Address: To/ Dr Southey/ 15. Queen Anne Street/ Cavendish Square/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 13 NO 13/ 1824
Seal: red wax; design illegible
MS: Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, 1996.5.336. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.
A haunch of Lowther venison ought to reach you as soon as this letter. It arrived to day, & therefore I conclude it was killed yesterday. – Lord Lonsdale is as attentive to me in all ways just as if I were a person of influence in these counties
I was glad to hear a good account of your household from E May, & shall be more glad to hear that that household has received its expected addition.
(1)
William Southey (1824–1871) was born on 16 November 1824. He later served with the East India Company Army, reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Now that she is returned to town I shall hear of you more frequently. In February I trust she will return to us, & Bertha with her, – for I begin to feel that life is not long enough (were its length <duration> more certain than it is) to afford such long absences. – Tell her I wish her to resume her lessons with Mr Fielding,
(2)
There were four Fielding brothers, all fashionable painters of watercolours: Theodore Henry Adolphus Fielding (1781–1851; DNB); Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787–1855; DNB); Thales Fielding (1793–1837; DNB) and Newton Smith Fielding (1799–1856; DNB).
– & tell her also that Mrs Hughes says if she does not hear from her soon she shall ferret her out at Lady Malets.
(3)
Lady Susanna Malet, née Wales (1779–1868), widow of Sir Charles Malet, 1st Baronet (1752–1815; DNB).
You remember what Johnson said of Bolingbrokes charging a blunderbuss, & leaving half a crown to a dirty Scotchman for pulling the trigger.
(4)
Speaking of David Mallet’s (c. 1705–1765; DNB) edition of the Works (1754) of Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751; DNB), Samuel Johnson (1709–1784; DNB) declared of Bolingbroke that ‘he was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not the resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death!’ (James Boswell (1740–1795; DNB), Life of Samuel Johnson, 3rd edn (London, 1799), p. 312).
Capt Medwin
(5)
Thomas Medwin (1788–1869; DNB), Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: Noted During a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the Years 1821 and 1822 (1824).
is Lord Byrons Blunderbuss. I have seen only some newspapers extracts, & the remarks in the New Times which Stoddart sent me.
(6)
New Times, 25–27 October 1824, where John Stoddart (1773–1856; DNB) used the newspaper he edited to comment extensively on Byron and Medwin’s Conversations. In the final article of 27 October 1824, Stoddart paid particular attention to attacking Byron’s The Vision of Judgment (1822), which had parodied Southey’s A Vision of Judgement (1821), and defending Southey against Byron’s ‘vindictive hatred’.
His Lordship it seems found me an ugly customer, & considering how ill he bore punishment, it was fortunate for him that I took no <so> little notice of his continual provocations. I am just vindictive enough to wish he could have known how perfectly indifferent I am to all such attacks. – His friends have now xxx gibbetted him. Even Murray I see has been obliged to come forward & prove him a liar, by his own letters.
(7)
Medwin’s Conservations recorded a good many criticisms of Murray by Byron. Most importantly, Medwin suggested that Murray had broken a contract between the publisher and Byron. Murray responded with a pamphlet, ‘Notes on Captain Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron’ (1824), which was widely distributed to, and reproduced by, the press, for example, in the Morning Post and Morning Chronicle, 6 November 1824.
My second vol.
(8)
The second volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832).
is getting on well in the press, & at the desk, but when Murray advertised it for this month,
(9)
‘In November will be published, The Second Volume of the History of the Late War in Spain and Portugal. By Robert Southey. Printing for John Murray, Albemarle-street’, Morning Post, 26 October 1824. The second volume of Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832) did not appear until 1827.
he must very well have known he was announcing what was impossible. That however is his concern. I travel my own pace. Sarmientos Memoir
(10)
Alexandre Tomás de Morais Sarmento, 1st Viscount of Banho (1786–1840), was a Portuguese diplomat. He had served as a volunteer in a Portuguese force, raised in Coimbra, that had defended the Vouga river against a French army in 1809 and written an account of the campaign, which had been forwarded to Southey.
has been of considerable use to me, & Trants
(11)
Brigadier-General Nicholas Trant (1769–1839; DNB), an Irish army officer who was assigned to command Portuguese forces. He served with distinction in many actions in the Peninsular War 1808–1813.
papers communications will be of more. From the two, from a French printed account,
(12)
Possibly Pierre-Madeleine Le Noble (1772–1824), Memoires sur les Opérations Militaires des Francaise en Galice, en Portugal, et dans la Vallée du Tague, en 1809, sous le Commandment du Maréchal Soult, Duc de Dalmatie. Avec un Atlas Militaire (1821).
– & from information in reply to my enquiries of the D. of Wellington (thro Wynn) I have made up <got together> a good account of the conspiracy against Buonaparte in Soults army.
(13)
Jean-de-Dieu Soult (1769–1851), the French Marshal who commanded the invasion of northern Portugal in 1809. His army was riven by intrigue. Soult attempted to have himself proclaimed ruler of Northern Lusitania; a counter-movement was headed by General Louis Henry Loison (1771–1816), and there may also have been a small republican conspiracy against Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; Emperor of the French 1804–1814, 1815) among lower-ranking officers. Southey covered these matters in his History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London 1823–1832), II, pp. 185–195, 303–309.
Landor tells me he has sent over a third volume of Dialogues to the Press.
(14)
Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824), no. 1600 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. The first two volumes published in 1824 were not succeeded by a third until 1828.
He has made one of those lucky hits <by> which an author sometimes secures his own certain fame, by falling upon the very kind of composition which he is best able to execute. I am heartily rejoiced at it. With the utmost difference of temper, & some wide differences of opinion, I never yet saw any one with whom I had so much sympathy in intellect & feeling, as Walter Landor.
I proceed doggedly with the Paraguay, – merrily with something else, – & well with the Colloquies,
(15)
A Tale of Paraguay (1825); The Doctor (1834–1847); and Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829).
– which are likely to make two volumes. In one of these Colloquies I think of discussing those objections to Christianity which are the grounds of popular unbelief. I think I can do this with some effect.
(16)
Southey did not pursue this plan.
Get for me if you can any thing that has <been> published in Portugal respecting the war. I have nothing in that language that comes down later than the Convention of Cintra,
(17)
The Convention of Cintra, signed 30 August 1808, allowed the defeated French Army to be evacuated from Portugal.
– except what is in the Jornal de Coimbra.
(18)
Southey owned an eight-volume set of the Jornal de Coimbra (1812–1820), no. 3498 in the sale catalogue of his library.
Our love to Louisa the children & Mrs Gonne –
God bless you
RS.
