Mrs. Hunt seems to have widened further the breach between the two men.[394] She did not speak Italian and the Countess Guiccioli, the head of Byron's establishment, did not speak English. Neither made any linguistic efforts and consequently there was no intercourse between the families of the two households. This, Hunt later says, was the first cause of diminished cordiality between Byron and himself. The Hunt children were a further cause of trouble. Byron wrote of them to Mrs. Shelley: "They were dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos. What they can't destroy with their feet they will with their fingers."[395] Again he described them as "six little blackguards ... kraal out of the Hottentot country."[396]
The question of rank was a thorn in the flesh, particularly to Hunt. While in open theory he had no respect for titles, in actual practice he groveled before them. Pride, as he thought, had made him decline all advances from men of rank, but it was more with the air of being afraid to trust himself than with real indifference. His exception, made in the case of Lord Byron, is thus explained: "But talents, poetry, similarity of political opinion, flattery of early sympathy with my boyish writings, more flattering offers of friendship and the last climax of flattery, an earnest waiving of his rank, were too much for me in the person of Lord Byron."[397] On the renewal of the acquaintance in Italy, the very familiar attitude seen in the dedication of the _Story of Rimini_, which Hunt himself had decided was "foolish," was changed at the advice of Shelley to an extremely formal manner of address. Hunt says that Byron did not like the change.[398] As a matter of fact, six years of separation had brought about other more important changes: Byron had grown more selfish and avaricious, Hunt more helpless and vain.
Three months were spent in Pisa after Shelley's death. In September the two families left for Genoa, travelling in separate parties and, on their arrival, settling in separate homes, the Hunts with Mrs. Shelley. From this time on there was little intercourse between Byron and Hunt. October 9, 1822, Byron wrote to England and denied that all three families were living under one roof. He said that he rarely saw Hunt, not more than once a month.[399] Hunt to the contrary said that they saw less of each other than in Genoa yet "considerable."[400] Although at no time was there an open breach, yet cordiality and sympathy were wholly lost on both sides in the strain of the financial situation. They failed of agreement even on impersonal matters. Byron had looked forward with great pleasure to Hunt's companionship. Before they met he had written: "When Leigh Hunt comes we shall have banter enough about those old _ruffiani_, the old dramatists, with their tiresome conceits, their jingling rhymes, and endless play upon words."[401] This pleasant anticipation was not realized, for Hunt's sensitiveness in petty matters and Byron's scorn of Hunt's affectation and of his ill-bred personal applications,[402] or so the hearer interpreted them, reduced safe topics to Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Even a mutual admiration of Pope and Dryden was forgotten. Literary jealousy and vanity fed the flames. Hunt was unable to appreciate manhood of Byron's virile type, and he did not try to conceal the fact from one who was hungry for praise. On the other hand, Byron did not render to Hunt the homage he was accustomed to receive from the Cockney circle and had nothing but contempt for all his works except the _Story of Rimini_. A statement in the anonymous _Life of Lord Byron_, published by Iley, that the misunderstanding was the result of a criticism by Hunt of _Parisina_ in the Leghorn and Lucca newspapers and that Byron never spoke to him after the discovery[403] is a fabrication as unsubstantial as the greater part of the other statements in the same book. Hunt denied the charge. His sole connection with _Parisina_ was that he supplied the incident of the heroine talking in her sleep,[404] a device that he had already made use of in _Rimini_.