4011. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 3 May 1823

Address: To/ Miss Bowles/ Buckland/ near Lymington/ Hampshire
Endorsement: N^o 26 To Miss Caroline Bowles
MS: British Library, Add MS 47889. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 3^d May. 1823.

I heartily wish the newspaper account of me were true where it is false, & false where it is true, – for I am going to London & have no poem to take in my pocket.

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My departure will not be as soon as I wish, because a book must first be compleated which I had hoped & expected ere this to have sent you, but which has grown under my hands into to a second volume.

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– I have to visit at wide intervals of place, – Devonshire & Norwich, but they must be flying visits. My whole absence must not exceed two months, – & if you come in August instead of July, I will be home by the middle of that month.

You have not been well informed concerning this climate. The best season for our Lakes & Mountains is that which is now beginning, or rather which has just begun. May & June are to be preferred to all the other months. July & August are more likely to be wet, in September the weather generally becomes fine again, & would be as delightful as the spring, if the days were not shortening, & did not sometimes bring with them premature indications of winter, – which I have known here to begin before Michaelmas

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& at other times nor to begin till after Christmas. But for the most part autumn lingers with us & is drier than the summer.

The best thing that I can say of the lodgings is that they are when farthest from this house within ten minutes walk of it, & some not half the distance. Let me know when you can fix the time, & I will take care they shall be provided. A letter to 15 Q Anne Street, Cavendish Square will find me wherever I may be on my circuit. Indeed you must tell me your direction when you reach Leamington, that I may send my Book of the Church thither. It ought to be an impressive book, for nothing can exceed the interest of the subject, in many parts.

You will enjoy this country, & I trust it may materially contribute to reestablish your health. One of my most intimate friends had an affection of the liver some ten years ago, which baffled the best medical aid in London, & his physician afterwards confessed that he ordered him here, in the belief that he would never return.

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His looks when he arrived gave me the greatest shock of that kind I ever experienced. In six weeks however he returned home perfectly well, & has ever since continued a sound man. And this can be attributed to no other cause than the mountain air which he delighted in, & enjoyed heartily during his stay.

My wife & eldest daughter are delighted with the thought of seeing you. There is nothing tremendous in the journey – when it is once begun. I shall have some things to shew you, & a great deal to say. You will go home with a xxxxxxxxx book full of sketches, – a mind full of imagery drawn from these waters & mountains, & a heart full of poetry.

God bless you
Yours must truly
Robert Southey.

P. S. You shall see my correspondence with Shelley when you are here.

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– When I spoke of him in a former letter it was as having been here ten years ago, not two.

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It was in 1812 that he came to Keswick, just after his first marriage.

Notes

1. ‘Southey is expected very shortly in London, with a new poem, the hero of which is a Quaker’ (Morning Chronicle, 24 April 1823). This was a reference to Southey’s unfinished ‘Oliver Newman’, set in New England. A fragment was published posthumously in Oliver Newman: a New-England Tale (Unfinished): with Other Poetical Remains by the Late Robert Southey (London, 1845), pp. 1–90.[back]

2. Southey’s The Book of the Church (1824).[back]

3. 29 September.[back]

4. See Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 8 July 1810, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Four, Letter 1791.[back]

5. In a letter of 26 June 1820, Shelley had accused Southey of writing a hostile review of Laon and Cythna, or the Revolution of the Golden City (1817; published late 1818) and The Revolt of Islam. A Poem, in Twelve Cantos (1818); see Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 358–359. Southey responded with his letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley, [c. 29 July 1820], The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3517. Shelley replied in a letter to Southey, 17 August 1820, Edward Dowden (ed.), The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles (Dublin and London, 1881), pp. 361–363. A letter from Southey to Percy Bysshe Shelley, 12 October 1820, The Collected Letters of Robert Southey. Part Six, Letter 3538, closed the correspondence.[back]

6. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 7 July 1822, Letter 3866. Shelley had stayed in Keswick from November 1811 to February 1812, shortly after his marriage to Harriet Westbrook.[back]

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4011. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 3 May 1823

4011. Robert Southey to Caroline Bowles, 3 May 1823

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer