1432. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, [c. 14 March 1808*

My dear Senhora

I have not written because unless I had stolen it from sleep I have not had one minute in which it would have been possible to write since my arrival in town: nor was it my intention to have written till I had reached home & could have given you a fair sheet full, & added a fitting letter of thanks to Sir Edward. I pray you make my acknowledgements to him in the meantime. I have done nothing but pack books, tramp the streets, dress, go out, blow my nose & cough for the last fortnight – at present my work is going on, & my cold going off.

God bless you RS.

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text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), p. 270.
Dating note: written about two weeks after Southey arrived in London on 29 February 1808. Back