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.35 7).Elsewhere Hunt urges people to get out oftheir beds on May morning and breathe the raw air , and describes covering hisfamily in blossom enough to make a bower of the breakfast-room.83 He even museson the possibilities of his own physical regeneration, like that of nature in spring:methinks it were a pleasant sphere,If, like the trees, we blossomed every year;If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyesReturned in cheeks, and raciness in eyes,And all around us, vital to the tips,The human orchard laughed with cherry lips!77 Bate, Romantic Ecology, p.19.78 Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Penguin Classics, ed.by Norman Page (London:Penguin, 1985), p.119.The quotation refers to Harold Skimpole, a character Dickens admittedwas a portrait of Leigh Hunt.79 Hunt, May Day at Holly Lodge , The Companion, p.242.80 Ibid., p.241.81 Ibid., p.242.82 Ibid.83 Hunt, Tomorrow The First of May , Leigh Hunt s London Journal, p.33 and p.34. Very fond of nature.very fond of art 83Lord! what a burst of merriment and play,Fair dames, were that! and what a rst of May!84Hunt considers, here, that if people could rejuvenate in the way that trees do,May Day would certainly come to be valued again.People ourish in spring andthey interact emotionally with it: In spring-time, joy awakens the heart: with joyawakes gratitude and nature; and in our gratitude we return on its own principleof participation, the love that has been shown us.85 In spite of Hunt s criticism ofthe guests at the Duchess s party for their lack of direct connection with the naturalworld, Hunt nds May Day at Holly Lodge compelling.He does so because heregards the festival as emblematic of the harmony between nature and mankind, andof the concord which should exist between people.May Day is a catalyst which, forHunt, could stimulate such a new harmony.He sees May Day, too, as a way to mergethe customs of the town and the country.For Hunt, the contemporary celebrationof spring is marred by what he sees as uncomfortable cultural associations, suchas the feudalism associated with Merry England.He argues, nevertheless, that asknowledge and comfort advance, there is no reason whatever why old good thingsshould not revive as well as new good ones be created.86 Any sense of condescensionto the lower classes which might accompany the idea of Merry England must beremoved.Hunt uses the May Day party at Holly Lodge as a touchstone for a discussionof the coming political reforms, urging the gentry to nd common ground withthe lower classes.He calls the Duchess wise in not affecting to patronize, and todistribute holiday beef and pudding.87 The poor, he says, do not want alms now-a-days.They are too poor, and too well informed.They want employment and properpay; and after employment, a reasonable leisure.88 A revival of May Day, Huntclaims, will lead to a harmonizing of the classes.He does not advocate revolution,but that people should share common cultural interests in order to move towardsthe kind of reform which disadvantages none.The principle of participation in thelove that spring shares with us, he says, necessitates that we emulate the joys of theseason: these joys are assumed to be communitarian.89 The Duchess herself, HarriotMellon (1777? 1837), seems to encapsulate the harmonious community of classeswhich Hunt seeks.An actress of obscure birth, Mellon rose to fame playing countrygirls on the stage before marrying Thomas Coutts, inheriting his great wealth, and84 J.H.Leigh Hunt, Lines Written on A Sudden Arrival of Fine Weather in May , 1831, ll.24 31 in The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, ed.by H.S.Milford (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1923), p.352.85 J.H.Leigh Hunt, Spring and Daisies , in Essays by Leigh Hunt, ed.by Arthur Symons(London: Walter Scott, 1887), pp.74 80 (p.75).86 J.H.Leigh Hunt, The Month of May , in Men, Women and Books: A Selection ofSketches, Essays, And Critical Memoirs from his Uncollected Prose Writings ed.by L.StanleyJast (London: T.Werner Laurie, 1943), pp.150 56 (p.151).87 Hunt, May Day at Holly Lodge , The Companion, p.242.88 Ibid., pp.242 3.89 Hunt, Spring and Daisies , Essays by Leigh Hunt, p.75. 84 The Romantics and the May Day Traditiongoing on to marry William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, the ninth Duke of St Albans.90It is tting, then, that she celebrates a festival that should be common to all.ThroughMay Day festivities, Hunt suggests, the aristocracy can be seen to share, ratherthan to appropriate, the culture of the poor the common sphere.The interests ofboth should converge in such a way that they exhibit as many tastes in common aspossible.91Hunt is fully aware that nostalgic representations of England, such as thoseassociated with pastoral scenes, may be used fundamentally to express the valuesof particular groups in society.But he believes that this ideological standpoint canbe used to political advantage.Marxist critics such as Raymond Williams, unlikeeco-critics, are wary of sentimental and intellectualised accounts of an unlocalised Old England .92 Nostalgia is universal and persistent ,93 and the pastoral visiondoes not re ect the real social situation of the rural poor.Williams de nes theliterary perception of the country and the city as fundamentally different ways oflife.This account is resonant when considering Hunt.Hunt repeatedly de nes thecountry against the city, and, while celebrating his love of the seasons and his directcontact with the natural world, he acknowledges the presence of ideology in culturalrepresentations of the natural world.To Hunt, nature acts both as a cultural referentand as a physical reality.Hunt s radicalism lies in his vision of May Day as a festivalworthy of revival because it celebrates not only closeness to nature but also politicalchange.Hunt suggests, too, that nostalgia for May Day can be read ideologically.Hedemonstrates unease at his need to campaign for a revival of May Day, suggestingthat such a revival, though warranted by its aesthetic and moral value, is a formof nostalgic conservatism which has feudal implications.Hunt s is a very differentchallenge to the status quo from that of Southey, for instance.Southey s Wat Tylerpresents May Day as a festival which reminds the poor of their disenfranchised lot,with the intention of causing the people to rebel.In order to convince his public ofthe need for a revival of May Day, Hunt suggests that it is possible to celebrate itas a festival which promotes a social harmony and which is advantageous for allclasses.His goal is for the rich to make a common cause with the poorest in a tastefor nature.94 He sees May Day as an opportunity for a cultural exchange betweenrich and poor.He sees the common sphere as a universal sphere that encompassesall social groups.Hunt s journalism traces the progress of the degeneration of the festival
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