3804. Robert Southey to Herbert Hill, 24 February 1822

Address: To/ The Reverend Herbert Hill/ Streatham/ Surry
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: 10 o’Clock/ FE 27/ 1822 F Nⁿ
Seal: red wax; design illegible
MS: Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, WC 213. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 113–114 [in part].

A young German M de Bielh

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has been here this morning with a note from Ostervald,

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written three years ago & addressed to me in London, desiring that I would bring him to those of his old friends who may yet be alive, but particularly to you, & saying that every favour done to him, he will take as a particular attention to himself. – The German is a very agreable man. He sate with me about an hour, & then proceeded to Whitehaven. But he will return here in the course of a month or two, & stay a few days on his way to London, – when I shall furnish him with credentials to you

He comes from Manheim, & says that none of his friends know what Ostervalds resources are, nor whence he draws them, but they suppose that he has a pension from the English government. His health is remarkably good; – he walks a great deal, & spends his summers mostly at Heidelberg.

You mistook me concerning Westalls intended views.

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They are a speculation of his own, for separate publication. He has got at (thro Bedford) a most extensive collection of sketches by General Hawker

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With regard to Ld Byron, I have suffered him to attack me with impunity for several years. My remarks upon the Satanic School were general remarks upon a set of public offenders;

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& it was only in reply to the foulest personalities that I attacked him personally in return.

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The sort of insane & rabid hatred which he has long entertained towards me cannot be increased, & it is sometimes necessary to show that forbearance proceeds neither from weakness nor from fear.

Your copy of Landors book

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was franked up, thro the Admiralty, to Gifford. His Latin I believe is of the best kind, – but it is like his English remarkably difficult, – the prose however much less so than the verse. The cause of this obscurity it is very difficult to discover.

My correspondence with B. Frere has been very brisk, – something also I have had from Whittingham,

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& am every day expecting answers to farther questions which I have sent. But the most valuable papers which I have yet had are from Sir Hew Dalrymple, relating to his first communications with the Spaniards, & the whole proceedings in the South of Spain while the Junta of Seville

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ruled the roost. They will cause me to cancel a few pages, & replace them with a fuller detail.

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Luckily the greater part comes in time to be introduced in its place without any inconvenience of this kind. – These papers have given me a clear insight into many points with which I was imperfectly or un-acquainted before. They contain also proof of scandalous neglect on the part of Ministers, or some thing worse than neglect, – a practise of leaving their agents to act without instructions, for the sake of shifting the responsibility from themselves. At the commencement of the troubles in Spain, out of 34 dispatches, certainly the most important that any Governor of Gibraltar

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ever had occasion to send home, Lord Castlereagh

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never acknowledged more than two. I have heard our Government bitterly complained of for this sort of conduct, which in fact is practised in every department of state; but this is the most glaring proof of it that has ever fallen in my way.

Do you know that the Cortes

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have decreed concerning the education of one of the Princes,

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that he shall receive todos os dias duas liçoens na Grammatica Portugueza!

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– The miserable government of that poor country is now paying the bitter price of its long misconduct, but in what this upstart dominion of medicos & letrados

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is to end, I cannot see, farther than that it must be in a more efficient despotism than the old, whatever denomination may be given it. Brazil of course is lost to the mother country,

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& I very much fear will split into as many separate states as there are large captaincies, & these again be subdivided among as many adventurers as can keep together a party of ruffians numerous enough to call themselves an army. Of the evils there & in Portugal & Spain, I certainly shall not live to see the end.

Is the Marquis to be left at Winchester? – so I interpret your letter to imply. – I am sorry for Edwards sake that Knox

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has left Westminster.

We are tolerably well, – not so well however but that Edith-May must go to Harrogate in the spring, – which she will have an opportunity of doing with Mrs Wordsworths sister. – Tom has an Accoucheur in his house,

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who is so much his friend that he comes forty miles to officiate, & has been in attendance now eleven days! – no great compliment methinks to the rest of his employers, & no great advantage to his own business, – this good-natured man being moreover postmaster in the place of his residence.

God bless you
RS.

Keswick 24 Feb^y. 1822

Notes

1. Unidentified.[back]

2. Jean Frédéric Ostervald (b. 1749), a Swiss from Neuchatel and son of Frédéric Samuel Ostervald (1713–1795), publisher and founder of the Société Typographique de Neuchatel (STN). Ostervald was in Portugal in the 1790s and was secretary to the legation and chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy 1792–1793 while Robert Walpole (1736–1810; DNB), Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary 1771–1800, was in Britain. Ostervald was an old friend of Herbert Hill and Southey had written to him during his continental journey in 1817. This letter had produced some correspondence with Ostervald’s nephew, Jean Baptist Isaac Harlé (1773–1854), a merchant at St Quentin; see The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Five, Southey to Herbert Hill, 15 March 1818, Letter 3093.[back]

3. 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). Each of the ‘views’ in this publication could be detached from it so as to be inserted in the appropriate place in the first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

4. Major-General Samuel Hawker (1763–1838), who had served in the Peninsular War between 1808 and 1811 as commander of the 14th Light Dragoons.[back]

5. A Vision of Judgement (London, 1821), ‘Preface’, pp. xvii–xxii, where Southey denounced ‘the Satanic School’ of modern poetry, without naming any one poet. However, this was clearly a riposte to Byron’s Don Juan (1819), whose suppressed ‘Dedication’, mocking Southey, had circulated widely.[back]

6. 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. Byron believed he had subsequently spread rumours that Byron and Shelley engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had responded by writing to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. His letter was published in the Courier on 11 January 1822.[back]

7. Landor’s Idyllia Heroica Decem Phaleuciorum Unum Partim jam Primo Partim Iterum atq Tertio Edit Savagius Landor (1820), no. 1598 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

8. Lieutenant General Sir Samuel Ford Whittingham (1772–1841; DNB), British soldier who served with Spanish forces in the Peninsular War 1808–1813. He provided material for Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

9. The Supreme Junta set up on 25 September 1808 to co-ordinate Spanish resistance to the French invasion. It remained the highest authority in unoccupied parts of Spain until January 1810, when the Junta dissolved itself and handed power to a Council of Regency.[back]

10. The Battle of Bailén, 16–19 July1808, was the first great success of Spanish forces in the Peninsular War. Southey dealt with the matter in his History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 382–386. On pp. 389–390, Southey inserted material concerning Dalrymple’s role in the attempts of Spanish commanders to change the terms of surrender of the French army.[back]

11. Sir Hew Dalrymple was Acting Governor of Gibraltar 1806–1808.[back]

12. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822; DNB), Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1807–1809, Foreign Secretary 1812–1822.[back]

13. Following a revolution in Portugal in 1820, a Cortes had convened and devised a new constitution in September 1821.[back]

14. Miguel (1802–1866), later King of Portugal 1828–1834. He had lived in Brazil since the age of five and only returned to Portugal in 1821.[back]

15. ‘Every day, two lessons in Portuguese grammar.’[back]

16. Doctors and lawyers.[back]

17. The Portuguese liberals were attempting to re-assert the metropolis’s control over Brazil; the latter declared its independence in September 1822. It did not, however, disintegrate.[back]

18. John William Knox (1784–1862), clergyman, scholar and usher at Westminster school 1806–1821.[back]

19. Tom Southey already had seven children. An eighth, Sophia Jane Southey (1822–1859), was born on 2 March 1822.[back]

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The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven