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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 229–230 [in part].
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.
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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
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I have something to say which your friends & neighbours may find it useful to know. Landor whose estate at Lanthony is very
extensive has several hundred acres to let at this time, for 20/ an acre, tythe free, the parochial rates extremely small, & he
will grant leases of 21 years, stipulating an advance of 4/ per acre after the first ten. He has also many thousand acres to let for
inclosing for the same term, at 3/ for the first ten years, 6/ for the remainder. a rail road is now forming within a mile of the
estate, along a level to the market town (Abergavenny) lime & marl are on the estate, & underwood <sufficient> for all
the new inclosures will be given. He hopes to get a scientific tenant for about 1600 acres, to whom he would give every encouragement,
but who ought to have about 6, or 7000 £ at command. The Taylorsup his wants known. They probably know the nature of that part of
the country, that land is very low, because the roads are bad, the farming slovenly, & there is a want of large towns to take off
the produce. Lanthony however has fewer of these disadvantages than most other parts of the
adjoining country. It is nine miles from Abergavenny, which is the best market in that neighbourhood, – there is at present a good road
of Landor’s making, & the rail road will be as good as a canal. As for
the soil it is the finest possible, a rich, deep, red mould.
We spent three nights & two days with Landor, sleeping
in one of the towers of the ruin, where he has three habitable rooms while his house is building. The house will be a good one, very
much resembling the front of that at St Helens, from the form of its roof. When we left them, they took us as far
as Hereford, & from thence we reached the Brownes at Ludlow to supper. There we
past four days very pleasantly, in the course of which I saw Ludlow itself & the Castle, which is of its kind the finest
<thing> I ever saw, – Croft Castle with its beautiful grounds, – the present proprietor a Mr Davisit which you suppose it literally to be because he speaks of cleaning it, it is a beautiful
shallow spring. the bones are found only in the early spring, as the old woman who acted as Naiad upon the occasion told me, & it
would not surprize if me if xxx a person who went at that season should be told that the right time was autumn.
Another day we gave to the grounds at Downton, Knights place.xxx books of his own writing about naval affairs, which you must shall overhaul when next you visit Keswick.
Three days we feasted upon the venison & pineapples at Teddesley, where
the Wolseleysr Wolseley is become methodistical,
& Miss Browne,
Mrs Rathboner Holbrooke
James White comes to us on Tuesday. Humphrey Senhouse comes at the same time to the Colonel. I have left myself <room> for nothing more than our love to Sarah & a kiss to Margaret.