By James Henry Leigh Hunt
Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
first published in the Monthly Chronicle, November 1838
Sweet, no? Well, this is a "Layla" type story...well kinda. Inspired by Thomas Carlyle's wife, Jane Welsh, who was nicknamed Jenny.
Thomas Hunt and Hunt were friends. Welsh-Carlye kissed Hunt on his arrival at the Carlye home as she was excited to see him recover from one of his frequent illnesses.
The poem is in actuality named “Rondeau,” though it’s technically not a rondeau. He was inspired by both this event and a rondeau which Alexander Pope had written. He had liked the device and wished to write his own. Two days later one of the Hunt servants delivered a note addressed, "From Mr. Hunt to Mrs. Carlyle." It contained the poem, "Jenny Kissed Me."
Leigh Hunt was a flirtatious man, often in trouble with his wife whereas, Jane Carlyle was a standoffish, scathing, and aloof woman, not usually known to lavish affection. It is interesting to think it could have been a torrid affair, but it was most likely one in flirtation only.
In marriage to her own husband, it was said by Samuel Butler, "It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four." The pair were famously in an unhappy union with over 9000 letters showing proof of their frequent quarrels, It is in large opinion their relationship was never consummated.
So there we have it. These lovely couplets are about a frigid wife who thaws her ice -box out over the fire and then uncharacteristically gives attentions to her husband's sickly friend, who then writes the tale of cuckold up and waves it in the man's face, and then publishes it, only for it to become his most famous work. Talk about insult to injury.
Oh and my mom studied this in high school and thought it would be awesome to name me for this very poem years later.
romaincrisis