1219. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 25 September 1806*
This evening I have received Mr Lewis’s1 letter – & tho I have nothing to say but that it is received, it seems something like a duty to tell you that I know what tidings awaited you on your return home. – God grant you strength to bear up against the shock, – for a shock it will indeed have been.2 The amputation of a limb is not the less painful, because it was a diseased one, & its removal desireable. – I am very anxious to hear from you.
My brothers are gone. they went this afternoon – Tom going to Taunton to his Uncle, & wishing to take Harry with him. It is the first time that we have ever been all three together since we were children – & it is by no means improbable that it may be the last. – My head feels as if it would be easier if I were to let a little water out, – but tears, Senhora, are a bad collyrium for weak eyes, – & I shall go to work. Idleness is the mother of sins they say, & it may be said that she is the wet nurse of Melancholy. My motto you know is In Labore Quies.3 I hope & trust that you may have too much business to be at leisure for unhappiness.
God Almighty bless you – Robert Southey.
Thursday Sept. 25. 1806.
Notes
Address: To/ Miss Barker
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to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard,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), pp. 206–207.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert
Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 394–395. Back
1. Possibly A.F. Lewis, who is listed among the subscribers to Mary Barker’s A Welsh Story (1798). Back
2. Southey is probably referring to the death of Mary Barker’s father, Thomas Barker (dates unknown). Back
3. Southey’s motto meaning ‘In Labour Rest’, borrowed from the sixteenth-century Spanish historian Esteban de Garibay (1533–1600) and engraved on his bookplate. Back