2662. Robert Southey to John May, 20 October 1815 ⁠* 

Brussels. Friday 20 Oct. 1815.

My dear friend

I wrote to you from Lige Liege, up to which time all had gone on well with us. Thank God it is well with us at present, but your god-daughter has been so unwell, that we were detained six days at Aix la Chapelle, in a state of anxiety which you may well imagine, & at an Hotel where the Devil himself seemed to possess the mistress & the greater part of the domestics. Happily I found a physician who had graduated at Edinburgh, [1]  who spoke English, & pursued a rational system, – & happily also by this painful & expensive delay I was thrown into such society, that now the evil is over, I am fully sensible of the good to which it has conduced.

The day after my letter was written we reached Spa, & remained there Sunday & Monday, a pleasant & necessary pause, – tho the pleasure was somewhat interrupted by the state of my own health, which was somewhat disordered there, – perhaps the effect of the thin Rhenish wines & the grapes. Tuesday we would have slept at Verviers (the great clothing town) if we could have found beds, – an English party had preoccupied them, & we proceeded to Herve, a little town half-way between Liege & Aix la Chapelle, in the old principality of Limbourg. There, for the only time during our journey Edith-May was put to sleep in a different from mine, for it was not possible to arrange things otherwise. She slept with the servant of the Vardons, – a young woman whom they have bred up. [2]  When we rose in the morning we found that she had not slept xxxxx any part of the night owing to a sore throat: – she had gone to bed apparently in high health & spirits. Being accustomed to see her tonsils swoln to a degree which might have alarmed a person not used to such see it, I was not uneasy; & having bought some hartshorn to rub it with, we proceeded to Aix la Chapelle – about 16 miles. – there was indeed no alternative, for any medical advice which could have been found in Herve, would have been worse than nothing. But the journey over a paved road, was the worst thing which could have been befallen a patient in an incipient fever, & when we arrived the child was so ill, that after seeing her laid to bed (about one o clock & in the afternoon) I thought it necessary to go to the Bankers & request them to recommend me to a physician. You may imagine how painful a time we past. It was necessary for her to gargle every hour, even if we waked her for it, – but she never slept an hour continuously for the three first nights. Thank God however she seems thoroughly recovered now, we are at Brussels, & can estimate the good with calmness.

While I was acting as nurse & cook (for we were obliged to do every thing ourselves) our party dined at the Table d’Hote, & there as the child grew better I found myself in the company of some highly-distinguished Prussian officers. One of them a Major Dresky, [3]  is the very man who was with Blucher at Ligny when he was ridden over by the French: [4]  the other Major Petry [5]  is said by his brother officer to have won the battle of Donowitz for Blucher. [6]  Two more extraordinary men I never met with. You would have been delighted to hear how they spoke of the English, & how to see how they treated us as representatives of our country. Among the toasts which were given, I put this into French – the Belle Alliance between Prussia & England, – may it endure as long as the memory of the battle: I cannot describe to you the huzzaing – & hob-nobbing & handshaking with which it was received: But the chief benefit which I have derived was from meeting with a certain Henry de Forster, a Major in our German Legion, [7]  a Pole by birth whose father held one of the highest offices in Poland. [8]  Forster, one of the most interesting men I ever met with, has been marked for misfortune from his birth. Since the age of 13 he has supported himself, & now supports a poor brother of 18, a youth of high principles & genius, who has for two years suffered with an abscess of the spleen. Forster entered the Prussian service when a boy; was taken prisoner, & cruelly used in France, & escaped almost miraculously on foot into Poland. In 1809 he joined the D of Brunswick, [9]  & was one of those men who proved true to him thro all danger, & embarked with him – The Duke was a true German in patriotism, but without conduct, without principles & without gratitude. Forster entered our German Legion, & was in all the hot work in the peninsula from the lines of T Vedras [10]  till the end of the war. The severe duty of an infantry officer proved too much for his constitution, & a fall of some 80 feet down a precipice in the Pyrenees brought on a hemorrhage of the liver, for which he obtained unlimited leave of absence & came to Aix la Chapelle, I grieve to say that he had a relapse on the very day that we left him. I never saw a man whose feelings & opinions seemed to coincide more with my own. When we had become a little acquainted he shook hands with me in a manner so unlike an ordinary greeting, that I immediately understood it to be (as really it was) a trial whether I were a free mason. This gave occasion to the following sonnet, which I put into his hands at parting.

________

He has promised me to employ this winter in writing his Memoirs – a task which he had once performed, but the papers were lost in a shipwreck off Santora; he has promised also to come with the MSS (if he lives) to England next summer – where I hope & expect that the publication will be as beneficial to his immediate interests, as it will be honourable to his memory. – We left Aix on Tuesday for Maestricht, slept the next night at S^t Trond, Thursday at Louvaine, & arrived here to day. Tomorrow I go again with Nash to Waterloo, for the purpose of procuring drawings of Hougoumont. [11]  On Sunday we go for Antwerp, rejoin the Vardons on Monday night at Ghent, & then make the best of our way to Calais & London. – The delay at Aix with its added expences has cost me a good deal, – I draw on you therefore without scruple for 30 £ for this place, & Englebert Werth [12]  (a merchant here) will cash the bill. I have bought a good many books, & seen & heard enough to leave a little volume behind me, if I should not think proper to publish it now. In ten or eleven days I hope to see you. It is as much as I can do, to keep pace in my journal with the business of the day. – On the whole I believe that I have never passed a month of my life to greater advantage.

God bless you my dear friend

your most affectionate

R South RS.