Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 77–83 [in part]; Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800–1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 91–93 [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.
The country immediately adjoining Buenos Ayres,x hair fine & curled, its blossom
growing tall & to be seen at some distan, a fine yellow flower distinguishable at a considerable
distance from its size. & the acanthus, the plant that gave a man of genius the idea of the Corinthian capital which he in
consequence invented. bl[MS obscured] these with wild roses, & woodbines – more profusely beautiful than I ever saw them elsewhere
& you have the idea of these bank-fences. our way was up & down steep hills, whence we looked over the valley, its scattered
houses, & here & there a convent – always a beautiful object, & sometimes the river, & its far shore like a low cloud.
It was dusk before we returned & the fireflies were awake – flashing about the banks, & then putting out their candles, &
again in light – like faery fire-works. my Uncle when first in this country
had lost himself in a lane at Cintra – it was evening – he had heard nothing of these fireflies
– & some hundred rose at once before him. he says he thought there was a volcano beginning under his feet.
The warm weather is come. we shut our windows to exclude the heated air, & our shutters to darken the room. – if
half the money expended upon the Souls in Purgatory were employed in watering the streets, we should be relieved from the torment of
burning – yet is the heat more endurable than the intense light. this is insufferably painful – the houses are white – the stones in
the street white – the very dust bleached – & all reflect back upon us the scorching sun. the light is like the white quivering of
a furnace fire: it dazzles & makes the eyes ache – & blindness is very common. At evening the sea breeze rises – a sudden
change! tremendous for an invalid – but it purifies the town, & then owl-like we come out of our nests. – At Cintra we shall be cool. we wait only for the Processions of the Body of God, & St Antony the 12 & 13th of June – & the Heart of Jesus on the 20th
& the first Bull-fight which will be about that time.
The Butchers annually pay a certain sum to Government – like tax or turnpike men in England. veal is prohibited – there
are however smugglers who carry on a contraband trade in veal, & better mutton than is to be procured in the legal way. one of
these was taken up near our door a few days since, a public calamity I assure you. The Portugueze servants do not like mutton, &
<they> mutinied in an English family the other day on this account. a tax of one rea per pound on all meat sold in Lisbon, raises
the fund for the Aqueduct. a light tax (about the fifth of a halfpenny) for so great a benefit. the water is indeed purchased from the
Gallegosthe
<a> name expressive of this they call it the free waters. The number of Gallegos employed here is disgraceful both to Spain &
Portugal. to their own country that these industrious people cannot find employment at home: to this, that the Portugueze are lazy
enough to let foreigners do their work, who annually drain Lisbon of its species. The Mules & Goats have a most ugly cup-shaped
bell from 6 to 12 inches long xxxxxx <hanging from> their neck – with a clapper as rude as the
rude cup in which it clinks. Manuelxx worse people than himself, adopts this system of coercion when conciliation has been advised, &
the ill effects of force experienced. you should coax the mule said my Uncle
– & never go near her without carrying her something in your hand. No Senhor – said Mambrino. that is the way with horned cattle I know – but not with beasts like mules or horses. nothing but beating will do. One day there was a hallaballoo
(I never saw that word in a dictionary, so pardon the spelling if it be wrong) in the stables which alarmed my Uncle – out he went – & there was Manuel, discomfited by the Mule & crawled
up under the manger, in bodily fear.
cou influenza of the country. the stone cutter will lay his head upon the stone at which he has worked,
& sleep, tho it be hot enough to boil a beef[MS obscured] very days are lazy. it was but yesterday I saw a great son of a bitch,
(literally,) let a mule step upon him from sheer laziness, & then he rose howling & walked away. the
fellows lie sleeping every where in the streets – they seem to possess the power of sleeping where they will. Everlasting noise is
another characteristic of Lisbon. their noon-fireworks – their cannonading on every fool pretext – their bells to every goat in a flock
& every mule in a drove prove this – above all their everlasting bell ding-donging – for bell ringing would
convey the English idea of music, & here it is only noise. A merchant not far from my Uncles has a private chapel from whence his bells annoy the whole neighbourhood. The
English Hotel till lately was near him, & the Invalids were disturbed & of course injured by the noise. they sent to requ state this & request that he would have the goodness to dispense with the bellringing. he
returned for answer that the Prince
We had often heard a noise below which puzzled us. it was like ranting linen – but so often that all the linen in Lisbon could not have supplied the sound. at last when Maria was cleaning the adjoining room we heard it. she was laying the dust & in the same way as she damps the cloaths in ironing – by taking a great mouthfull of water & then squirting it out, – this is the Portugueze way – & the mouth makes a very good watering-pot.
I have heard a good anecdote to illustrate the <personal> insecurity in this Kingdom. did you <ever> see
old Harris who lodged with my mother once?
My Uncle has purchased Charts of all the coasts & ports of Spain &
its islands – with the intention of giving them to you. should you ever get on this station they will be eminently useful. Lord St Vincent has a copy – but the copies are so rare & so expensive that
there can be very few in the navy. Omit not to write often your letters cost very little – not more than at Bristol. God bless you.
Rundell
It was Rundell made the enquiry near Helstone. you have had the Anthology