3819. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8 April 1822

Address: To/ G. C. B.
Seal: [partial] red wax
MS: Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester, Robert Southey Papers A.S727. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.

My dear G.

If your deafness depends upon the general state of your nervous system, I verily believe that a few weeks of mountain air would be the best remedy for it. Come you must & will, but do not spoil your holyday by splitting it. Go to Bowles next year, or at any other time.

Your account of Hawker

⁽¹⁾

pleases me so much that I could find in my heart to sing him the song which I send him. You must inform him that it was written to be sung by myself, I am afraid he will have a very inadequate notion of its merit unless x you can explain to him how admirably it is adapted to my execution.

Xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx God bless you

RS.

Apr. 8. 1822.

I inclose a letter for Allan Cunningham to thank him for his volume.

⁽²⁾

There is a great deal of true poetry in it.

Notes

1. Major-General Samuel Hawker (1763–1838), who had served in the Peninsular War between 1808 and 1811 as commander of the 14th Light Dragoons. His sketches were used in 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). These pictures could be inserted into the first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832). In return, Southey had promised Hawker ‘a fair piece of handwriting’; see Southey to Bedford, 23 March 1822, Letter 3815. It is not clear which ‘song’ he had sent to Hawker.[back]

2. See Southey to Cunningham, 8 April 1822, Letter 3820. The ‘volume’ was Allan Cunningham, Sir Marmaduke Maxwell, a Dramatic Poem; The Mermaid of Galloway; The Legend of Richard Faulder; and Twenty Scottish Songs (1822), no. 745 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven