3822. Robert Southey to John May, 10 April 1822

Address: To/ John May Esq^re./ 4. Tavistock Street/ Bedford Square/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 13 AP 13/ 1822
Watermark: W D & Co/ 1819
Endorsement: N^o. 225 1822/ Robert Southey/ Keswick 10^th April/
rec^d. 13^th d^o./ ans^d. 19^th d^o
MS: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Charles Ramos (ed.), The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 192–194.

Keswick. 10 Apr. 1822.

My dear friend

It is long since I have heard from you, & I am afraid one cause of this silence may have been that you have had no favourable intelligence to communicate. I look at the news from Brazil always with apprehension because of the manner in which it may affect you.

⁽¹⁾

Henry writes to me but seldom, & his letters when they come are not longer than so many prescriptions; so that I learn nothing from him. On Saturday however I heard something concerning you which gave me sincere pleasure. Dining at a neighbours with a M^r Thompson

⁽²⁾

he gave an excellent report of your son, from Arnold,

⁽³⁾

who spoke of him in the highest terms, & said how glad he was to have had him under his care. This must be a great satisfaction to you, & one motive for my writing is to repeat it to you because coming in this circuitous manner more weight may be given to a commendation of this kind, than if it had been said directly by Arnold to yourself.

Another motive is to remind you that of something like an engagement to visit xxx me this year, & to say that the xxxx after the leaves xxx not the better nearer Midsummer you can come the better, before rather than after. You should come at the end of May, & be here when the days are at the longest, & the country in its best dress. I cannot express how much I wish to see you under this roof.

⁽⁴⁾

Your goddaughter has not been in good health, we have counted & still countxx upon an opportunity of sending her to Harrogate with Miss Hutchinson (Mrs Wordsworths sister) – such waters & such baths being plainly what she stands in need of. If they go Miss H. must return by the 22^d of May; – so that Edith May will be returned in time for your arrival. You will be pleased with her manners which are thoroughly unaffected, – diffident & at the same time frank; – None of the others have you ever seen; thank God they are all in tolerable health & Cuthbert in particular thriving as we could wish.

I sent you the reprinted volume of Brazil, thinking that you were interested enough in that work to like to have it in its amended form state.

⁽⁵⁾

The additions amount to nearly 100 pages; & the expence of time & labour was much greater than this sum might seem to imply, good part having been gathered from Dutch materials & from manuscripts which were not easily perused. If at any time you feel disposed to look at the additional matter, the paging will direct you to it, that of the former edition being xxx retained in the margin.

In this last QR. I have reviewed Sara Coleridges translation of Dobrizhoffer,

⁽⁶⁾

– & in the next there will be a life of Camoens, including one of Faria e Sousa.

⁽⁷⁾

The proofs of it were returned last week.

The biographical letter which I have begun

⁽⁸⁾

has lain unfinished from a feeling that such communications would be ill timed while you have such pressing anxieties to occupy your mind. – My first volume of the War is advanced to 600 pages, – about 750 will be the extent, & I am now travelling fast toward the conclusion.

⁽⁹⁾

Today I had a chearful letter from my Uncle; his boys seem to be going on well, & his old age happier than that of most men. Gooden was here last week, & from him I heard of M^r Sealys

⁽¹⁰⁾

secret marriage, & the manner in which it was disclosed after his death. The old Lisbonians are almost all past away, – your Uncle

⁽¹¹⁾

& mine are nearly all that now remain: – & you & I are taking xxx our place among the elder part of xxxxx society. Johnny however will make you old M^r May before I shall be old M^r Southey.

⁽¹²⁾

Remember us to Mrs May & your daughters,

⁽¹³⁾

not forgetting Charlotte who I hope still remembers the Lamb & the Lark.

⁽¹⁴⁾

Write, – & tell me that I may expect you by the first of June –

God bless you
yours most affectionately
Robert Southey.

Notes

1. An army revolt in Porto in August 1820 led to the election of a Cortes in Portugal in December 1820 and demands that the monarchy return from Brazil, where it had fled in 1807–1808 following the French invasion. John VI (1767–1826; King of Portugal 1816–1826) arrived back in Lisbon on 3 July 1821 and eventually agreed to a new liberal Constitution in October 1822. John VI appointed his son Pedro (1798–1834; Emperor of Brazil 1822–1831) as Regent in Brazil, and Pedro summoned an elected advisory council to represent the different Brazilian provinces. These events eventually led to the separation of Portugal and Brazil on 7 September 1822. John May’s business affairs in Brazil had long been in financial difficulties and finally collapsed in early 1822.[back]

2. Unidentified.[back]

3. John May (1802–1879), after his expulsion from Eton in 1818, was being educated at a school in Laleham, near Staines, run by Thomas Arnold (1795–1842; DNB).[back]

4. John May and his son visited Southey for four weeks in August–September 1822.[back]

5. The second (1822) edition of the first volume of Southey’s History of Brazil (1810–1819).[back]

6. Southey reviewed Sara Coleridge’s An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay (1822) in Quarterly Review, 26 (January 1822), 277–323, published 30 March 1823. The book was a translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791), Historia de Abiponibus Equestri, Bellicosaque Paraquariae Natione (1784).[back]

7. John Adamson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Luis de Camoens (1820), no. 10 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. Southey reviewed it in Quarterly Review, 27 (April 1822), 1–39, published 4 July 1822. Southey included in his review (14–19) a life of Manuel de Faria e Sousa (1590–1649), an editor of the poetry of Luis Vaz de Camões (1524–1580), who Southey felt was ‘entitled to a fuller account in a life of Camoens than Mr. Adamson has assigned him’ (14).[back]

8. Southey to John May, 28 December 1821–21 April 1822, Collected Letters of Robert Southey, 1819–1821. Part Six, Letter 3772.[back]

9. The first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832). It ran to 806 pages.[back]

10. Richard Sealy (c. 1752–1821), Lisbon merchant and father of Henry Herbert Southey’s first wife, had died in Lisbon on 11 July 1821. His first wife, Elizabeth Baldwin, had died in 1811; his second marriage is unrecorded.[back]

11. Thomas Coppendale (d. 1833), John May’s uncle and business partner.[back]

12. John May’s son had been born in 1802, while Southey’s only living son, Charles Cuthbert Southey, had been born in 1819. John May would therefore have had to be referred to as ‘old Mr May’ to distinguish him from his son long before Southey needed to be referred to as ‘old Mr Southey’.[back]

13. May’s daughters, Mary Charlotte (b. 1804), Susanna Louisa (1805–1885) and Charlotte Livius (b. 1812).[back]

14. This may refer to a children’s book, possibly Lindley Murray (1745–1826; DNB), Introduction to the English Reader: or, A Selection of Pieces, in Prose and Poetry; calculated to Improve the Younger Classes of Learners in Reading; and to Imbue their Minds with a Love of Virtue (1811).[back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven