4295. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 14 December 1824

Address: To/ D^r Southey/ 15. Queen Anne Street/ Cavendish Square/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 17 DE 17/ 1824
Seal: red wax; design illegible
MS: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Don. d. 4. ALS; 4p.
Unpublished.

Keswick 14 Dec. 1824

My dear Harry

I send off by this nights post three cantos of the Paraguay,

⁽¹⁾

that Richard Westall may make two designs from them for the laudable purpose of making a volume sell at 10/6 which otherwise could not be priced at more than three half crowns.

⁽²⁾

Bedford will send the mss to you, & R Westall lives so near your Hospital,

⁽³⁾

that I may with an easy conscience request you to put it into his hands. I forget his address – but your Directory will show it, – it is in that sort of Crescent between Tottenham Court Road & Russel Square, on the right hand going Eastward.

For a subject I recommend the Jesuit in the woods C^o3 St.21. – for the other the single figure of Mooma as described in the same Canto from 37 – to – 45.

⁽⁴⁾

The poem will soon be finished now that I have begun the last canto, & am impatient to have it off my hands.

I will write to the Episcope as you desire, – but tell me, if I am to call it a petition, – for the word seems an odd one.

⁽⁵⁾

Edmund & Arthur are both good names, & you may toss up for either.

⁽⁶⁾

I should like Oliver better, or Walter, – which last I should have taken had I had another son, – & perhaps have asked Walter Scott & Walter Landor to have sponsor godfathered him, the two greatest Walters since Walter Tyler.

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Should the union which you suspect take place, I know of no single word which can express so compound a relationship as will be produced by it. You must then address the person in question as Niece, my Aunt, or Aunt, my Niece.

⁽⁸⁾

I have had a formal announcement from Murray that “after the little there can be to negotiate, he has every reason to believe it will terminate in M^r Coleridges acceptance of the Editorship.” And he wishes me as of my own accord to write my opinion & recommendation of J.C. to Canning & Croker whose confidence he says it is of great importance to obtain. – I can very well write to Croker, – but certainly not to Canning. For in the first place I will never lay claim to any importance with a great man – for my connection with the QR. And in the second the time cannot be very distant when the QR must make its choice between M^r Canning – & the Church.

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I know something of what is going on – more probably than is known in Albermarle Street,

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or than has got abroad.

Love to all
God bless you
RS.

Say to your Aunt in rus, or Aunt in urbe

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(she is a very mysterious personage this Niece-Aunt or Aunt-Niece) – that Miss Bristow,

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who left Keswick today, takes up a packet for her, – to find its way by way of Nobodys daughter-in-law.

Notes

1. A Tale of Paraguay (1825).[back]

2. A Tale of Paraguay was priced at 10 shillings and 6d., rather than 7 shillings and 6d., which Southey suggests would have been its price without its two illustrations by Richard Westall (1765–1836; DNB), painter and illustrator.[back]

3. Westall lived at 6 South Crescent, Bedford Square 1816–1828; Henry Herbert Southey was a physician at the Middlesex Hospital on Mortimer Street, 1815–1827.[back]

4. Westall did not take this advice. His first illustration was for Canto I, stanza 44, and showed Mooma and her family; the second was for Canto III, stanza 42, but showed Mooma and the Jesuit.[back]

5. Henry Herbert Southey was asking his brother to request William Howley to support Henry Herbert’s application to become a Fellow of the Royal Society. Southey did so on 24 December 1824, Letter 4304.[back]

6. Henry Herbert Southey’s new child was christened William Southey (1824–1871). He was born on 16 November 1824 and later served with the East India Company Army, reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. However, Southey’s advice was not totally dismissed; Henry Herbert christened two of his future sons Edmund Southey (born 1828) and Arthur Southey (born 1833). There were no Oliver or Walter Southeys though.[back]

7. Wat Tyler (d. 1381; DNB), leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and subject of Southey’s play, Wat Tyler (1817).[back]

8. Henry Herbert Southey may have speculated that Edith May Southey, or Bertha Southey, might marry one of Herbert Hill’s sons, especially the eldest, Edward Hill. Southey was in the habit of referring to Herbert Hill’s sons as the ‘Welsh Uncles’ of his children – a term for older cousins. As Southey’s daughters were Henry Herbert Southey’s nieces this might produce the terms ‘Niece, my Aunt, or Aunt, my Niece’.[back]

9. Canning favoured Catholic Emancipation, a subject that the Quarterly Review had studiously avoided.[back]

10. John Murray’s home and office at 50 Albermarle Street, London.[back]

11. Bertha Southey was in the countryside (‘rus’) with John Rickman, while Edith May Southey was in London (‘urbe’ or town).[back]

12. Possibly Miss Ann Bristow (1765–1842) of Portinscale.[back]

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