3875. Robert Southey to John May, 25 July 1822
Endorsement: No. 227. 1822/ Robert Southey/ Keswick 25th July/ recd. 30th do./ ansd. personally
MS: Robert Southey Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. ALS; 2p.
Previously published: Charles Ramos (ed.), The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), p. 195.
I received your letter this day (Thursday) – on which our post does not go out for London. A letter which should leave Keswick tomorrow would arrive in town on Monday, – but you travel in a day coach, – & therefore I can only reach you by firing a shot at Birmingham.
There was two years ago a mail from Birmingham to Manchester, which started about ten or eleven in the forenoon. It may probably be earlier now, since the increased celerity of the mail-motions. That mail will bring you to Manchester time enough for the Kendal mail, in which you will have a much better chance of sleeping than in a Manchester Inn, & at any rate will pass the night more satisfactorily. It sets out from the Bridgewater arms,
& will bring you to Kendal early the next morning, in time for the Keswick Coach. You will reach Keswick by two o clock, & I shall be on the look out for you.
My old <friend> Lightfoot whom I was in hopes you would have seen here, will pass thro Birmingham on his return, while you are there. If you will leave a note at the Inn where the Manchester coach puts up, saying where you are to be found, he will be heartily glad to find some one who knows him there by name, & you will see one of the worthiest men in the world, who will give you a full account of us. He is a clergyman, & Master of the Grammar School at Crediton – an old fellow Collegian of mine, whom I had not seen for eight & twenty years till now.
I am in pretty good training at present, & we shall try Johns hand at an oar, & his feet upon the mountains.
God bless you
yours affectionately
Robert Southey.
