4042. Robert Southey to Herbert Hill, 13 July 1823

Address: To/ The Reverend Herbert Hill/ Streatham/ Surrey
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmarks: E/ 16 JY 16/ 1823; 10 F. NOON 10/ JY.16/ 1823
MS: Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, WC 234. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 13 July.

Edward’s broken head, as it has been brought to light, may do him some service: any exposure of this kind serves for a time to check the abominable system which the head master wants either feeling, or courage, or sense to suppress. I am more sorry for Phillimore the father,

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than for Edward. He was contemporary with me, & a more inoffensive & thoroughly respectable boy never went thro the school. I never knew him do an ill-natured thing, or say an ill-natured word. But it has been his fate to be notoriously hen-pecked

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& so mala avis malum ovum.

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Poor Phillimore would have been employed more to his own & to the general good if he had used his influence for putting S^t Peter’s College to rights, than in meddling with the Marriage Act, & with Catholic Emancipation.

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Tom reached Quebec on the 28^th May.

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& seems to have been very hospitably received there by Symes,

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an old shopman of my Fathers who married a French-Canadian widow, & is now a rich merchant. On the 31^st he set off in the steam packet for Montreal.

The Doctor has been applied to to know whether it would be agreable to me to be elected an Associate of this Royal Society of Literature,

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– certainly it will not, seeing the scheme is so excellently miscontrived that such an appointment carries with it neither honour nor profit. The person so appointed is to write an annual essay, & receive 100 guineas a year. Now it is quite as well to receive 100 £ for an article in the Q.R. as far as profit is concerned, & in other points a great deal better. I could do no worse that to accept such an offer, if it were come to date obolum.

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Edith-May has had a severe bilious attack, which has left her very weak. To day has brought with it the first appearance of a convalescents appetite. I shall probably send her shortly to Wordsworths for change of air, & delay my own journey till the middle of the autumn for the sake of taking her with me. She has invitations to the East & the West, & will make a wide progress before she returns home. – For myself I have not been able to subdue the annual visitation of catarrh, & it has brought on a return of my old infirmity,

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– but in a slight degree. I am now trying for it the balsam of Copaiba,

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with good opinion of its efficacy A companion who would walk with me from ten to twenty miles a day would prove the surest physician. – The rest of my household are in tolerable condition, thank God. Cuthbert has insensibly past from infancy into that stage of childhood when the character of the individual physical & moral begins to assume its permanent features. He grows very thin, – & it is not without some secret apprehension that I perceive how much the intellectual is likely to predominate over the animal part of his xxxx xxxx xxxx nature.

That I may pass to a lighter subject – here are eight conundrums for the boys, each containing the name of a Greek author

1 Anna, my wife.

2 A common play thing belonging to Henry & his brother.

3 What happens if when I am looking into the glass, you [MS missing]ok in it too?

[MS missing]hat a pair of turtle doves who are offered for sale would say to the Duchess of Gloucester

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(or to M^rs Gonne) if they could speak.

5 Lady Diana, highly perfumed.

6 A woman’s peculiarities.

7 A wandering young Gentleman

8 Lay your hand upon your breeches pocket, & then ask “what part is this?

On the opposite page is the key to this nonsense.

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If it be nonsensical enough to make my Aunt & Miss Bigg

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smile, I shall be glad

God bless you
RS.

1. Menander. 2 Harry’s top and his. 3 Isaeus. 4 Polly, buy us! 5 Diodorus. 6. Her oddities. 7 Strabo. 8. Your hip it is.

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Notes

1. John George Phillimore (1808–1865; DNB), the eldest surviving son of Joseph Phillimore, had assaulted Edward Hill, a fellow pupil at Westminster School. Like his father, Phillimore was educated at Westminster School (1817–1824) and Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1828, MA 1831). In later life he was variously a Clerk at the Board of Control 1827–1832, a barrister and a Liberal MP for Leominster 1852–1857. In 1820 Phillimore had passed ‘The Challenge’ examination and became one of 40 King’s Scholars at Westminster. They had their own house known as ‘College’ and considerable privileges, including the right to proceed to closed scholarships at Trinity College, Cambridge, or Christ Church, Oxford. Edward Hill had just become a member of ‘College’.[back]

2. Phillimore had married in 1807 Elizabeth née Bagot (d. 1859), daughter of Walter Bagot (1731–1806), a Warwickshire landowner and clergyman.[back]

3. ‘Bad egg of a bad crow’.[back]

4. Phillimore was a member of the Grenvillite group that had joined the government in 1822. He was one of the prime movers behind the Marriage Amendment Act (1822), which legalised marriages that had been undertaken in contravention of the terms of the Marriage Act (1753), where both parties were still living together and if neither one of the parties sued to end the union in an ecclesiastical court. He also favoured Catholic Emancipation.[back]

5. Tom Southey sailed from Whitehaven on 20 April 1823 on the brig Maria and reached Quebec on 27 May. He investigated emigrating to Canada but decided against this option.[back]

6. George Symes (c. 1768–1833), originally from Tenby. He emigrated to Quebec City and in 1802 married Marie Angelique Girard (1763–1843), widow of Augustin Cuvillier (dates unknown). Symes became a wealthy merchant, trading in wheat, rum, furs and timber, and an important figure in Quebec. He was Master of Trinity House 1818–1824, the body that regulated shipping and the city’s harbour and arbitrated disputes between merchants.[back]

7. The Royal Society of Literature had been founded in 1820. However, its first Annual General Meeting did not take place until 17 June 1823. This resolved to create 20 Associate Fellows, recommended by the Society’s Council, on the terms outlined by Southey. [back]

8. ‘spare a farthing’, the cry of a beggar. In other words, Southey saw this as a charitable offer to one in desperate straits.[back]

9. Southey’s rectal prolapse.[back]

10. Balsam of Copaiba is derived from the South American tree of the Copaifera genus. It has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments including bronchitis, constipation and haemorrhoids.[back]

11. Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1776–1857; DNB), sister of George IV. As Mrs Gonne’s first name was also Mary, and ‘Polly’ was a common nickname for ‘Mary’, Southey’s conundrum can be unravelled.[back]

12. The answers are written upside down at the foot of fol. 1r. [back]

13. Alethea Bigg (1777–1847), sister of Herbert Hill’s wife.[back]

14. These, the answers to Southey’s riddles, correspond to: Menander (c. 342/341 BC–c. 290 BC), Greek dramatist; Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 BC), Greek comic playwright; Isaeus (fl. early 4th century BC), Greek orator; Polybius (c. 200–c. 118 BC), Greek historian; Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), Greek historian; Herodotus (c. 484–c. 425 BC), Greek historian; Strabo (64/63 BC–c. AD 24), Greek geographer, philosopher and historian; and Euripides (c. 480–c. 406 BC), Greek tragedian.[back]

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Ian Packer

4042. Robert Southey to Herbert Hill, 13 July 1823

4042. Robert Southey to Herbert Hill, 13 July 1823

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer