3129. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 30 April [1818]
3129. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 30 April [1818] *
My dear R.
The chest of oranges occasioned a great deal of speculation in this family, there was no indication whence it came, farther than that Liverpool was the place, but to whose good works it was to be set down we could not devise. I wish Mrs R. had seen the children when it arrived; – I was expecting a box of books from Milan, they called me down with news that it was come, which to them was a great joy, but their astonishment when they discovered the contents would have made no bad subject for a picture. The oranges were very good, & part of them are still existing in the form of marmalade, the first specimen of my daughter Ediths manufactory in this kind.
A table of weights & measures at the end of the book will save me the trouble of frequent calculations. [1] I never mean to use a foreign appellation in the text, unless it has been previously explained, & has no equivalent term in English, – which must very often be the case.
I am surprized at the delay of the Review. [2]
General Crauford is going to send me the few papers which remain of his brothers who was killed at Ciudad Rodrigo; – for the greater part were lost with his effects after his death. [3]
God bless you
RS.
30 April.
Notes
* Endorsement: 30 April – 19
MS:
Huntington Library, RS 367. ALS; 3p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter
(ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols
(London, 1856), III, p. 129 [misdated ‘1819’].
Dating note: Year from
letter content. BACK
