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. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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If you should have received a cargo of Espriellas letters
I have had my visit from the Influenza, a pleasant visitor, who liked my company well enough to come twice. it cost me some flesh, some physic, & some time, – of the first & last articles I have too little at all times to spare any with convenience – however I am come up to my original standard of leanness, – the time there is no recovering – I am so much behind hand with reviewing, & so much the poorer. My journey to London will take place about the end of March – God willing, a proviso which I also insist upon such occasions from a deep sense of the uncertainty of all human projects, impressed by frequent disappointments. If you are in the way, that is if you are not out of it, for Penkridge lies in the road, I will rest a day with you. My way home will be by another route, as in all probability I shall go to Norwich for a week.
This journey is a great undertaking, & not a pleasurable one, tho I have many friends to see, & shall feel real pleasure in seeing them. But to emerge from the total seclusion of this place, for nothing can be more secluded than I am during my hybernation – & go at once to London, where every day I shall be dining with a party invited expressly to meet me, – every morning to be past in walking & every evening in talking, – where I shall not get to bed till after midnight, get too little milk for breakfast – & too much wine at dinner – Senhora all this is not agreable. it puts me out of my way, & I like my own way best. Rickmans is a very comfortable house, & ought to be more so now if the Rickwoman be what I expect her to be. I like all my male friends to be married – if I had many females ones, I am not quite sure whether selfishness would let me form the same wish for them.
Harrys adventure has terminated. the young Lady has given him up
to please her parents.
If you ever exhibit a picture, the Rivers praise will be worth something, – he will talk you into more reputation in a week, than the greatest possible merit would obtain for you in seven years.
Two pink saucers are arrived. be pleased to send directions how they are to be used
I can tell you nothing about Lisbon, for my motions must depend upon Bonaparte. If he does not eject the factory,
about September will be the time for my migration – & most likely I shall leave Edith – for the sake of saving money & returning sooner,
The Colonel has sent me half a collar of brawn & a little barrel
of pickled sturgeon. An imperial Colonel! is he not? – I never look at the Lake without wishing summer were come that I might see
his wife upon the water gliding along alone in her little boat like a Lady of the Lake.
My daughter gets dearer & dearer daily – & I very often wish the next hundred years were past, so that she & I & all of us were safe in Heaven, settled for a few ages, & to go on thro the Universe together, with no more separations.
Edith is this day mending from a weeks toothache. No news of Coleridge – I am very seriously uneasy about him – as he would be at Vienna
about the time the French got there,