3797. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 9 February 1822

 

Address: To/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ near Lymington/ Hampshire
Endorsement: No 23 To Miss Caroline Bowles
MS: British Library, Add MS 47889. ALS; 4p.
Previously published: Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 24–26.

Keswick. 9 Feby. 1822.

Thank you for your little volume.

(1)

The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (1822).

I received it yesterday evening. It was with pleasure that I saw it advertised, & with more pleasure that I saw it turn up among the contents of a heavy parcel. Have I perused it with pleasure? both with as much pleasure & as much pain as you have wished to excite. And whether most to find fault with you for chusing such deeply tragic subjects, or to praise you for the manner in which you have treated them I know not.

For the execution, it is not too much to say that you have become such a poetess as I believed & hoped from the first. You have the ear & the eye & the heart of poetry, – & you have them in perfection. Had this volume appeared thirty years ago, England would have rung from side to side with its praises. And gay as the flower market now is, take my word for it it will flourish when all the annuals of the season have faded.

William & Jean

(2)

‘William and Jean’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 103–124.

would to my judgement, have been made two poems with advantage. – The picture which is, like all your pictures, true, & finely coloured by itself; – but it is too chearful, too happy, for the tale which follows

(3)

‘Conte à Mon Chien’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 125–147.

– Your tragedy is always in the right tone, having with it the true & only balm. Yet it is too painful. I feel it to be so, & in this respect I may judge of others by myself. We are less able to bear these emotions as we advance in years. Youth courts them, because youth has happiness as well as health & spirits in excess. But at my time of life, tranquillity is the treasure of <the> mind, – & if it must be broken, more willingly would I have it done by comedy or farce that makes the sides ache, than by any thing which xxx excites a heartache for imaginary distress, – especially with such possible & actual scenes as that of your Editha,

(4)

‘Editha: a Dramatic Sketch’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. [187]–222.

– perhaps the more painful to me because I have a daughter of that name.

Give me I intreat you, a picture in summer & sunshine, – a tale that in its progress & termination shall answer to the wishes of the reader. Make the creatures of your imagination as happy as you would make them if they were real beings whose fortunes depended upon your will. Your poem will then be read again & again with delight. You will please more readers, & please them more. It is a road to popular favour which has not been tried in this country, & it is a sure one. Goethe & Voss have found it so in Germany. And I speak sincerely when I say that express my belief that you can produce as fine a poem as the Herman & Dorothea, or the Luise.

(5)

Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826), Luise (1783) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Hermann and Dorothea (1797).

It is better for yourself too to dwell upon happier themes. You have no such exuberance of health & spirits that you can afford with impunity to shed so many tears as these poems must have cost you.

I must not forget to mention the Sea of Life,

(6)

‘Sea of Life’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 83–102.

– which is throughout in a fine tone both of feeling & versification. At P. 95 you should have written ‘ignes fatui’, – but marsh-fires would xxx <be> better, if the word marshes did not occur in the next line.

(7)

‘led astray/ By igni fatui from the beaten way,/ They founder in the marshes of despair’: The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), p. 94. Ignis fatuus, the meterological phenomenon popularly known as will-o-the-wisp, phosphorescent light seen over marshy ground at night.

And now let me ask how you are? That you are in the sure way to reputation, & that of no mean degree, or transitory kind you must yourself know; – & that feeling will encourage you in a favourite pursuit. I think you are right in withholding your name. There is an advantage in exciting curiosity, – & sometimes a comfort in privacy which one is not sensible of till it is lost.

I shall send you my Book of the Church

(8)

Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).

as soon as it is published – you will go with it in feeling, & find in it, I think, something that will interest you. But do not wait for it to let me hear from you, for it will not be ready in less than three or four months. – I am fastened to my desk by many employments, but well both in myself, & in my family (God be thanked) – & no ways disturbed by such enemies as Lord Byron.

(9)

In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. The ‘calumnies’ Byron believed Southey to have later spread were rumours that Byron and Shelley had engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had re…

God bless you
Yrs faithfully
Robert Southey.

Notes

1. The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (1822). [back]
2. ‘William and Jean’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 103–124. [back]
3. ‘Conte à Mon Chien’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 125–147. [back]
4. ‘Editha: a Dramatic Sketch’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. [187]–222. [back]
5. Johann Heinrich Voss (1751–1826), Luise (1783) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Hermann and Dorothea (1797). [back]
6. ‘Sea of Life’, The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), pp. 83–102. [back]
7. ‘led astray/ By igni fatui from the beaten way,/ They founder in the marshes of despair’: The Widow’s Tale: and Other Poems (London, 1822), p. 94. Ignis fatuus, the meterological phenomenon popularly known as will-o-the-wisp, phosphorescent light seen over marshy ground at night. [back]
8. Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824). [back]
9. In the ‘Appendix’ to ‘The Two Foscari’, Sardanapulus, A Tragedy. The Two Foscari, A Tragedy. Cain, A Mystery (London, 1821), p. 328, Byron had cautioned: ‘I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey’s calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return from Switzerland against me and others.’ Southey had visited Switzerland in his continental tour of May–August 1817. The ‘calumnies’ Byron believed Southey to have later spread were rumours that Byron and Shelley had engaged in a ‘League of Incest’ during their residence in Switzerland in 1816. Southey had responded by writing to the Editor of the Courier, 5 January 1822, Letter 3776. His letter was published in the Courier on 11 January 1822. [back]
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