1436. Robert Southey to [Mary Matilda Betham], [late March 1808]
1436. Robert Southey to [Mary Matilda Betham], [late March 1808] *
My dear Madam,
Unluckily I am engaged to breakfast on Friday in Upper Seymour Street, & have afterwards to reach Stockwell to an early dinner. Saturday I go to St Mary’s Cray, [1] & return on Monday, – on Tuesday I will be with you at half past ten, [2] – if it suit you; – if any other morning be more convenient to you, it will be equally so to me.
I am very much obliged to you for your little volume. [3] It contains so much of what is really good that I hope the same powers will one day be employed upon something of greater extent.
Yours respectfully
Robert Southey.
Wednesday morning.
Notes
* MS: Pforzheimer Collection, New York Public Library, Misc MS. 3573. ALS; 1p.
Previously
published: Ernest Betham, ed., A House of Letters: Being Excerpts from the Correspondence of Miss Charlotte Jerningham (the
Honble. Lady Bedingfield), Lady Jerningham, Coleridge, Lamb, Southey, Bernard and Lucy Barton, and others, with Matilda Betham;
and from Diaries and Various Sources; and a Chapter upon Landor’s Quarrel with Charles Betham at Llanthony (London,
1905), p. 104.
Dating note: Date based on details of Southey’s visit to London at this time. BACK
[1] A village in Kent to the southeast of London, in which Peter Elmsley lived. BACK
