4045. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 July [1823]

Endorsement: 18 July 1823
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 26. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.

My dear Grosvenor

I thought I had told you that as my journey had been so long delayed I should probably put it off till the autumn, when I could take up Edith May with me to pay her promised visits in the South. The 16^th sheet of my second vol. of this B of the Ch. is on the table, – but I have still three Chapters to write:

⁽¹⁾

& certain it is, whatever may be the cause that I have not the same alacrity in writing as when I was younger. The cold which seizes <fastens upon> me every year at this season sometimes disables, & more often indisposes me for employment. And the only remedy is in a continued course of exercise, – occasioning an expense of time which I can very ill afford.

Your note puts me in fear that Lord Lonsdale may ask me to meet Ld Grenville at Lowther. I can hardly escape a visit thither this year, but I should much rather make it at any other time than when he is there.

⁽²⁾

The Dog Star owes his appointment

⁽³⁾

to Sir W^m Knighton, – aided a little perhaps by his having formerly met the King at Lord Ravensworths.

⁽⁴⁾

It is taking a high degree in his profession, & I hope he will feel it in his practise, which indeed has lately been much on the increase.

I have just heard that my brother Tom is this day returned. To go in three months from Keswick to the Falls of Niagara & back is pretty quick work.

⁽⁵⁾

God bless you
RS.

Keswick. 18 July.

Notes

1. The Book of the Church, 2 vols (London, 1824), II, pp. 313–528.[back]

2. Though Grenville was Charles Watkin Williams Wynn’s uncle, and the head of the political group of which Wynn was a member, Southey had come to dislike Grenville for his advocacy of Catholic Emancipation and his critical attitude to the government’s conduct of the war in Spain and Portugal in 1808–1814. In his History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, p. 55, Southey had condemned the ‘factious animosity’ with which the Grenville group had criticised government policy.[back]

3. Henry Herbert Southey had been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 25 June 1823; the London Gazette, 1 July 1823, announced he had been appointed a Physician in Ordinary to George IV.[back]

4. Thomas Liddell, 1st Baron Ravensworth (1775–1855), a landowner and colliery owner in Durham and Northumberland and a friend of George IV.[back]

5. Tom Southey had sailed from Whitehaven on 20 April 1823 on the brig Maria and reached Quebec on 27 May. He had been considering emigrating to Canada.[back]

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4045. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 July [1823]

4045. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 18 July [1823]

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer