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British Library, Add MS 47888. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 192–195.
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.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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& has been used for the ampersand sign.
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At last my dear Edith your letter has reached me, but not till yesterday, not till after much expectation & frequent disappointment. so much the more welcome was its arrival. I must not ask you to write again. I must not expect it – but Edith can I help feeling something like disappointment if no tidings of you should arrive before Saturday next?
I heard from God-knows-who & on I-know-not-what-authority that Wordsworth was returned.xx would you not buy off a few hours of the ensuing week at a high price?
Yesterday according to custom, finding leisure in town, I went to George
Dyer, & put myself under his arm to be introduced to Major Cartwright, the venerable patriot, respectable for so many
years exertion in the cause of parliamentary <reform.>xxxxxxx clergyman> whom I saw also was once a celebrated poet & is now a good
mechanic.nor man when the Pantheon of British Liberty shall be erected no man, whose name will more deserve to be
inscribed on the columns of glory. – Yesterday I was fortunate enough to pick up the very bookr Foxs. d6, & my Kalendar
For the next week my engagements are many. seven days more have I to pass in London. three dinners out of these at
Grays Inn – Tuesday with Hamilton,r Peacock,
You ask me about Wales – I hear nothing to tempt me that way, nor have I any letter from Biddlecombe. it seems therefore likely that we shall go to Devonshire, whither I suppose my Mother will like to accompany us, & we may perhaps find a cottage in our way that will suit her, & please us as our summer home, for Edith we will not waste our two summers in London. I will have a Library there, two or three boxes of books, poems, romances, french &c, such as will not be most wanted in town, which would be heavy in carriage, will amuse us, & help me in my manufacture of verses.
By this time you must have seen Burnett. I thought he would have
been in Bristol before you had left it. I hope Carlisle may follow me instead
of accompanying me, & will endeavour to arrange it so, because it will be more convenient, & because I should so much rather be
without any company on my return. – You will not Edith leave Stowey with much regret I suppose.
how should you & I feel in an eight or ten months seperation? if a whim took me abroad? no no Edith – whenever I go abroad you
shall go too. the duty of marriage is for two persons to render each other happy. Edith it often occurs to me what widely different
beings we are from what a single life would have rendered us. a single man has no one to know him, thoroughly to understand him, at
least I never should have had – & if you Edith had never known affection you would scarcely have understood your own capability of
happiness. Edith it is five years since you & I first became intimate, five years ago at this season xx did you & I play with the lilac blossom in the Old Market. do you remember it? true affection increases with time,
habit makes it a part of our identity. – never did I think of you more frequently or more fondly than during this absence from
home.
I wrote to my Mother some time ago about Edward, & shall write again about my return. once I have heard from her; she wishes us
home again. Why did you not go see Wokey Hole?xx sight of which would repay a long journey. Wells <Cathedral>
My dear Edith you have taken up my evenings most unconscionably – I will not <say> most unprofitably, for what
could I have written to produce more pleasure? & therefore could I have been better employed? but you are not quite fair Edith. you
do not make return enough when you are from me. – at home I have all cause for satisfaction & thankfulness to you – but now are you
not somewhat my debtor & may I not remind you so? & may I not hope one letter to say you will meet me? I do not expect to write
oftener than once more. you will perhaps leave Stowey on Saturday next. I do not understand the
posts – & besides in the next seven days I shall have more to do than to relate. – Holcroft
Snivel