3852. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8 June 1822

Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esq^re/ Exchequer/ Westminster
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 1x xx 1x/ xx2x
Endorsements: 8 June 1822./ How does the water come down at Lowdore?; [in pencil] 19-9/ 16-1; N^o. 60.; To Grosvenor C. Bedford Esq; 8 June 1822.
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 26. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 313–315 [in part].

My dear Grosvenor

I received your letter with as much pleasure as a man most desperately uncomfortable in his bodily feelings could derive from any thing. My catarrh of this year deserves to be called a cat-a-mountain-arrh. The extreme heat of the weather aggravates it. I spend about half my time on the sofa with my eyes shut, & the other half in blowing my nose. Nothing ails my eyes but the weakness which this violent cold produces. However my spirits are not a jot the worse, & Mrs Coleridge xx can bear testimony that I practise all varieties of intonation in sneezing. She can testify also that I never sneeze like a sneaker. No! I let the house, & the town & the mountain echoes hear me.

Oh Grosvenor is it not a pity that two men who love nonsense so cordially, & naturally & bon a fidecally as you & I, – should be three hundred miles asunder! For my part I insist upon it that there is no sense so good as your honest, genuine nonsense. Read for instance a pamphlett of M^r Ricardos,

⁽¹⁾

or a treatise of Dugald Stewarts,

⁽²⁾

or a criticism upon it in the Q.R. – or an agricultural Report from a Committee of the H. Commons with the evidence at full length, or a debate upon the said report,

⁽³⁾

& then tell me whether five minutes of the Butler

⁽⁴⁾

is not worth the whole existence of all the political economists, metaphysicians & critics that ever have xxxx xxxd hxxd perxxted consumed time & paper! Is the counsellors, – the bishops – the Speakers – the Judges Chancellors Wig so respectable a covering for the head as the Cap & Bells? Counsellors? Judges? Bishops? Speakers? Chancellors? has there been ever any lack of them? – any scarcity of heads to wear becomingly their full-buckled honours? But <why> have xxx the Cap & Bells disappeared from Court?

⁽⁵⁾

Why – but because this degenerate age produces none worthy to succeed to it. The King cannot can create confer dignity, he can create Knight Baronet, Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquis & Dukes, but he cannot create a Fool. He can find fellows by the dozen to talk sense or what passes for it in the H.C. but where will he find one who can talk nonsense to the purpose? And is there any of his Ministers who xxxx do him half so much service in Parliament, as a good Fool would do there?

For myself – I have the honour to be his Majestys Poet. And I am also poet to my own son, – your godson, who says the reason why he has no tail is because he is a small homo, & homos have no tails. In the discharge of this latter office (the pleasanter of the two) I have lately composed the following poem descriptive <poem> which I hope may please Godfather as well as it pleases Godson.

How does the Water come down at Lowdore?

⁽⁶⁾

It comes creeping & leaping,
And dripping & skipping,
And hissing & whizzing,
And whitening & brightening,
And quivering & shivering,
And falling & brawling
And hitting & splitting,
And glancing & dancing,
And shining & twining,
And rattling & battling,
And shaking & quaking,
And pouring & roaring,
And waving & raving,
And tossing & crossing,
And toiling & boiling,
And foaming & roaming,
And guggling & struggling,
And heaving & cleaving,
And thundering & floundering,
And sprinkling & twinkling & wrinkling,
And sounding & bounding & rounding,
And bubbling & troubling & doubling,
And dividing & gliding & sliding,
And gleaming & streaming & beaming,
And grumbling & rumbling & tumbling,
And rushing & flushing & gushing,
And clattering & battering & shattering,
And curling & whirling & purling & hurling,
And thumping & flumping & bumping & jumping,
And dashing & flashing & splashing & clashing,
All at once, & all oer, with a mighty uproar
And this way the Water comes down at Lowdore.

————

God bless you
RS.

8 June. 1822.

Notes

1. David Ricardo (1772–1823; DNB), the former stockbroker, classical economist and reformer, MP for Portarlington 1819–1823.[back]

2. Dugald Stewart (1753–1828; DNB), the Scottish philosopher and mathematician who was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh 1785–1820. His ‘A Second Dissertation Prefixed to the Supplemental Volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Moral and Political Philosophy in Europe, from the Revival of Letters’ (1821), was reviewed, possibly by William Rowe Lyall (1788–1857; DNB), in Quarterly Review, 26 (January 1822), 474–514, published 30 March 1822.[back]

3. First and Second Reports from the Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Allegations of the Several Petitions Complaining of the Distressed State of the Agriculture of the United Kingdom (1822). The Committee’s reports were received on 1 April 1822 and the House of Commons resolved to set up a Committee of the Whole House to examine a series of government and opposition resolutions on the matter, after a lengthy debate on 29 April. The Committee’s debates took up most of the time of the Commons over 6–13 May 1822 and resulted in a government bill to amend the Corn Laws.[back]

4. The mock-heroic figure whose adventures Southey and Bedford had elaborated since childhood.[back]

5. The role of Court Jester seems to have last been occupied during the reign of Charles I (1600–1649; King of Great Britain 1625–1649; DNB).[back]

6. An early version of ‘The Cataract of Lodore, Described in Rhymes for the Nursery, By One of the Lake Poets’, published in Joanna Baillie (ed.), A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, And From Living Authors (London, 1823), pp. 280–283. The poem describes the Lodore Falls, formed by the beck from Watendlath Tarn, as it descends towards the southern end of Derwentwater.[back]

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The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven