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Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. 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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We sailed yesterday at noon, with a fair wind, – it slackened on the way, & we did not reach this place till four
in the morning. I was thrice in the same predicament as the whale when Jonah was landed from his live boat; but even sea sickness does
not subdue my chearfulness.
Here we are at the Cour Imperiale, & in the public room, for the town is so full owing to the coronation at
Brusselsb me by a fellow passenger, but I accepted it only as receiver
for the fishes, & in that capacity all that I took was taken, & faithfully paid over to their account. –
May the Maid (of whom concerning whom & the wonder which she
saw in her journey from the land of the hills & the water, I her father, ‘Mully the Poet – have written a long chapter for the
instruction of Lunus my son) here is a long parenthesis – so I must begin
again. Maid May was dismally sick; but by a provokingly it happened
that her Mother to whom sickness would have been the best remedy, was not
affected to any good purpose by her qualms.
Will you write a line to Mrs Coleridge, the Venerable among
women, informing her of our safe arrival. & another to Tom, directing St Helens – Auckland – Durham. Rickman will frank them, &
thus you <they> will be spared pay postage & I shall save time of which it becomes me to be avaricious.
Nevertheless I shall probably fill this paper. – About two in the morning it began to rain, so that I was below in my berth when I
wished to have seen the entrance of the port. Little was lost in this. The Ramsgate captain cheated me, – a la Ramsgate. The agent for
the packet, seeing Ediths size, demanded 16 shillings for her, – the captain
when he saw her asked for one pound. We offered to pay, & he desired to be paid at Ostend, – then he demanded full price for her, –
alledging that she had occupied a whole berth. This he knew she must of necessity do when he saw her. Of course I paid the money
without dispute, & now write down X Capt Aylesbury of the Lord Liverpool for a picaroon.Lord Liverpool was a packet ship which sailed between Ramsgate and Ostend. Presumably
Captain Aylesbury (dates unknown) was its master.xx plainly indicated a great jealousy between the people & the garrison, which we did not chuse to increase by giving
any preference to the son of green Erin, when it was due to the peo natives. So we left our luggage for the present. I fear
the rain will continue. The boat for Bruges starts at three in the afternoon, – perhaps we shall not find apartments when we arrive
there such is the trouble which this coronation, of which I had not heard in London, makes in this country. Tomorrow will probably be
past in Bruges <a[MS torn]> Our fellow passengers was a horse dealer to the army by name Wm Taylor,