2626. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 June 1815
2626. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 June 1815 *
My dear Grosvenor
Barrow has put it into the Bibliopoles head to make me take up Wellingtons story from the point which I hurry it over, (after the battle of Vittoria [1] ) – & so carry it on for the next number down to the expected consummation. [2] And for this I am to have the same goodly guerdon as for the former part. This is like the turn of the tide to an oyster left in a hot day something above low water mark. I tell you of it for sundry reasons, – one of which is that I tell you every thing.
N.B. I took what I call a humming dose of magnesia this morning, – humming I call such doses, & for why? – Because they hum all the way thro. [3]
Why have you not sent me your journal? [4] From it, & from your sharpened recollections I may perhaps get some notions of the ground, – at least of the sort of scene: – & certes of the previous state of Brussels.
Collect for me all the anecdotes you can of the battle. [5] What a battle it has been! Think Grosvenor what an expenditure of morbleus & parbleus & ventrebleus & sacrebleus [6] there must <have> been not only in the army, but wherever the in the precious city of Paris, & all over France wherever the news travelled; – how eyebrows & shoulders must have risen, & chins as well as stocks have fallen! For many how many years did I wish that Wellington might once fairly meet this Buonaparte in the field, – at a time when the very thought would have cost Whitbread & Lord Grey & the Scotchmen a pair of breeches. [7] that is supposing the said Scotchmen were not sitting t without them at the time for the sake of oeconomy.
I have not yet seen the Review. Murray says the Egyptian paper [8] is generally liked the best of the two [9] – as I thought it would. The fact does not agree very well with his scale of prices; [10] – but he does not appear dissatisfied, & has no reason to be so.
Be you my true & faithful jackal & purvey for me upon this occasion. This must be much flying matter to my purpose.
& so God bless you
RS.
30 June 1815
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ Exchequer/
Westminster.
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 3 JY 3/ 1815
Endorsement: 30 June 1815
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng.
Lett. c. 25. ALS; 3p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols
(London, 1856), II, pp. 416–417. BACK
[1] The allied defeat of the French at Vittoria, 21 June 1813. It paved the way for eventual victory in the Peninsular war. BACK
[2] Southey had already published an article on Wellington in Quarterly Review, 13 (April 1815), 215–275. Murray, who had failed to persuade Southey to write a biography of the Duke, had now commissioned a second article instead. Southey’s review of Eustache-Auguste Carel (1788–1836), Précis Historique de la Guerre d’Espagne et de Portugal, de 1808 à 1814 (1815); Jean Sarrazin (1770–1848), Histoire de la Guerre d’Espagne et de Portugal, de 1807 à 1814 (1814); General View of the Political State of France, and of the Government of Louis XVIII (1815); An Answer to the Calumniators of Louis XVIII (1815); Official Accounts of the Battle of Waterloo (1815); Lieutenant-General W. A. Scott (dates unknown), An Authentic Narrative of the Late Sanguinary Battle on the Plains of Waterloo (1815), appeared in Quarterly Review, 13 (July 1815), 448–52. BACK
[6] A series of oaths, attributed by Southey to the forces of Bonaparte in his ‘March to Moscow’, Courier, 23 June 1814. BACK
[7] The Whig politicians Samuel Whitbread (1764–1815; DNB) and Charles, 2nd Earl Grey; ‘the Scotchmen’ are probably the Whiggish Edinburgh Review and its writers. BACK
[8] Jacques François Miot (1779–1858), Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire des Expéditions en Egypte et en Syrie (1814), Quarterly Review, 13 (April 1815), 1–55. BACK
