4068. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 15 October 1823

Address: [deletions and readdress in another hand] To/ G. C. Bedford Esq^re./ Exchequer <Post Office>/ Westminster. <Dover>
Stamped: [partial] KESWICK/ 2
Postmarks: E/ 18 OC 18/ 1823; [partially illegible] 1823; [partially legible] Txxhill/ Street
Endorsement: 15. Octo^r. 1823.
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. lett. c. 26. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 15 Oct. 1823

My dear Grosvenor

The time of my departure is now as well fixed as any thing beforehand can be in this uncertain world, for Monday the 3^d of November. But how long I may be on the road depends upon circumstances. I take charge of four ladies,

⁽¹⁾

besides my daughter. We shall fill two chaises, & if the weather permits we mean to see the Yorkshire caves, Gordale scar, & Bolton Abbey,

⁽²⁾

on the way, & moreover the posteriors of Beelzebub in the Peak,

⁽³⁾

– all which will occupy a whole week before we reach Derby. And there we are to separate if Sir George Beaumont should by that time be at Cole Orton, in which case Edith & I must visit him for a few days. Upon leaving him we shall get into some coach at Loughborough & endeavor to reach London on the Saturday. Send me I pray you 40 £. I have to make arrangements with Murray about the B. of the Church,

⁽⁴⁾

when I arrive, on which I depend for my ways and means. It is too good a chance in the lottery for me to part with it, if I can help it. He was to have given me 500 £ for it in one volume. By doubling its size I very well know that I have not doubled its marketable value; & I think it will be better to recur to a former agreement whereby I am to have half the profits of the first edition, & two thirds of every succeeding one. But I shall need 200 £ while I am in town, – & must bargain accordingly, – for I am wofully on the wrong side of the Longmens books.

The truth is (& it is not a comfortable one) that I neither write so much, nor compose so fast, as I was wont to do when younger. My health requires more exercise, – absolutely requires it. – And as I am more careful what I write, an over-scrupulous solicitude has been contracted, for looking into every accessible source of information upon the subject before me, at an injurious expence of time.

I have proposed to Murray to publish a selection of my papers from the QR. I do not expect any objection to the proposal, & if he assents to it I shall begin with the Essays Moral & Political, altering, restoring & adding as may seem best, & incorporating some things from the Register, & from the Annual Review.

⁽⁵⁾

They will very well bear to be thus brought forward. The Historical & Ecclesiastical Essays might follow, – & lastly the Critical & Miscellaneous, – leaving the biographical for another use.

⁽⁶⁾

I hope you may have saved the copy or the proofs of some of my papers, which have undergone wicked mutilation. The last escaped pretty well.

⁽⁷⁾

But the article upon the Progress of Infidelity,

– Dobrizhoffer,

Camoens,

& the Sinner Saved

suffered grievously. – If this scheme takes effect it may very materially lessen my cares for three or four years, should I live so long.

You will hardly recollect my daughter when you see her. She will pass her time chiefly with her godmother M^rs Gonne (the Dogstars mother in law) – but will be a little while in Gloucester Place with Lady Malet, one of our fellow travelers. – The time of year will be fa[MS missing]rable to me in one respect, that it will leave me more to my friends than if the town were full. If the Rickmans

⁽¹²⁾

should be in town, my quarters will be a short time with them, & how many recollections will that house bring with it! But I must be chiefly at Streatham. I bring up work with me to finish & as soon as it is done, shall hurry down upon a series of flying visits to Devon & Somersetshire, – & on my way back must fly also into Suffolk & Norfolk. It almost dismays me to think of all this, – but I hope that change of air, plenty of motion, & a good allowance of claret will put me in better xxx tone than I have been since the relaxation brought on by my last annual attack.

Osiris will send you a packet which requires an official frank. It contains some deeds to be signed by M^rs S. & her sisters,

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by virtue of which they will share some trifling property from the effects of an Uncle who died intestate

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Bad as the season has been we have had some glorious caravan parties at which it would have done your heart good to have been present. Yesterday we were at Watenlath, & dined on the fell side, looking down upon Borrodale, thirteen persons & five horses, – & this was the smallest force with which we have taken the field this year. It is a symptom of sound heart at least that my inclination for such things increases rather than diminishes.

I wish you could see your godson; – you would see in him every thing that you could desire

God bless you.
RS.

Notes

1. Louisa Charter, and Elizabeth Charter (1782–1860), friend of the poet George Crabbe (1754–1832; DNB). They were the sisters of Emma Peachy, first wife of William Peachy, and nieces of Sir Charles Malet (1752–1815; DNB), 1st Baronet, a prominent diplomat with the East India Company. Peachy had lent the Charter sisters his home on Derwent Island. They were accompanied by Lady Susanna Malet, née Wales (1779–1868), widow of Sir Charles Malet, 1st Baronet (1752–1815; DNB), the maternal uncle of the Charter sisters. Their other companion was one of the three children born in India to Sir Charles Malet and Amber Kaur (b. 1772): Eliza (b. 1791); Henry Charles (1793–1844); and Louisa (b. 1795). They accompanied Malet to Britain in 1798 and were brought up with his children by Susanna Malet. Eliza Malet married, in 1812, Robert Ekins (1785–1874), Vicar of Godalming 1810–1833, Rector of Folke, Dorset 1833–1843, Perpetual Curate of North Wootton 1843–1854. Southey is probably referring here to Louisa Malet.[back]

2. A limestone ravine in North Yorkshire; and the ruins of a twelfth-century Augustinian monastery.[back]

3. The Peak Cavern, near Castleton, Derbyshire, also known as the Devil’s Arse.[back]

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

5. This project became Essays, Moral and Political (1832). Southey had reviewed extensively for the Annual Review for 1802, 1 (1803) until the Annual Review for 1808, 7 (1809) and written the historical sections of the Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1808 (1810) until the Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1811 (1813). Essays I–III in Essays, Moral and Political, 2 vols (London, 1832), I, pp. [3]–72, and Essays XI–XII in Essays, Moral and Political, 2 vols (London, 1832), II, pp. [277]–328, were mainly drawn from the Edinburgh Annual Register. None of Southey’s contributions to the Annual Review formed the basis of an essay, but parts of Southey’s review of Thomas Malthus (1766–1834; DNB), An Essay on the Principle of Population (1803), Annual Review for 1803, 2 (1804), 292–301, were grafted onto Essay IV of Essays, Moral and Political, 2 vols (London, 1832), I, pp. [73]–155, which was mainly taken from Southey’s review of Patrick Colquhoun (1745–1820; DNB), Propositions for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor: and for Improving the Moral Habits, and Increasing the Comforts of the Labouring People (1812), Quarterly Review, 8 (December 1812), 319–356.[back]

6. These further volumes did not appear.[back]

7. Bishop Burnet’s History of his Own Time: with the Suppressed Passages of the First Volume and Notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, and Speaker Onslow, Hitherto Unpublished; to Which are Added the Cursory Remarks of Swift, and Other Observations (1823), no. 498 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. This was a new edition of Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715; DNB), History of My Own Time (1724–1734), edited by Martin Routh (1755–1854; DNB). Southey reviewed it in Quarterly Review, 29 (April 1823), 165–214, published 27–28 September 1823.[back]

8. Southey’s review of Henri Grégoire (1750–1831), ‘Histoire de la Théophilantropie, depuis sa Naissance jusqu’à son Extinction’, part of Grégoire’s Histoire des Sectes Religieuse, qui, Depuis de Commencement du Siecle Dernier Jusqu’a l’Epoque Actuelle, sont Nées, se sont Modifiées, se sont Éteintes dans le Quatre Parties du Monde, 2 vols (Paris, 1814), II, pp. 55–171, Quarterly Review, 28 (January 1823), 493–536, published 8 July 1823. The book was no. 2838 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

9. Southey reviewed Sara Coleridge’s An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay (1822) in Quarterly Review, 26 (January 1822), 277–323, published 30 March 1823. The book was a translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791), Historia de Abiponibus Equestri, Bellicosaque Paraquariae Natione (1784), no. 843 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library.[back]

10. John Adamson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Luis de Camoens (1820), no. 10 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library. Southey reviewed it in Quarterly Review, 27 (April 1822), 1–39, published 4 July 1822.[back]

11. The preacher and religious writer, William Huntington (1745–1813; DNB), who added ‘S. S.’ – ‘Sinner Saved’ – to his name, to indicate his spiritual state. Southey’s review of The Works of the Reverend William Huntington, S. S. Minister of the Gospel, at Providence Chapel, Gray’s Inn Lane, Completed to the Close of the Year 1806 (1811), appeared in Quarterly Review, 24 (January 1821), 462–510, published 6 April 1821.[back]

12. John Rickman and his family.[back]

13. Sara Coleridge and Mary Lovell.[back]

14. George Fricker, a Bristol accountant, had died at Wells, Somerset, in August 1823. Because he had died intestate, his estate was divided amongst his nearest surviving relatives, who included his nieces, Edith Southey and her four sisters.[back]

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Ian Packer

4068. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 15 October 1823

4068. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 15 October 1823

Notes

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven

Lynda Pratt, Ian Packer