4142. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 24 February 1824

 

Address: [deletions and readdress in another hand] To/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ Lymington/ Hampshire/ <Calshot Castle/ Southampton>
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298; [partial] LYM ON 98
Endorsement: No 46. 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. 52–54.

Keswick. 24 Feby. 1824

Since I returned I have been replying to the heap of letters which as they followed me about were xxx xxx laid aside till a more convenient season: you will easily understand that such letters are meant as had no right to more ceremonious treatment. I have <been> unpacking, arranging, & idling over the long looked for box of books from Italy, & a parcel of some forty volumes which I dispatched from Norwich. I have been enjoying an old coat & old shoes, – habits so regular that the clock might be regulated by them, – my usual breakfast, my usual hours, my xxx after-dinner sleep – the consciousness of being at rest, – in a word home after a long absence. Every All things are now resuming their old course. The children come to me regularly with their lessons, & I go down to supper with folio under my arm, to be taken with the black-currant rum, as a composer. Rumpelstilzchen arches his back to meet my salutation in the kitchen, & Hurlyburlybuss

(1)

Feline members of the Southey household.

greets me with the like demonstration of good will in the garden. Proof sheets are the only things wanting to my contentment, & I shall not be long without them.

I had been absent fifteen weeks wanting one day. To say nothing of the arrears of business which so long an interruption occasions, there were heavy arrears of sleep; & if on the former score I am debtor, here I am on the creditor side of the account. By a fair calculation not less than three hundred & forty five hours of good honest sleep were due to me when I reached home, at the rate of three hours lost in every twenty-four, besides six nights past in stage coaches. Such arrears are like the national debt, too large to be paid off; & having taken out a small part, I am making a magnanimous resolution to cancel the remainder of the debt, & rise as early as I did in London. The produce of this time before breakfast will find its way to Buckland, & before you receive this letter I shall have made a beginning.

(2)

Southey was beginning work on ‘Robin Hood’. The resulting incomplete work was published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [1]–36.

There can be no more difficulty in your writing the verse of Thalaba,

(3)

Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801).

than there is in an expert dancer’s acquiring a new step. The simple rule is to consult the ear alone, & when you use lines of less than the ten syllables, let the pause generally be at the end of the line.

I sent your sea-poem

(4)

Caroline Bowles had offered to contribute ‘The Mariner’s Hymn’, later published in Solitary Hours (London, 1826), pp. 22–24, to Alfred Pettet’s Original Sacred Music (London, n.d., but 1827). The ‘Hymn’ was eventually rejected and replaced by ‘I weep, but not rebellious tears’, later published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [227]–228.

to the poor Musician at Norwich. The other & the finer of the two,

(5)

Bowles’s ‘It is not Death’, Solitary Hours (London, 1826), pp. 58–60.

is not so appropriate to his purpose, & is moreover too good to be so bestowed. My admiration of xxx <it> is nothing abated by frequent re-reading & re-considering it. The feeling & the movement are in beautiful accord, – & the expression is every where excellent, except in the stanza respecting Lazarus.

(6)

John 11: 1–46. Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.

– It is the second line, which I feel to be faulty – would either of these variations be better?

Oer Lazarus’s livid clay, –
Oer Lazarus where entomb’d he lay –
                              a corpse
When dead & buried Lazarus lay –

The last is the best, – yet neither satisifies me.

(7)

‘It is not Death’, Solitary Hours (London, 1826), p. 60, changed this line to ‘O’er him he loved – corrupting clay! –’

This poem if it were set to music with a thousandth part of the feeling that it breathes, would not fail of doing good. What are Shields merits as a composer? He is the only musician whom I know, but whether he has any merit or not in his profession is what others must tell me, for I am utterly ignorant upon that subject. If however you think well of him, he I know would think himself obliged to me if I sent him the poem.

When you write under cover to Rickman remember that his privilege extends only to two ounces. I keep two of the old penny pieces

(8)

Copper penny pieces minted from 1797 onwards weighed one ounce exactly and so were a good way of measuring the weight of a letter. Copper pennies minted from the mid-1810s onwards were smaller and weighed less than one ounce.

among my weights to ascertain the weight of a doubtful packet, a single letter is not worth the trouble of inclosing; you see I set you the example of sending one direct. But my next I hope will bring with it an attempt at a beginning: & ‘what is well begun is half done.’

(9)

A proverb, derived from Aristotle (384–322 BC), Politics, Book 5.

I hope to do a great deal this year, – & among other things to compleat the series of Inscriptions,

(10)

Southey’s inscriptions on the Peninsular War, most of which were unpublished until the eighteen finished poems were collected in Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838), III, pp. 122–156. Southey originally planned to write thirty inscriptions.

– the sooner they are published the better, because every year lessens the number of those persons who would be gratified by seeing the tribute paid to their lost friends – God bless you – RS.

Notes

1. Feline members of the Southey household.[back]
2. Southey was beginning work on ‘Robin Hood’. The resulting incomplete work was published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [1]–36.[back]
3. Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (1801).[back]
4. Caroline Bowles had offered to contribute ‘The Mariner’s Hymn’, later published in Solitary Hours (London, 1826), pp. 22–24, to Alfred Pettet’s Original Sacred Music (London, n.d., but 1827). The ‘Hymn' was eventually rejected and replaced by ‘I weep, but not rebellious tears’, later published in Robin Hood: a Fragment. By the Late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey. With Other Fragments and Poems By R.S. and C.S. (London, 1847), pp. [227]–228.[back]
5. Bowles’s ‘It is not Death’, Solitary Hours (London, 1826), pp. 58–60.[back]
6. John 11: 1–46. Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.[back]
7. ‘It is not Death’, Solitary Hours (London, 1826), p. 60, changed this line to ‘O’er him he loved – corrupting clay! –’[back]
8. Copper penny pieces minted from 1797 onwards weighed one ounce exactly and so were a good way of measuring the weight of a letter. Copper pennies minted from the mid-1810s onwards were smaller and weighed less than one ounce.[back]
9. A proverb, derived from Aristotle (384–322 BC), Politics, Book 5.[back]
10. Southey’s inscriptions on the Peninsular War, most of which were unpublished until the eighteen finished poems were collected in Poetical Works, 10 vols (London, 1837–1838), III, pp. 122–156. Southey originally planned to write thirty inscriptions.[back]
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