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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 199–202.
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.
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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
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Capt. Davy who is just returned with the Foudroyant from R Janeiro has been with me this morning, –
he was a shipmate of Toms in the Royal George.Foudroyant, an 80-gun third rate ship from January–May
1809. He was a Lieutenant on HMS Royal George, 1797–1800, with Tom Southey.t Pauls, thinking it safer than a maritime situation, – for tho the entrance of the Rio is admirably fortified
an enemy might easily land behind the town & in that case Capt D. thinks it would fall with little or no
resistance. The Prince has made himself unpopular & the people are very disaffected. On his arrival people were turned out of their
houses to make room for the emigrants, & obliged to accept a fixed rent for them, – something like the price of beasts &c
during an embargo, both in the justice of the valuation, & the exactness of payment. Gambierxx if he was disposed to let xxx <it>.
No Sir, the Brazileiro replied, & I call upon you as an Englishman who know the nature of property, not to apply to Government for
it. Of course Gambier assured him that no such intention was in his thoughts.
The nights at Rio are not hotter than the days Capt D. says. <Lord> Strangford he speaks very ill of.x when he stopt there on his way, & with the
reception which he found, that he would willingly have fixed his court there if his own inclinations had not been over ruled. He is
said to be under not merely the absolute government, but even tyranny of his wife,
S Sebastians is as filthy as Lisbon, – the shambles are just to windward of the city, & send a pestilential odour
thro it. Sir S. advised the removal of this nuisance, – & probably would have succeeded in his application but for his enemies – I
have asked Capt Davy to dinner, & shall get from him all the information I can. – He repeats with great glee a saying of
Chamberlaines that Ld Strangford has xxxxxxxx as an xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx <just talent enough for a country>
attorney.
Among other articles sent out to the Rio on speculation was a large venture of skaits, – they went with a cargo of warm woollen cloths.
The native merchants cannot be very well pleased with their new competitors. A system of credit to which they had been
unaccustomed was introduced by the English, which gave them so greatly the preference that many of the Brazilians gave over their
business & retired into the country, – I hear a deplorable account of the lower classes who <are> eaten out with all the
diseases appointed in the wise order of things to punish the laziness & vices of men. They attribute some of them to the water, or
to the wind, – to any thing rather than to themselves. Yet how much is owing to themselves is plain from this circumstance, that
numbers are crippled by the jiggers,
The strangest thing which I have heard from Capt D. is that he saw a wild woman, kept in a cage,
like a wild beast, in the Palace. She was one <of> a tribe whom he calls Botafogos, whom he describes as incorrigible cannibals,
& untameable. He could give no other account than this, & that she was caught on the frontiers, & carried to the Capital as
a curiosity. Something is wanting in the story, or he has mistaken an ape for a savage, – for if the Portugueze had supposed this
creature capable of salvation, they would have been for christening instead of caging her. – The Prince is said to be less under the
influence of the Priests than formerly. He has even been fond of asking some of the English officers whom he liked best whether they
thought there was any use in his confessing. If this be true there will be no difficulty in finding an excuse for setting him aside,
whenever it is wished.
The beef he says is execrable, & comes from such a distance that it is fourteen months on the road. This is hardly
credible. The number of English at the Rio he heard estimated at 300, – the whole population at 80,000. He was at St Catarina,
The number of mulattos is not so great as in an English colony. I suppose the Tupi mixturemuch greater mixture must have taken place there than in our islands. You have here as
much as I can recollect of the days conversation. – I thought it better thus to minute it down than to forget it & then fancy it
had been of more value than it is.