Four Generations Of A Literary Family - The Hazilitts In England, Ireland And America 1725-1896 - Vol I The Hazilitts in England, Ireland and America 1725-1896

FOUR GENERATIONS OF A LITERARY FAMILY THE HAZLITTS IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA THEIR FRIENDS AND THEIR FORTUNES 17251896 BY W. CAREW HAZLITT WITH PORTRAITS REPRODUCED FROM MINIATURES BY JOHN HAZLITT IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON AND NEW YORK GEORGE REDWAY 1897 PREFACE I WAS not only in my own person the fourth genera tion of a family which had been connected with literature during upward of a century, and in the case of my grandfather had acquired a solid title to permanent, if not growing, distinction from such a source, but both my predecessors and myself had mixed with a number of noted men and women, whose names, characters, and works still remain a valued part of the household recollections of thousands of educated persons in Great Britain and the United States. Innumerable traits, which do not survive in memoirs or in ordinary books, seemed to accumulate on my hands, deriving their interest from those who were but lately in our midst, from spots in the suburbs of London, con secrated by their hardly yet forgotten presence, or from conditions which the swift course of time is beginning to modify. Among literary people, it seldom, I think, occurs VI PREFACE that such a continuity of association and sympathy is found, as renders one family the storehouse and guardian of facts about individuals, and about places identified with them, during a space of years extend ing back from the present day to the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The people who maintained an intercourse and friendship with the literary and artistic circles of the last quarter of the eighteenth, and the first half of the present, century, who were brought into contact with those circles either in theway of ordinary social relations or in the way of business, or who, again, as in my grandfather Hazlitts case assuredly, were prominent members of them at that period these were my forerunners and testifiers. My intimates, who have often perhaps too often been my seniors, represent another fruitful source in the development of my design and the enrichment of my notebooks. My personal knowledge of Old Brompton, as it was before 1850, and of the celebrities who made it their residence, has constituted one of the pleasantest features in my life and thoughts, and in my conversation with such as had seen the place and its inhabitants under conditions almost in credibly different from those which at present exist. PREFACE VII At a distance of nearly fifty years from the date which I mention, I could, if I were a draughtsman, trace on paper a chart of the village from my unassisted memory, with little more than an occa sional clue to old landmarks to guide my hand. This dual tie, during the last two generations of Hazlitt, may explain my wish and ability to impart to my enterprise a twofold character, so far as my father and myself are concerned, and to incor porate with my biographical experiences of this once sequestered hamlet some account of its topo graphical features, before it was parcelled out into building-land and virtually effaced. It is to be regretted that, while the thing was possible, such a survey was not made of Old Brompton as Smith made and published of West minster, or as Faulkner has left of all the region environing this particular district. Of course, Faulkner, in his account of Kensington, has neces sarily approached very near to the immediate sub ject, since a part ofOld Brompton is parochially within the boundaries of St. Mary Abbots. But a considerable residue appears to have been regarded, in a literary or descriptive sense, as a sort of No-Mans-Land. Several books come within an easy stones-throw of it, and there pause. viii PREFACE So far as Hazlitt himself is concerned, I do not attempt to resuscitate any portion of the Memoirs of 1867, unless it should happen to be the elucidation or correction of some point on which I have succeeded since that date in discovering new light...