1175. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 15 April [1806]*
My dear Senhora I am in London at last after a fortnights absence from home – a week on my way, a week at Norwich.1 Yesterday I reached this place, & am now in all the hurry & bustle of arrival. Mr Hyde my tailor has this minute left me2 – I am about to look for a decent hat &c – & as you may suppose have little leisure as yet to write hepistles. The sole object of this is to beg you will send me Don Manuels letters that I may get them without delay into the press.3 The direction was given in my last – but you may have mislaid it & therefore I repeat it. enclose them to John Rickman Esqr. (there needs no inner enclosure to me) & enclose that to the Speaker – Right Honble The Speaker &c &c &c Westminster.4
I had a letter from home yesterday & all was well. The weather is intolerable – I have far to walk & no great coat, & am out of humour & not in spirits –
God bless you R Southey.
Tuesday 15. April
Notes
Address: To/ Miss Barker/ Congreve/ Penkridge/
Staffordshire
MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert
Southey to Mary
Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), p. 189. Back
1. Southey visited William Taylor in Norwich on his way to London. Back
2. A tailor frequented by Southey when he was in London; his first name and dates are unknown. Back
3. Southey had asked Mary Barker to provide some material for Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella; Translated from the Spanish (1807); see Southey to Mary Barker, 26 January 1805 (Letter 1027) and 27 November 1805 (Letter 1126). Back
4. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Charles Abbott, who had the power to frank mail, a power Rickman, his secretary, used on Southey’s behalf. Back