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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 341–343. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I fancied that I had written to you at no very distant date, – but I believe the circumstances of having said something to Mrs Montagu which I meant also to have said to you, has been running in my head as if you had received it. – This circumstance is, that the presence of Mrs M. disturbed me during her whole stay at Keswick, – first by the very striking resemblance which she bears to my mother , – & that when that feeling was abated, by a perpetual apprehension that she was in a far worse state of health than any other person supposed her to be, – in fact that she [was] wasting away by some species of atrophy. This of course I have not told her. But being exceedingly struck, as you may well conceive, by her whole mind & manner, – it constantly hung upon me.
Poor Jackson, you
perhaps do not know, began a house adjoining what we used to call the
wood-house.when
you want it .
Be [MS cut]
Kehama
There is nothing that you can do for me in town, – all my wants there lie at the booksellers, & with them I have regular communication. Edith is to accompany me in the spring to visit my new Aunt in Streatham. I hear there is a new cousin expected in that quarter. The more the merrier is my maxim for my friends as well as myself.
My correspondence with Mrs
Montagu was concerning Coleridge who went to London for the express purpose of putting
himself under Carlisle to be
cured of – evil habits,