4136. Robert Southey to Nicholas Lightfoot [fragment], 18 February 1824

 

Address: [in another hand] London Febry twenty one 1824/ Revd N. Lightfoot/ Crediton/ CWWilliams Wynn
Postmark: FREE/ 21 FE21/ 1824/ +
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. lett. d. 110. AL; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 18 Feby. 1824
My dear Lightfoot

Your letter would have given me great pleasure if the melancholy conclusion had not thrown a cloud over it. I hardly dare ask you what has been the termination.

My movements after I last wrote to you were executed punctually as they had been foreplanned. I visited Norwich, & Playford Hall

(1)

Home of Thomas Clarkson.

(near Ipswich,); remained a clear day at Cambridge where Edith saw the place to great advantage by favour of the bright sunshine – returned to town on Thursday the 5th. in time to keep an engagement for dinner; went to Richmond on the Saturday, back to London on the Tuesday following, on the Friday seated myself in the Carlisle mail, & on Sunday reached my own home in safety, after having been absent fifteen weeks, & travelled fifteen hundred miles. God be thanked I found all well, & arrived in perfect health myself.

This is the third day, & I am not yet got fairly into joint. I was never before absent for so long a time, – not even when I crost the Alps.

(2)

Southey’s continental journey of May–August 1817. He left Cumberland for London on 22 April 1817 and did not return until 18 August 1817, making this absence slightly longer than that of 3 November 1823 until 15 February 1824.

There is so much to do that I hardly know where to begin. The first business however is to clear off heavy arrears of letter-writing, – for I have brought home with me a huge pile of letters from all sorts of people upon all sorts of subjects: a whole host of unknown persons seeming all perfectly to agree in supposing that I can have no other earthly business than to attend to them & their concerns.

As yet I seem hardly awakened from a long dream. Already however the days appear to pass as rapidly, as they did slowly a week ago. The journey has been profitable in the best way; it has freshened old recollections, & laid in store of new ones. And I can now retrace at leisure the scenes which I was too much hurried to enjoy thoroughly while they lasted. Crediton has left upon me a very lively & very pleasing impression. A few names indeed have dropt thro the holes of a memory which begins to be the worse for the wear; – but every thing else is clear & vivid. I have nowhere enjoyed myself more; nowhere seen a happier family, a happier man, – one who has more cause to be happy, or more deserves to be s[MS missing]

My book,

(3)

The Book of the Church (1824).

as far as could be judged when I left London, was doing well. Murray offered me 700 guineas for the copyright: this I refused to take, (telling him he must be well aware that of all the authors with whom he had ever been concerned there were none whom he had paid so ill as myself. He admitted this to be the case.) And if the Book should obtain a regular sale, as an essential part of English history, nowhere else to be found in a connected narrative, or legible form, it may become a valuable property.

Concerning the University Living,

(4)

The University of Oxford had the right to appoint the Vicar of South Petherwin in Cornwall. In March 1824, Robert Stephen Stevens (c. 1778–1856), a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, was instituted to the Vicarage after a long campaign to mobilise influential backers at the University. Southey may have been approached to support Stevens by his old friend Thomas Poole, who certainly wrote to Mrs Coleridge, asking her to obtain the backing of her Coleridge relatives at Oxford – both Poole and Stevens were from Somerset and had friends in common; see Sara Coleridge to Thomas Poole [January–Februar…

applications came to me from friends of both candidates at the same time; & consequently I have made no attempt to serve either.

I must not forget the thanks of Bertha Kate & Isabel for their broaches, – nor of Edith May for her beautiful ring. Mrs S. sends her kindest regards, present mine also to Mrs Lightfoot, – to my god-daughter, Kate & Bridget, & Sir Nico.

(5)

Nicholas Lightfoot married Bridget Prideaux (1768–1856) on 13 July 1801. Their children were: John Prideaux Lightfoot; Frances Jane Lightfoot (1806–1882), Southey’s god-daughter; Catherine Anne Lightfoot (1808–1898); Bridget Mary Lightfoot (1810–1889); and Nicholas Francis Lightfoot (1811–1881), Vicar of Cadbury 1846–1855, Rector of Islip 1855–1881.

Remember that you know the way to Keswick, & that the sooner you retrace it, the happier you will make us all. – Make my thanks & compliments to all your neighbours for whose civilities I am obliged, – more especially to Mr – your brother in-law

(6)

Possibly Roger Ilbert Prideaux (1765–1850), eldest brother of Bridget Prideaux, and a solicitor in Kingsbridge, Devon.

– (I cannot call to mind his name) –

[remainder of MS missing]

Notes

1. Home of Thomas Clarkson.[back]
2. Southey’s continental journey of May–August 1817. He left Cumberland for London on 22 April 1817 and did not return until 18 August 1817, making this absence slightly longer than that of 3 November 1823 until 15 February 1824.[back]
3. The Book of the Church (1824).[back]
4. The University of Oxford had the right to appoint the Vicar of South Petherwin in Cornwall. In March 1824, Robert Stephen Stevens (c. 1778–1856), a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, was instituted to the Vicarage after a long campaign to mobilise influential backers at the University. Southey may have been approached to support Stevens by his old friend Thomas Poole, who certainly wrote to Mrs Coleridge, asking her to obtain the backing of her Coleridge relatives at Oxford – both Poole and Stevens were from Somerset and had friends in common; see Sara Coleridge to Thomas Poole [January–February 1824], Minnow among the Tritons: Mrs S. T. Coleridge’s Letters to Thomas Poole 1799–1834 (London, 1934), pp. 107–114. Stevens’s main rival was John Williams (c. 1774–1828), a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford 1809–1826, and friend of John Taylor Coleridge, who became a Fellow at this College in 1813. John Taylor Coleridge may well have asked Southey to support his friend. Williams was eventually rewarded by becoming Vicar of Probus, Cornwall 1826–1828, a rather more valuable living in the gift of the Bishops of Exeter.[back]
5. Nicholas Lightfoot married Bridget Prideaux (1768–1856) on 13 July 1801. Their children were: John Prideaux Lightfoot; Frances Jane Lightfoot (1806–1882), Southey’s god-daughter; Catherine Anne Lightfoot (1808–1898); Bridget Mary Lightfoot (1810–1889); and Nicholas Francis Lightfoot (1811–1881), Vicar of Cadbury 1846–1855, Rector of Islip 1855–1881.[back]
6. Possibly Roger Ilbert Prideaux (1765–1850), eldest brother of Bridget Prideaux, and a solicitor in Kingsbridge, Devon.[back]
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