3931. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 13 December 1822

Address: To/ G.C. Bedford Esq^re/ Exchequer./ Westminster
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 16 DE 16/ 1822
Endorsement: 13. Dec^r. 1823. 1822/ Copies of Penins. War
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 26. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 13 Dec. 1822

My dear Grosvenor

Thank you for the half notes, & for your story of the price of a Black Captain,

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– which is a good story. Lord Wellington I believe, would have been glad to have xxxx sold <some> of his officers cheaper & would have thought himself well rid of them.

I ordered the copy for G. Hawker,

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somewhat with prospective view to some statements promised, – (I think) in one of your letters, relating to Soults flight.

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It has been a rule with me to present copies in quarters where materials have been supplied to me; – this I have done with other books where the expence fell in proportion on myself, – in this case it will fall upon the work; – & my bargain having been made ten years ago is so improvident a one,

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that I have no reason to be scrupulous in laying the charge of a few copies on the proprietors. – With regard to this, the destination cannot be changed, if it comes, as I conclude it will, with the Generals name written therein. – You shall introduce me to the brother,

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& I will find an opportunity of sending him some other book.

My own copies arrived yesterday.

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One of my own works when it first reaches me is as agreable to me as a new plaything to a child, – & I am not yet tired of looking at it. It has prevented me from sending the Ode

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by this post, the said Ode being finished, & half transcribed. I have now to put together pieces of it for the Musdoc, – & tomorrow I shall dispatch it to your highness. When it has lain by for a few weeks, & received such alterations here & there as I shall then see how to make, it bids fair to please me tolerably well. The subject is the Kings visit to Scotland:

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– or rather it starts with that, – a sort of parallel to the last years Ode.

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It has cost me a weeks work, which I should not grudge, if it had not taken me from the B of the Church,

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now in good progress.

We are going on well, thank God. It would amuse you to hear how gravely his Very Reverence, the Rural Dean talks of his primacy in rus,

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– & how exceedingly pleased he is with his destination.

God bless you
RS.

You would render my eldest daughter a good service, if – when you pass a shop where such things are sold, – you would purchase for her some ultramarine

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& send it in a frank

I cannot guess what there was in the tenour of my last, which you do not like.

Notes

1. Grosvenor Bedford’s letter to Southey of 11 December 1822 had contained halves of banknotes to the value of £40. Bedford told Southey that this was the amount that Quashy Boland (dates unknown), a black man who served as a Captain in the British Army during the American Revolutionary wars of 1775–1783, had been sold for by a commissary. Bedford had become friendly with Boland, who regularly visited the Exchequer, where Bedford worked, to pick up instalments of the pension of £27 p.a. that Boland had been awarded in 1783. Boland was last recorded as being in receipt of his pension in 1813 and may have died around that time.[back]

2. 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 could be inserted into the first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

3. Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult (1769–1851), Marshal of the French Army. He was in command of the French forces in northern Portugal in 1809 when they were defeated and forced to withdraw to Galicia. Hawker had taken part in many of the key actions in this conflict.[back]

4. Murray offered Southey one thousand guineas for his History of the Peninsular War, in two volumes (rather than the three it eventually comprised), Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 23 July 1813, Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Four, Letter 2284.[back]

5. Peter Hawker (c. 1773–1833), Rector of Woodchester 1809–1833.[back]

6. Copies of the first volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).[back]

7. ‘Scotland, an Ode, Written after the King’s Visit to that Country. By Robert Southey, Esq. Poet Laureat’, The Bijou: Or Annual of Literature and the Arts (London, 1828), pp. 81–88. This was Southey’s New Year’s ode for 1823 in fulfilment of his obligations as Poet Laureate.[back]

8. George IV paid a state visit to Scotland 15–29 August 1822.[back]

9. ‘Ireland’, Sir Thomas More: or. Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, 2 vols (London, 1829), I, pp. [295]–302. The poem was Southey’s new year’s ode for 1822, as Poet Laureate and was inspired by George IV’s state visit to Ireland 12 August–3 September 1821.[back]

10. Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).[back]

11. ‘in the country’; part of an in-joke about the supposed clerical ambitions of Southey’s infant son.[back]

12. A deep blue pigment used in painting.[back]

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3931. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 13 December 1822

3931. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 13 December 1822

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer