4237. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 22 August 1824
Address: To/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ Lymington/ Hampshire
Endorsement: No 62 To Miss Caroline Bowles
MS: British Library, Add MS 47889. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.
Tho there is a letter for you inclosed to Rickmans care lying on the chimney piece for this nights post, – I must not let that post depart without replying to yours which I have just received & which dark as its tidings are
– has in truth relieved me from a growing anxiety, – for I was very uneasy at your silence. – The loss which has befallen you, you know how to bear: & you have no longer to bear the prospect of it. An evil which you knew to be inevitable, & near, is past. – For such sorrows time is the sure cure, & tho the eld generation of your earliest friends is now past away, you are not & cannot be alone in the world. How sincerely do I wish that you were always as near me as you were this time twelvemonth.
One word about myself. It is not change of climate that I want, – my annual catarrh coming on always with the fine weather. It is constant exercise & change of air at the time when that relaxation of the system would otherwise come on, – the North therefore would do as well as the south, & six or eight weeks suffice. – Of that complaint I am pretty well recovered, – but my tenement is out of repair, & has some ugly flaws in it. I will take all the care of it that can be taken, & that a tranquil mind enables me to take. See that you do the same with yours, – & take you hope also. We shall meet again, – often I trust in this world, – & surely & lastingly in another: – but in this also. – Write to me & tell me that you xxx are recovering from the shock & the exhaustion which you have undergone.
God bless you dear friend
R
