4211. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 7 July 1824
Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ Exchequer/ Westminster
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 10 JY 10/ 1824
Endorsement: 7 July 1824
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. lett. c. 26. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.
Your letter gave me as much surprize as hope, for I had heard that Elmsley was dead,
– & you may very well suppose had been thinking of him by day & by night. – I shall look for your next letter with great anxiet anxiety.
Since I wrote last I have been & indeed continue to be on the sick list. My annual catarrh has settled into a cough, which tho in itself not very troublesome, lies deep, & is accompanied with a feverish pulse. In this state it has been for some six weeks, & what with starving, want of exercise when the catarrh made me incapable of bearing the light, & physicking, it will I fear be more than tonics are able to do (when I can venture to take them), to bring me into condition again this season. – Your appearance would do me more good than any thing else. What I told you respecting as the French would say, Keswicks being brought one night nearer to London, relates to the journey up: The mail which used to arrive in town about six in the morning arriving now between nine & ten at night. If you wish to escape a night on the road in coming down you should take the day coach to Grantham, or Stamford: but then there is the chance of not finding a place next morning in the Carlisle Mail. – When you reach Penrith, you will find a Mail Coach starting from thence for Whitehaven; which will give you time to wash, shave & breakfast, & deposit you here a little before twelve o clock.
Edith has taken flight for Seaton on the Devonshire coast with Lady Malet,
Bertha goes with the Rickmans
into Hampshire. We miss them very much.
There has been <We have had> a forgery here also,
– & in one of my departments, – which tho it gives me none of the sort of anxiety that you have suffered, will deprive me of a very useful person. There was a bookbinder here,
whom I was employing to mend & letter old books & – so by little & little to bring my ragged regiments into a state of discipline & equipment. The fellow fancied it would be a better trade to make Whitehaven Bills than to vamp old books, – accordingly he procured a plate from Bxxx Birmingham, set to work, was detected before he xx could set half a dozen notes in circulation, & is now upon the stool of repentance in Carlisle jail, waiting for the Assizes to know whether he shall be hanged or transported for life. “I could have better spared a better man”
Call at Murrays for when you go that way next & pay two pounds for me to the subscription for poor Bloomfields family. It is money very well bestowed. Will there ever come a time when the Public as that many headed beast is called, will show their regard for a good & meritorious man while he can profit by it, – instead of letting him die half -starved & half-heart broken, – & then subscribing for his family – or perhaps for his monument!
God bless you my dear G.
RS.
Your Godson is, where his father is very often, – & where you & I were once on Skiddaw, – in nubes.
