3869. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 14 July 1822

Address: To/ D^r Southey/ 15. Queen Anne Street/ Cavendish Square/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmarks: E/ 17 JY 17/ 1822; [illegible]
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Don. d. 4. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 14 July 1822

My dear Harry

I hope you may not come when John May is here

⁽¹⁾

for this reason only, that I like to husband my enjoyments & as it is badly management to introduce venison at a turtle feast

⁽²⁾

so is it bad economy of pleasure to have two friends at the same time. I am looking every day to hear from him. Meantime my old college friend Lightfoot is with me, whom I had not seen for eight & twenty years. He is now a married man with five children;

⁽³⁾

– his life has been uniform & laborious, but singularly fortunate; he has realized a respectable fortune as a schoolmaster,

⁽⁴⁾

& during one & twenty years, that he has been married,

⁽⁵⁾

has never had so much anxiety as to deprive him of a single nights rest. A happier man I never saw, & no man is more deserving of happiness. He stays here till Tuesday the 23^d. If John May arrives before that time the young John must sleep in the town, otherwise we have so managed matters as to find rooms for father & son.

One of my New England friends has sent me a cargo of Yankee books which I wish you would enquire for because they ought to have reached me before this time. They come from Mr Ticknor of Boston & were sent by the same vessel which brought me advice of them, to the care of his bookseller John Miller 69 Fleet Street, Strand,

⁽⁶⁾

with directions to forward them to me by coach. This is the American direction, & whether Miller live in Fleet Street, or in the Strand I cannot tell but think it is in the former. When you go that way call, & make enquiry concerning them.

A spell among the mountains will do you good. I was on Skiddaw yesterday, – & am trying whether by persevering in exercise I can, as on former occasion, put my system in such tone as for awhile to suspend my complaint.

⁽⁷⁾

It annoys me greatly on waking & I have little doubt but that it will effectually lay me up at last, if I live long enough for it to take its course. My cold is very much better tho I cannot yet dislodge it from the chest.

In the coach from Kendal Lightfoot fell in with a Laker of whom Mrs Gonne knows something. M^r Heathcote

⁽⁸⁾

a son of D^r Heathcote of Hackney.

⁽⁹⁾

– He drank tea with us the other evening, & is now lodging near the Grange

⁽¹⁰⁾

with a young pupil

Can you make room in your portmanteau for S^t Teresas life

⁽¹¹⁾

which is in Gooch’s possession?

Love to all –

God bless you
RS.

Notes

1. John May and his son, John May (1802–1879), visited Southey at Keswick 5 August–2 September 1822.[back]

2. Green sea turtle had been one the most expensive and high-status foods served at feasts since the mid eighteenth century.[back]

3. John Prideaux Lightfoot; Frances Jane Lightfoot (1806–1882), Southey’s god-daughter; Catherine Anne Lightfoot (1808–1898); Bridget Mary Lightfoot (1810–1889); Nicholas Francis Lightfoot (1811–1881), Vicar of Cadbury 1846–1855, Rector of Islip 1855–1881.[back]

4. Lightfoot had been Master of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Crediton, since March 1800. Although Lightfoot’s stipend had at first been only £20 p.a., his admission of boarding pupils, and improvements in the school's endowments, gave him a respectable, if not secure, income. In 1818 he received a stipend of £50 as headmaster, plus a house and an allowance for taxes. He was also paid £5 p.a. for each day pupil and charged 30 guineas p.a. for boarding pupils (of whom he had 37 in 1811). In addition, the Governors of the school had presented him to the nearby Rectory of Kennerleigh in 1807, with a stipend of £100 p.a.; Nicholas Carlisle, A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales, 2 vols (London, 1818), I, pp. 254–265.[back]

5. Nicholas Lightfoot married Bridget Prideaux (1768–1856) on 13 July 1801. They had met when he was usher at Kingsbridge Grammar School in Devon 1795–1800.[back]

6. John Miller (dates unknown), publisher who specialised in marketing and distributing American books and journals.[back]

7. Probably Southey’s rectal prolapse.[back]

8. Charles John Heatchcote (1796–1874) was a BA of Trinity College, Cambridge 1817, a clergyman, Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge 1823–1826 and a teacher at the university at this time. He was Stipendiary Curate of St Thomas’s, Stamford Hill 1827–1861. His pupil is unidentified.[back]

9. Charles Thomas Heathcote (1769–1820), Vicar of Rodmersham 1799–1815 and Rector of Little Wigborough 1814–1820, was Headmaster of Hackney School 1805–1815.[back]

10. The village of Grange in Borrowdale, about four miles from Keswick.[back]

11. St Teresa of Avila (1515–1582). The copy sent to Southey by Gooch is unidentified. Southey at some point acquired The Works of the Holy Mother St Teresa of Jesus, Foundress of the Reformation of Discalced Carmelites (1675), no. 2847 in the sale catalogue of his library.[back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven