3809. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 1 March 1822.

Address: To/ D^r Southey/ 15. Queen Anne Street/ Cavendish Square/ London
Postmark: E/ 4 MR 4/ 1822
MS: Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, 1996.5.121. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

My dear Harry

I meant to have written to you concerning Kate when the effect of the medicine had been observed. The first trial is not yet over: – but I was vexed to learn that after the fourth dose, the lids fell as before. It was perhaps occasioned by a stronger light than usual. – It did not occur to me to tell Gooch, in corroboration of D^r Farres

⁽¹⁾

opinion, that she has always been subject to bleeding at the nose, rather in greater quantity than is usual with children; & that for some months past there has been no discharge of this kind. Her eyes are large & globular, – much the largest of all my children; & her general health much the best, – that is the least liable to head ache, or derangements of any kind.

The pictures must be packed by the framer & sent by wagon.

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I conclude that you have obtained the miniature from Bowyer.

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– If you have received a book for me (probably in pamphlett size) from M^r Holmes’s in Manchester Street,

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consign it to Murraylemagnes care, for his next parcel, which will probably be sent off when the Review comes out.

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I am sorry that you are among the sufferers by this financial operation.

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I am of that class of pers travellers in this world whom the poet describes as singing in sight of the robber.

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We are not in the best condition just now. Cuthbert has a feverish attack upon him, & I have a recurrence of an ugly flatulent affection of the lower intestines which plagued me some weeks ago. I sent rhubarb

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upon a mission there last night, & rhubarb performed its part, – but I fear has not performed a cure, for I still feel a distention & hear sounds which a highlander might mistake for the music of his native land. – I want a shaking up & shall go to Rydal shortly for that purpose, – early next week if Cuthbert be recovered. If I could afford it I would take a long journey every year, but travelling is doubly expensive to me, as incurring loss at the same & cost at the same time.

Some unknown person sent me the New Times with a letter from an equally unknown hand about the Editor of Wat Tyler.

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– Of course I did not for a moment think of noticing the subject, & thereby letting a scoundrel that he could put me to the trouble of writing x xx replying to him

They are I believe about to print some of my poems in France, – & to translate more of them.

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I believe there is a third translation of Roderic.

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But if I have any favour in that country, it will not be of long continuance, inasmuch as the Buonapartists will find my Hist. of the War

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rather unpalatable – 536 pages are printed. I am now working upon some very interesting papers of Sir Hew Dalrymples – which have given me more insight into the affairs of Andalusia than all my other documents. And I have got much useful information in correspondence from Bart. Frere, from himself, & from Gen. Whittingham

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Tom has had the nurse in his house this month, & the Doctor (both from Brough) more than a fortnight.

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His hooping cough has reached Keswick but I hope we may escape it.

Love to all –
God bless you
RS.

Keswick. 1 March. 1822.

Go to the Exchequer for whatever I owe you on the Frame – or any other score

Notes

1. John Richard Farre (1775–1862; DNB), distinguished physician at the London Dispensary for Curing Diseases of the Eye and Ear (1806–1856) and author of works on diseases of the eye.[back]

2. Portraits of the Southey family made by Edward Nash. Southey had sent them to London for framing by William Haines (1778–1848, DNB), painter and engraver, whose studio was at 3 Boyle Street, Savile Row.[back]

3. The artist and publisher Robert Bowyer (1758–1834) was working on a painting, ‘View of the Interior of the House of Lords, during the important investigation of 1820’, and wished to include Southey in the crowd in the Strangers Gallery in the House of Lords. Southey had loaned him a miniature painted by Edward Nash in 1820 (it is now in the National Portrait Gallery); see Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 4 May 1821, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3681.[back]

4. Thomas Holmes, later Hunter (1751–1827), a wealthy East India merchant of Beoley Hall, Worcestershire, had his London home in Manchester Street, Marylebone. He was the father of Southey’s correspondent Ann Attersoll. She had presumably arranged that her father should convey a book to Southey on her behalf, since she lived in France.[back]

5. Quarterly Review, 26 (January 1822) was published on 30 March 1822.[back]

6. The resumption of the link between bullion and the currency in 1819–1821 had caused a general deflation in prices.[back]

7. Decimus Iunius Iuvenal (late 1st century AD – early 2nd century AD), Satires, Book 4, Satire 10, line 21: ‘The empty-handed traveller will cheerfully sing when confronted by a robber.’[back]

8. Rhubarb was commonly used as a laxative.[back]

9. Southey had been sent copies of two newspapers which contained anonymous letters about the unauthorised publication of his early radical play, Wat Tyler, in 1817. The first letter appeared in The Times, 25 January 1822, and was signed ‘THE EDITOR OF WAT TYLER’ and dated 23 January 1822. It claimed to be from one of the people instrumental in arranging for the publication of Southey’s play in 1817; see Daniel E. White, ‘The Case of the Nocturnal Amanuenses: New Evidence in the Wat Tyler Affair’, Modern Philology, 118/2 (2020), 277–303. The second letter appeared in the New Times, 12 February 1822, unsigned and dated 6 February 1822. It contained a detailed defence of Southey and, in particular, the change in his political opinions from early radicalism to his own, later, idiosyncratic brand of conservatism.[back]

10. See Southey to Ann Holmes, 6 February 1822, Letter 3795.[back]

11. The two translations were: Antoine André Brugière, Baron de Sorsum, Roderick, le Dernier des Goths (1820), no. 2697 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library; and Pierre Hippolite Amillet de Sagrie (1785–1830), Roderic, Dernier Roi de Goths (1821), no. 2700 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. Amédée Pichot (1795–1877), French novelist, historian and prolific translator, began a translation of Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814), but abandoned the project once the two other versions in French appeared.[back]

12. Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832), which was relentlessly hostile to the invasion of Spain ordered in 1808 by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; Emperor of the French 1804–1814, 1815).[back]

13. Lieutenant General Sir Samuel Ford Whittingham (1772–1841; DNB), British soldier who served with Spanish forces in the Peninsular War 1808–1813.[back]

14. 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