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Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previously published: Charles Ramos, The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 145–147; Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 132–136.
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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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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I have a happy habit of making the best of all things & being just at this time as uncomfortable as the dust & bustle & all the disagreeables of an inn in a larger filthy manufacturing city can make me, I have called for pen ink & paper & am actually writing in the bar, the door open to the yard opposite this unwiped table, the folding doors open to the public room where two men are dining, & talking French, & a woman servant at my elbow lighting a fire for our party. Presently the folding doors are to be shut, the ladies will descend from their chambers, the bar will be kept appropriated to our house, the male part of the company will get into good humour, dinner will be ready & then – I must lay aside the grey goose quill. As a preliminary to these promised comforts, the servant is now mopping the hearth, which is composed (like a tesselated pavement) of little bricks about two inches long by half an inch wide, set within a broad black stone frame. The fuel is of fire balls, – a mixture of pulverised coal & clay. I have seen a great deal & heard a great deal more indeed than I can keep pace with in my journal, tho I strive hard to do it: but I minute down short notes in my pencil book with all possible care & hope in the end to lose nothing.
As for Harry & his party I know nothing more of them
than that they landed at Ostend a week before us & proceeded to Bruges. This we learnt from Mrs Harrison at
Ramsgate.
Flanders is a most interesting country. – Bruges the most striking city that I have ever seen: an old city in perfect
preservation; – it seems as if not a house has been built during the last two centuries, & not a house suffered to go to decay. The
poorest people seem to be well lodged, & there is a general air of sufficiency, cleanliness, industry & comfort which I have
never seen in any other place. The cities have grown worse as we advanced. Ghent (tho very interesting) is less so than Bruges, – there
is more that is modern, more that is vicious, more that is wretched. Brussels has some very fine parts the work of old times. – The
modern parts are fine also but they are French, & the city has the credit (which you & I shall agree in thinking the worst
possible character) of being a second Paris. At Namur we reached a dirty city, situated in a romantic country. The Meuse there reminded
me of the Thames from your delightful house, an island in size & shape resembling that on which I have often wished for a grove of
poplars coming just in the same position. From thence along the river to this abominable place. The country is for the greater part as
lovely as can be imagined, – especially at Huy, where we slept last night & fell in with one of the inhabitants,
Our weather hitherto has been delightful: this was especially fortunate at Waterloo & at Ligny where we had much
ground to walk over. It would surprize you to see how soon Nature has recovered from the injuries of war. the ground is plowed and
sown, – & grain & flowers & weeds already growing over the field of battle, which is still strewn with vestiges of the
slaughter, caps cartridge boxes, hats &c. We picked up some French cards, & some bullets, & we purchased a French pistol,
& two of the eagles which the infantry wear upon their caps. What I felt upon this ground, it would be difficult to say, – what I
saw & still more what I heard, there is no time at present for saying. In prose & in verse you shall one day hear the
whole.
At Les Quartre Bras
I have laid out some money in books. – four or five & twenty pounds. & I have bargained for a set of the Acta
Sanctorum