When I was a student, I developed a bit of a thing for William Hazlitt. As a writer, he was so funny, so direct, and his prose was so fresh – and he was also kind of a babe, for someone alive 200 years ago.
That’s the most flattering portrait of him, though, and he’s less of a babe in other images. Also, he sounds like he was pretty terrible to women in general. So these days I only like him for his writing. I’ve been reading his essays again, and they’re honestly like something out of the New Yorker; they almost feel as if they were written only a few days ago. The Fight and On the Pleasure of Hating are two of my favourites.
A few weeks ago, I was in London for meetings, and it worked out cheaper to stay in a boutique hotel in Soho than to find a Novotel or whatever. So I stayed in a single room at Hazlitt’s, the hotel in the house on Frith Street where Hazlitt lived.
It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been inside. All the furniture is antique, mostly dating from the time that Hazlitt and his contemporaries lived in the building when it was a boarding house. The whole interior is at a wonk, so you feel drunk going down the stairs, and there’s no dining room, so you order breakfast to be brought up to your room on a tray in the morning. I had coffee and porridge with honey and nuts. I told myself it was the kind of thing Hazlitt might have eaten. And it was delicious.
And then I walked right out into the middle of London on a weekday morning as the sun was shining. I don’t always get on with London, but sometimes, when it feels like being in the middle of history and the future at once? I get it.
More lush things this week…
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