Address: To/ William Heathcote Esq^re/ Winchester
Postmark: JA/ 2/ 1824
Endorsement: M^r Southey/ Jan 2. 1823
Seal: red wax; design illegible
MS: Hampshire Record Office, 63M84/234/23. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: Dating from postmark; Southey misdates by a calendar year.

I ought sooner to have acknowledged your obliging letter; but you know enough of my hurried manner of life in London to account for & excuse an involuntary appearance of neglect. I should regret not seeing you at Winchester more, if it were not likely that we may arrive in town the same day, & <even> not impossible that we may fall in upon the road. For I shall leave Lymington by the stage on Tuesday with the intention of proceeding to London by the first conveyance, & it may easily happen that good Fortune may appoint you a place in the same coach. – Mine is a harassed life at present. This evening I set off for Devonshire, & before I reach home in the middle of February must travel not less than a thousand miles.

Errol was better on Thursday, & my brother is not uneasy concerning him.

Before I received your letter my place had been taken for Exeter, & engagements made at every point of my circuit. A very wearying one it will be; – one day at most places, two at another, & only four with the old friend for whose sake I undertake the journey. – On the second day after my return I start again, with my daughter then, for Norwich – Ipswich & Cambridge – a fortnights round. Then a three days visit at Richmond, after which I shall put myself into the Carlisle mail, & feel at rest when nothing remains to be done but to be whirled over three hundred miles.

Believe my my dear Sir
Yrs very truly
Robert Southey