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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 254–259. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 36–38 [in part].
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.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I am flattered & gratified by Sir Edwards offer of becoming
godfather to the unborn,hearsay
report, & have seen so seldom. But were I to name a child of mine after him, the immediate question would be is he a
particular friend of yours, – & to this what reply could be made? – It would be paying him a very mean compliment thus to set
aside one of my oldest & dearest friends, a man whom I most entirely love, honour – & esteem, & whose name, I verily
believe, if there be anything good in the boy who bear it, will operate as an incitement in him to every virtue. If I judge
rightly of Sir Edward Littleton he would think within himself ‘what am I to Southey that he should show me this preference?’ –
& judge me to be one of a suppler spirit than it has pleased God to make me. – When you have reflected a little upon this, you
will feel that I am right, – & as for the never-forgiving of which you talk, it is I, Senhora, who have
to forgive you the imprudence with which you have subjected me to this risque of displeasing Sir Edward, & appearing
insensible of the honour he has done me. Out of this you must bring me as you best can. I have a sort of feeling about naming my
children after my friends just as the Catholics have for calling them after their favourite saints. Should I have a third son his
name would be Edmund Seward, & a fourth would have a good chance of being called
Rickman. – On looking back one thing requires explanation – you may perhaps take
it in your head (are you liable Senhora to that female complaint which Doctors call the pet? – I think not.)
– you may I say possibly think that if I will not call the boy Edward Littleton, I may as well let Danvers be his sponsor; – the fact is that Danvers is one of those dissenters who reject this ceremony altogether, & look upon godfathership as a relic of
Popish superstition. I have a different feeling upon the subject, & think the more ties there are of good will to bind man
& man together, the better.
If this unborn does not appear some time in January it will be very extraordinary, – for as nature is as punctual
as I am in all her operations he may certainly be expected about that time. You may therefore look for me in less than six weeks.
Tom will accompany me as far as our roads lie together, which will probably be just
to Penkridge – then he strikes for Bristol & I for Litchfieldthat half on which he himself lived. Miss Tyler, & what he
allowed Harry engrossing the other: My friend John May loses the bulk of his fortune by it –20,000 £. I know no man who ever made a
better use of affluence, & there is none who will bear up against adversity more like a man. Whether my Uncles ‘great friends’
will do any thing for him remains to be seen. I generally suspect that a mans great friends are so called on the old law of
contrarieties, because they are very little his friends. – As for the Doctor
he gets into a scrape wherever he goes, – & certain it is that the most prudent thing he can do is to marry as soon as he can,
– tho in any body else so circumscribed it would be a great imprudence. But he never can get into practice till he has a wife to
make fathers & mothers easy. Mary Sealy (do you remember her?) is the present object. Her fatherdamn
the
Count! –) whom I have ever seen that woman is the most like what Angels must be,
& we usually like best those persons whom we resemble most. So I am very well satisfied with my sister elect, tho a little
more anxious than I would wish to be about their outset in life. – I think sometime of the cr[MS obscured] that fall from the rich
man’s table – or rather of the guineas which are locked up in the bureau of that wretched Uncle at Taunton, whom I always call Mr. Southey, by way of
disowning.
Thank you for your very very very amusing letter about the Reverend. I cannot tell you how much it amused us. And
now the best thing you can tell me is that his Reverence is off again, for as fortune must have shuttle cocks to knock about, she
cannot chuse a fitter one than Kurles,had no reason for knowing it because it only knows me as a poet
& Espriella is not in the same stile as Madoc Thalaba or Joan of Arc.
Today, being the shortest day, I have a library-table come home, – of dantzic oak,
Hartley has been writing, by her desire, to your friend Mrs Skepper,