1062. Robert Southey to Henry Herbert Southey, 27 April [1805]*
Dear Harry
I have some reasons for not writing to John May just at present – write to him yourself & state that as you will pass the summer with me that will afford you time to fetch up your lea way, & enable you to start for the next winter with unparalleled resources.
If the Censuria Literaria1 be to be had at Edinburgh bring me the first number, – for if it be done tolerably & is not there be enough for the money I should like to take it in.
Wordsworths child (little Dora)2 has the croupe, which has continued now for 12 days – tho very slightly of late – the General3 is about to sell the lease of his house for which the Bellygerent4 is in treaty – of course they come no more to Keswick. Come who will we shall not get better neighbours. Of the Colonel we know nothing. Mr Bunbury5 is expected the 20th of May. & Kenyon6 still holds his intention of returning here. We have been obliged to sell John,7 being unable to keep him at home because the gates were thrown wilfully open every night, – & equally unable to keep any where else – the boys breaking down every kind of fence to get at him, & using him with the greatest cruelty: Spedding bought him for his wifes riding – & I hear has been xxx xxx obliged to convert him into – Signor Giovanni.8 How the operation agrees with him I have not heard, & I am inclined to doubt its effect at so advanced an age. No news from Lisbon Lisbon – I conclude that there will be letters by Lord Holland.9 none from the W Indies.10
yrs affectionately RS.
Saturday, April 27.
Notes
Address: For/ H. H. Southey Esqr/ Mr Guthrie – Bookseller/ Nicholson Street/ Edinburgh/ Single
Stamped: KESWICK/
298
Postmark: [illegible]
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Don. d.3. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished. Back
1. Censura Literaria: Containing Titles, Abstracts, and Opinions of Old English Books, with Original Disquisitions, Articles of Biography, and other Literary Antiquities (1805–1809), ed. Samuel Egerton Brydges, (1762–1837; DNB). Back
2. Dora Wordsworth (1804–1847). Back
3. John Peche (dates unknown), who had served in the East India Company’s army, gazetted as Colonel in 1796 and Major-General in 1798. Back
4. The aggressive and corpulent Keswick resident Mr White (dates unknown), who had hoped to buy Greta Hall in 1804. Back
5. The artist Henry William Bunbury (1750–1811; DNB), father of Southey’s schoolfriend Charles John Bunbury. Back
6. John Kenyon (1784–1856), poet and philanthropist, would become a close friend of Southey’s in later years. Back
7. Southey’s ass. Back
8. Implying that John had become a c-ass-trato. The last great operatic castrato was Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781–1861). Back
9. Meaning letters from Southey’s uncle Herbert Hill, in Lisbon, conveyed by Lord Holland , the Whig patron and Hispanophile, whose library Southey would later use when working on his History of Brazil (1810–1819). Back
10. i.e. from Thomas Southey. Back