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Huntington Library, RS 4. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 217–219.
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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Dr Beddoes’s lectures
I will work & in right willing earnest. we have in England something like Beguinagesx worked muslins were
fashionable, my father who was a linen draper was often employed to get xxxxxxx <them> worked,
& xxxx as this was done by the Moravians I have sometimes accompanied my mother to their dwelling.
There is not much hope x from Hannah
More & the vital Xtians. they would so clog the institution with chapels & chaplains as to pervert it into a
Calvinistic Nunnery. the Dutchess of Devonshire
The influence of women in society would make an interesting chapter. among savages, as far as my reading reaches, they
are universally despised. hence, nothing to humanize & soften. the Spartan females – like the men of Sparta, seem out of the limits
of calculation, – with all their Helot-enormity
Polygamy enslaves necessarily & voluptualizes the women. so, except in perpetuating the race, they do no good in society – & one might doubt whether they do any good by that – for better is a wilderness than a Turkish province. in a harem vanity & envy will predominate, & each seeks the caresses of the husband to mortify the rest, & the whole of female education there is limited to instructions how to stimulate desire. the perpetual excitements of polygamy probably occasion at least half the libidinous habits attributed to climate. early debility is the consequence, & such men must be slaves.
In Arabia the women are not ashamed to shew their faces to a stranger – because they are not unchaste. polygamy is not common, & I believe the usual vice of the East, almost unknown. voluptuousness is not the characteristic of the Arabs – yet their climate is at least as hot as any part of Persia.
Popular superstitions cannot have occasioned the despotisms of the East. perhaps no religion is hostile to improvement
(except the Hindoo –) but every religious establishment. a Mufti is no worse than an Archbishop – & certainly not so bad as the
Pope. xxxxxxx Besides the religion of Mohammedfrom the or an objection from the Man in the Moon,
who by the by looks of the Chinese breed by his broad face & his no eyebrows.
I am materially better – yet I think a long journey & another climate will be materially beneficial to my health. I
have ever been a temperate man, & since I first perceived my usual state of health declining, watchful of what affected me either
well or otherwise. a visit to the Western island would involve many voyages – now at sea I am always emptying my bowels at the
fore-door –, & loathe ship food too much to replenish them. I am I believe secure of an English passport to France – if I like to
go – & if I can find a woman-companion for Edith, I will go. but it will not
be well to leave her alone among foreigners while I make my rambles to the right & left of our halting places. I have a way open to
procure the French passport, & what is more difficult, can settle my money matters so as to receive cash from Perigord
y. 1800