3774. Robert Southey to William Westall, [early] January 1822

Address: To William Westall, Esqre; A.R.A./ 18 Mornington Place,/ Hampstead Road
MS: New South Wales State Library, Australia, B 1548. TS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: This letter belongs to early January 1822 and predates Southey to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. The latter was sent as an enclosure to Bedford on 6 January 1822, Letter 3778, and forwarded by him to the newspaper, where it appeared on 11 January 1822.
Note on MS: Letter text, including the address, survives as a typescript copy, kept with a transcript of ‘M.S. Sketch of the Life of the Late William Westall, A.R.A. by Robert Westall, Feb 1850’. The transcript of the Life was made by Rex Rienits and dated ‘14.2.58’; Rienits was probably the transcriber of the letter also.

Keswick,
Jan: 1822

My dear Westall,

I wrote to Longman some little time ago saying I could have the “Tale of Paraguay”

⁽¹⁾

ready for publication this season, and desiring that your brother might make three drawings from it. Their answer was “When you have the Tale of Paraguay ready we will consider respecting plates. The enormous charge now made for drawings and engravings is such as to amount almost to prohibition.

⁽²⁾

Those which have been lately done for the Scotch Novels

⁽³⁾

have not answered, and we believe it is not the intention of the parties to illustrate any more.”

By this you will see how unavailing it would be for me to write to them respecting the illustration of “Roderick”.

⁽⁴⁾

And indeed I do not see of what use it could be, as we do not want them to take part in the speculation. In the common course of trade they must sell them when they are ordered, and more than this they would not do unless the concern was wholly their own.

Murray said to me that he had seen the drawings, spoke very highly of them, and added that he should be most happy to engage in the engravings and publication of them. He was to confer about it with Bedford, he said. When I wrote in reply I let him know what number of copies had been sold, which I believe he had very much underrated.

⁽⁵⁾

Farther I have not heard. Do you act according to your own judgment, and I will be ready at the time you specify with half the adventure. Much as I should like to see the drawings, it is better to defer this gratification as the engravers are less occupied just now.

I shall be a great deal before the public in the ensuing year, and with that sort of notoriety which may be of use to the prints. They may very likely lead to a series from the other poems.

Edith shall copy the few sketches which I possess.

⁽⁶⁾

They were taken by one quite unacquainted with the art, the two best of the collection were many years ago put into the hands of an artist at Bristol

⁽⁷⁾

on his travels to make drawings that they might be engraved for my letters

⁽⁸⁾

– but he took them away, and we never heard of him or them afterwards. It is possible that my Uncle may have the originals, and I will write to him about them.

⁽⁹⁾

I have two scenes in the Life of Sir J. Moore’s retreat which, if you had sketched them, would have been fine things indeed.

⁽¹⁰⁾

Edith will set about them directly. And I will put out my feelers in all directions to find where sketches may be obtained. Murray could be of material assistance here.

The book about the new, or rather, old process in painting has been sent me,

⁽¹¹⁾

and I have been much struck with the ingenuity of the authoress in seeing the hint which a mere accident gave her and pursuing it so steadily and successfully. Have you see the book or the pictured painted in the manner there described?

You have most likely seen Lord Byron’s abuse of me. I reply to it because it contains a direct charge of calumny which it is proper to meet with a direct denial.

⁽¹²⁾

And this gives me an opportunity of laying on the lash as he deserves.

My letter is gone this day to Wordsworth and as soon as he returns it I shall dispatch it to the Courier. Murray will be sending to me sooner than Longman.

I shall very much like to see your stone drawings.

⁽¹³⁾

Is there any secret in the printing of these things which we have not yet discovered in this country?

The ladies all desire their kindest remembrances. When is there a chance of seeing you in this country?

Did it ever occur to you that views in illustration of Wordsworth’s poem

⁽¹⁴⁾

would be a promising speculation? I do not know so promising a one. They should be a small size and such as Lakers would purchase.

God bless you.

Yours affectionately.
Robert Southey

Notes

1. A Tale of Paraguay (1825). [back]

2. A Tale of Paraguay had two illustrations by Richard Westall (1765–1836; DNB), William Westall’s brother. Southey suggested that these raised the book’s price to 10s. 6d., from 7s. 6d.; see Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 14 December 1824, Letter 4295. [back]

3. Probably a reference to illustrated editions of Sir Walter Scott’s novels from Waverley (1814) onwards. Novels and Tales of the Author of ‘Waverley’ (1821) was illustrated by Alexander Naysmith (1758–1840; DNB), while William Allan (1782–1850; DNB), Illustrations of the Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley (1820) was a book of illustrations that could be inserted into existing copies of the novels. [back]

4. This venture, in which Southey himself invested, resulted in Illustrations of Roderick, the Last of the Goths. A Poem, by Robert Southey, Esq. from the Drawings of R. Westall, R.A. (1824), published by Longman; nos 2627–2628 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. Purchasers of the set of six illustrations could arrange to have them bound into their copy of Southey’s poem, also published by Longman. [back]

5. Southey to John Murray, 17 December 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3764. [back]

6. The copies were to assist Westall’s work on A Series of Views of Spain and Portugal, to Illustrate Mr. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War; Drawn on Stone by W. Westall, A.R.A., from Sketches by General Hawker, Mr. Locker, Mr. Heaphy, &c. Part I, containing Eight Views, illustrating Vol. I (1823). [back]

7. See Southey to Thomas Southey, 15 March [1798], The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Two, Letter 296. [back]

8. The second edition of Southey’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (1799). [back]

9. See Southey to Herbert Hill, 25 January 1822, Letter 3783. [back]

10. Two sketches by Herbert Hill. The first was of the Puente del Corgul, a bridge in Galicia that Southey had crossed in December 1795, ‘a scene of tranquil sublimity’ (Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (Bristol, 1797), p. 54). In the Edinburgh Annual Register, 1.1 (1808), 452, Southey lamented that the failure to destroy the bridge had ruined the best chance the British forces, led by Sir John Moore (1761–1809; DNB), had to impede their pursuit by the French in the retreat to Corunna in 1808–1809. He also referred in a note to ‘a sketch, taken upon the spot’ that he had seen – probably Herbert Hill’s drawing. The second sketch was of a bridge over the River Esla at Castro Gonzalo, with the town of Benavente in the distance. It was the scene of a defeat of French cavalry by British forces on 29 December 1808. [back]

11. Elizabeth Cleaver (dates unknown), An Account of a New Process in Painting (1821), no. 2077 in the sale catalogue of Southey's library, where it was described as a ‘Presentation Copy from the author’. Cleaver used glazed crayons, as she claimed Venetian artists had in the sixteenth century. Her experiments were strongly supported by Sir George Beaumont and Richard Westall. [back]

12. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. The ‘calumnies’ Byron believed Southey to have later spread were rumours that Byron and Shelley had engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey responded to this charge in his letter to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776, published in the newspaper on 11 January 1822. He sent a draft of his letter to Wordsworth for his comments before dispatching it to London for publication in the Courier. [back]

13. A reference to Westall’s use of lithography, in which an image is initially drawn on a flat stone. The process had been invented in Germany in 1796, but had arrived in England much more recently. [back]

14. It is unclear which of Wordworth’s poems Southey refers to here, though Westall later published Views of the Lake Country to Illustrate the Poems of William Wordsworth (1840). [back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

Notes

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven