4104. Robert Southey to Nicholas Lightfoot, 22 December 1823
Address: To/ The Reverend Nicholas Lightfoot/ Crediton/ Devonshire
Postmarks: E E/ D 22/ 1823; [partial] DE 22/ 1823; T.P./ Tooting
Endorsement: Dec-23
Seal: red wax; design illegible
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. lett. d. 110. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
I can write to you concerning my movements now with as much certainty as any things <arrangement> dependent upon such frail things as health & life will admit. My place is taken for Friday Jany 2 in a coach, which will deposit me the next x day about noon, near Sir John Kennaways
door. I am to pass that day with his family, the next with Col. Coleridge,
Monday & Tuesday with Mr Marryat
& Sir Thomas Acland, (they will determine their respective days) Wednesday I get to Exeter as early as I can to make my calls there on Mrs Keenan,
& the widow of my excellent friend Wade Browne of Ludlow, & then proceed to Crediton, taking chaise if no other ready means of conveyance should offer. Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday I propose to stay with you; – I know your friendship will think the time short, – & I feel it to be so, – but you will perceive that it is four times as much as I allow to any other person in the West, & when you know that I left home on the third of November, & cannot reach it again before the middle of February, – I am sure you will not press me to lengthen an absence which is necessarily so much too long. Monday the 12. I must get to Taunton.
Your last letter – like all your letters – is full of warm-hearted kindness. Very gladly would I bring my daughter to your hospitable home, if it suited the disposal which has been made of her time, & if she was equal (which she is not) to bear the continued fatigue & excitement of my hurried movements. She has too little of the strength of a mountaineer, & too much of that home sickness which mountaineers feel more than any other people. – I may tell you, that her easy & natural manners are thought good proofs of what may be effected by domestic education, & that those persons who were disposed to regard her with friendly feelings for my sake, like her now for her own.
At present she is with our fellow travellers from the North, in Gloucester Place.
I write from Streatham, where I am closely employed in finishing a paper for the QR.
Tomorrow I expect to finish it. I have still to put the last hand to the B of the Church.
Wednesday will do so much it, that two or three mornings more will bring me to the end desired. I return to town on Thursday to my Xmas dinner, & remain there in Q. Anne Street till my departure from the West
I cannot obtain a frank for this letter because there is no franking it from hence to London. My best wishes to all your fireside. It will be a great disappointment to me not to see John, – for I have no chance of visiting Oxford.
God bless you my dear old friend!
Yrs affectionately
Robert Southey.
