort of worship for the authors of his being, and if we mistake not, for their's; perhaps for two or three generations upward. Wherever subsistence is easy, and the temper not excessively bad, this can hardly fail to produce a corresponding tenderness towards the children, at least a mild and considerate treatment. It is true, instances of the reverse, when they do occur, must be frightful, and give double force to that excess of arrogance and selfish exaction which parents, not overwise, are sometimes guilty of in all countries : for even in China the mistake must be exasperated by an instinctive sense of it's contradictin; the first laws of nature, which are rather prospective than retrospective, and for an obvious reason, consider rather children than parents. But necessity and public opinion must, upon the whole, combine to render the principle of filiality a convenience rather than an abuse; and we have little doubt, that, in their domestic intercourse, the Chinese are prepared to entertain all the gentler sympathies of their nature, subject to those drawbacks which accompany excessive submission of any sort, and which keep them timid, secret, and circumventing. The worst of it is that the paternal system of law is apt, like other dull parents, to mistake anger and bodily correction for good things ; and thus the Chinese are the most bastinadoed people on earth. It is remarkable, that the first account we have of a Chinese paper (for such the Canton Register may be called) brings with it an instance of this extraordinary reverence inculcated towards parents, of the licence into which their effeminacy leads them, and of the opportunities taken by government to turn the national feeling to its own purposes. At the same time the government itself, not being out of the pale of this feeling, and always making a shew both of its power and humanity, takes into consideration the "extenuating" circumstances of the case, and, though apparently both cruel and unjust, is not more so, it is to be supposed, than it can help. The following is the extract: — "The offender, Vaou-a-pa, detected his uncle in incestuous intercourse with his mother, for which his uncle tied him up, and heat him. After which he witnessed his uncle jjoing and spending the whole night in his mother's room. Yaou-a-pa's feelings of anger and indignation were now worked up to the highest pitch. He seized a sickle, and made blows at Yaou-tseih, his dear uncle. The uncle slipped and got behind him, and seized the handle of the sickle, with his arms round his nephew. The mother came behind, and reheved the uncle from his embrace. He fled, and the mother threw her arms round the youth without his conscious of the change. The struggle continued until the young man overpowered the woman, and wounded her mortally before he was aware that the stroke of the sickle entered his mother's heart. On the 21st of August his INIajesty's decision in the case of Yaou-a-npa was received. His sentence is decapitation, after a period of imprisonment ; this sentence usually terminates in strangling on a cross, which, leaving the body entire, is regarded as a lesser punishment than beheading. Yaou-tseih, the incestuous uncle, is ordered for immediate execution. Some amusing specimens of national manners and feeling accompany this tragic story. The Governor of Canton, a personage of the name of Le, who appears to have newly entered upon his office, is, we are told, " a gentleman of mild and conciliating manners, easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings, and desirous of tranquillity. In short, he is considered a good governor." His Excellency the Hoppo also, whose name is Wan, is a very mild, good-natured man, when he is sober ; but he has an unhappy propensity, like most of the Tartars, to strong liquors; and, when under their influence, he is rather violent and unruly.'' Thus it is under all Imperial Governments. " Let observation, as Johnson says, as Johnson says, - with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru, and, besides equally bad poetry written by the critics, it will find that the way to satisfy great men in all countries is to make them pecuniary offerings ; and that they are not above the temptation of drinking strong liquors ; upon which occasion the ruler becomes unruly. The Hoppo however is still a God-send, considering he is a Governor; for he is mild when sober: and Le is still better, for he is "easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings;" which, as fees appear to be ad lihitum in that quarter, is more than you could say of gentlemen in less heathen countries. The religion of the intelligent classes in China is understood to be deism : but the public one is polytheistica. They have a gun-powder-plot in November "in honour of the god of Fire", with illuminations and street plays ; and last summer, thanksfivings were ordered to the Great Dragon, or God of Water, for visiting the thirsty province of Pekin with rain. "The law against parricide stands as follows, in the book translated by Sir George Staunton : — "Any person convicted of a design to kill his or her father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, whether by the father's or mother's side ; and any woman convicted of a design to kill her husband's father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, shall, whether the blow is or is not struck in consequence, sufl'er death by being beheaded. In punishing this criminal design, no distinction shad be made between principals and accessaries, except as far as regards their respective relationships to the persons against whose life the design is entertained. If the murder is coriimitted, all parties concerned therein, and related to the deceased, as above-mentioned, shall suffer death by a slow and painful execution. If the criminal should die in prison, an execution similar in mode shall lake place on his body." |
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| 3 | 1834 |
Hunt, Leigh. Tea-drinking [ID D31310]. The very word tea. so petty, so infantine, so winking-eyed, so expressive, somehow or other, of something inexpressibly minute and satisfied with a little {tee !), resembles the idea one has (perhaps a very mistaken one) of that extraordinary people, of whom Europeans know little or nothing, except that they sell us this preparation, bow back again our ambassadors, have a language consisting only of a few hundred words, gave us China-ware and the strange pictures on our tea-cups, made a certain progress in civilisation long before we did, mysteriously stopped at it and would go no further, and, if numbers and the customs of "venerable ancestors" are to carry the day, are at once the most populous and the most respectable nation on the face of the earth. As a population they certainly are a most enormous and wonderful body ; but, as individuals, their ceremonies, their triflingedicts, their jealousy of foreigners, and their tea-cup representations of themselves (which are the only ones popularly known), impress us irresistibly with a fancy that they are a people all toddling, little-eyed, little-footed, little-bearded, little-minded, quaint, overweening, pig-tailed, bald-headed, cone-capped or pagoda-hatted, having childish houses and temples with bells at every corner and story, and shuffling about in blue landscapes, over "nine-inch bridges," with little mysteries of bell-hung whips in their hands, — a boat, or a house, or a tree, made of a pattern, being over their heads or underneath them (as the case may happen), and a bird as large as the boat, always having a circular white space to fly in. Such are the Chinese of the tea-cups and the grocers' windows, and partly of their own novels too, in which everything seems as little as their eyes, little odes, little wine-parties, and a series of little satisfactions. However, it must be owned, that from these novels one gradually acquires a notion that there is a great deal more good sense and even good poetry among them than one had fancied from the accounts of embassies and the autobiographical paintings on the China-ware ; and this is the most probable supposition. An ancient and great nation, as civilised as they, is not likely to be so much behind-hand with us in the art of living as our self-complacency leads us to imagine. If their contempt of us amounts to the barbarous, perhaps there is a greater share of barbarism than we suspect in our scorn of them. At all events, it becomes us to be grateful for their tea. What a curious thing it was, that all of a sudden the remotest nation of the East, otherwise unknown, and foreign to all our habits, should convey to us a domestic custom which changed the face of our morning refreshments ; and that, instead of ale and meat, or wine, all the polite part of England should be drinking a Chinese infusion, and setting up earthenware in their houses, painted with preposterous scenery !... But to the right tea-drinker, the cup, we see, contains not only recollections of eminent brethren of the bohea, but the whole Chinese nation, with all its history, Lord Macartney included ; nay, for that matter, Ariosto and his beautiful story of Angelica and Medoro ; for Angelica was a Chinese ; and then collaterally come in the Chinese neighbours and conquerors from Tartary, with Chaucer's and the travels of Marco Polo and others, and the Jesuit missionaries, and the Japanese with our friend Golownin, and the Loo Choo people, and Confucius, whom Voltaire (to show his learning) delights to call by his proper native appellation of Kong-foo-tsee (reminding us of Congo tea) ; and then we have the Chinese Tales, and Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, and Goldsmith brings you back to Johnson again and the tea-drinkings of old times ; and then we have the Rape of the Lock before us, with Belinda at breakfast, and Lady Wortley Montague's tea-table eclogue, and the domestic pictures in the Taller and Spectator with the passions existing in those times for china-ware, and Horace Walpole, who was an old woman in that respect ; and, in short, a thousand other memories, grave and gay, poetical and prosaical, all ready to wait upon anybody who chooses to read books, like spirits at the command of the book-readers of old, who, for the advan- tages they had over the rest of the world, got the title of Magicians. .. |
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Bibliography (2)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1828 |
Hunt, Leigh. Domestic news from China. In : The companion ; vol. 16 (1828). http://www.archive.org/stream/companion00huntrich/companion00huntrich_djvu.txt. |
Publication / HuntL1 |
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| 2 | 1834 |
Hunt, Leigh. Tea-drinking. In : London journal ; July 9 (1834). In : Essays by Leigh Hunt. Ed., with introd. and notes by Arthur Symons. (London : W. Scott, 1887). http://archive.org/stream/essaysofleighhun00huntuoft/essaysofleighhun00huntuoft_djvu.txt. |
Publication / Hunt2 |
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