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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 359–362.
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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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.
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You will have wondered at a silence unusually long. in fact I have a heavy arrears of letters to pay off. fine weather
has led me day after day mountaineering with a long succession of visitors. We have a round of company here which intrudes upon many an
evening. Duppa is with me – & all these interruptions & temptations give
such assistance to my printer in our race that he is hard upon my heels.r Pownall the agent,
I corrected this evening the 38th sheet of Madoc which brings it down to the beginning of the old tenth book, now the
fourteenth section of the second part, & I have also this evening just finished the revision of Madocs combat with
Coanocotzin.
Now, when the time of your visit would have been over, I am glad that you have not been, & that it is still to
be looked on to, but seize the first temptation of spring & do not let us wait for the chance of another summer. You will find me
the best of all possible guides.
Miss Smith, Miss Kennedy & Miss Baileyr Crumptons
Did I tell you that Tom had had a slight attack of the yellow fever
which had got on board his ship owing to her being obliged to go to an infected place for stores? his hopes of prize money were all
over, for the ship was given up.
___
October 11. This letter has remained long enough for sundry unpleasant circumstances to fall out before it was sent off. Edward has compleated his own ruin. Dr
Thomas sent him off from Kingston with money to fit himself out as lavishly & wantonly disposing of my Uncles property to him, as if it had been his own, & to a favourite son. he
expended 150 £ upon him for 8 months board & this fitting out. Whether he went on board at all I know not, but last night arrives a
bill from a brothel at Plymouth Dock – for such the house must be by the handwriting & spelling of the mistress, & at the same
time news to Mrs Peachey a friend of ours here, from her sister
Evils never come alone. Our house is sold over our head & we shall be
unkennelled at Whitsuntide.
God bless you. We are all well – & I am as little uncomfortable under the circumstance as possible. I have had too many real evils ever to be cast down by accidents that do not touch my happiness in a vital part.