3833. Robert Southey to Edith May Southey, 7 May 1822

MS: MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856)
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 305–306.

Keswick, May 7. 1822.

My dear E. May,

Fortune, I think, has fitted you with a physician

⁽¹⁾

to your taste. He has tabooed ham, vinegar, red–herrings, and all fruits. But if the melancholy Jaques

⁽²⁾

were not a heretic, he would never have put you to a trial so far beyond the strength of women. If Eve, when she had the choice of the whole garden besides (a garden, too, as rich in fruits as William Herbert’s,

⁽³⁾

which you have been visiting, is in flowers), could not refrain from the forbidden apple,

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how does he suppose that a daughter of Eve can resist strawberries, cherries, and currants, to say nothing of green gooseberries and hard pears?

Your second letter arrived to–day, and Sara has it at Mrs. Calvert’s,

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whither she is gone for the remainder of the week. I have not much to tell you. The boat is in the water, and looks very well; the pew

⁽⁶⁾

was painted yesterday; your uncle Tom has lost a cow, in calf–bed; sundry rats have been taken; I expect a parcel by the next carrier, and your plant is as well as can be expected; whereby you will understand that there is an addition to its leaves. But this new leaf has been produced in a curious manner, the stem proceeding from the base of the youngest and largest of its three ancestors, and all the folded part from the mother, or middle one; so that its genealogy is more puzzling than the relationship between Dick and John.

⁽⁷⁾

I am glad you take so kindly to the waters, and that they seem to agree with you so well. What a happy quarter of an hour you must pass between the two draughts! I had forgotten to tell you, as part of the domestic news, that I have laid hands, since your departure, upon a larger and richer picture of Mukkens

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than any which Cupn had ever seen before. Having told you all that has happened, I believe I must now tell you what has not. Pone

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is not gone; Mr. Midgeley

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is not come; Miss W****

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is not married: Mr. F***

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is not false, and a she–Friar will not be the same thing as a Nun; Mr. P***

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has made no proposals to ****** (by–the–by, if he has ever any children they will all be pipkins)

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; Sara has had no letter from W***;

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I have not yet heard from Mr. B.;

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your mother, notwithstanding her persevering search, has not found anything under the bed at night; I am neither younger, nor fatter, nor quieter, nor graver, than when you departed for Harrogate. O ye immortal Powers!

⁽¹⁷⁾

I would send you a noise, but I cannot tell how to enclose it; but you may imagine one at breakfast–time.

My movements will be determined by yours. If Mr. Wordsworth goes with us, we shall travel in a jaunting–car, which will bring us all back. If I go alone, I shall follow your course to Skipton, and chaise it, solo, from thence, which will be better than taking the Penrith road, and sleeping the second night at Borough Bridge. I do not wish to be more than three days at Harrogate, at the most.

Remember us to Miss H. and her sister,

⁽¹⁸⁾

and so

God bless you,
Very magnificent daughter,
YO EL PA.

Notes

1. John Jacques (d. 1832), a doctor based in Harrogate.[back]

2. The ‘Melancholy Jaques’, a character in As You Like It (1599).[back]

3. William Herbert (1778–1847; DNB). He abandoned a career in politics and the law for the Church of England, serving as Rector of Spofforth, near Wetherby, 1814–1840, and Dean of Manchester 1840–1847. Herbert was also a poet and a noted writer on botany. His garden at the Old Rectory, Spofforth, was well known and the site of Herbert’s development of the Spofforth crocus.[back]

4. In Genesis 3, Eve, the first woman, was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit was usually identified as an apple.[back]

5. Mary Calvert (c. 1775–1834), née Mitchinson, the wife of William Calvert.[back]

6. The Southey family’s pew at St Kentigern’s church, Crosthwaite.[back]

7. ‘Dick and John’ were commonly used for fictional characters, including by Southey himself in his Botany Bay Eclogue, ‘John, Samuel, & Richard’, Poems (Bristol, 1797), pp. 92–98.[back]

8. Cuthbert Southey’s pronunciation of ‘monkeys’.[back]

9. Unidentified.[back]

10. Midgeley (first name and dates unknown) was renting Greta Lodge, next door to Greta Hall.[back]

11. Mary Laetitia Wilbraham (1799–1874), Tom Southey’s lodger.[back]

12. Joseph Harrison Fryer (1777–1855) of Whitley House, Northumberland. A surveyor, geologist and mining engineer, Fryer spent part of each year at Keswick. At this time he was renting Ormathwaite, a large house about a mile and a quarter from Keswick. He married Mary Laetitia Wilbraham in June 1822.[back]

13. Unidentified.[back]

14. A ‘pipkin’ is a small cooking pot, but also a diminutive of the name ‘Philip’, so it is possible that ‘Mr P’ was a Mr Philip.[back]

15. Unidentified.[back]

16. Possibly Grosvenor Charles Bedford.[back]

17. Joseph Addison (1672–1719; DNB), Cato, a Tragedy (1712), Act 5, scene 3, line 9.[back]

18. Joanna Hutchinson (1780–1841).[back]

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The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven