945. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 29 May [1804]*
Miss Mary – or dear Miss Mary to write in the old way – if you will for a moment recollect how I am worn down to the very bone by business you will excuse me for not writing till now, & for now writing so hastily. I have taken my place in the Brummejams1 coach for Friday afternoon next. which (God willing) will carry me to that sweet town on Saturday afternoon. I shall endeavour to make my way to Penkridge by way of Walsall2 that night, if not as early as possible on Sunday morning – & of course you know that the sooner we get into the coach together the better. I know nothing of the stages about Penkridge but a long coach passes thro Stone,3 where we may be sure of places.
God bless you – yrs in filth, fatigue & ill humour R Southey.
Tuesday May 29 – being the most rascally day in the Kalendar.4
Notes
Address: To/
Miss Barker/ Congreve/ Penkridge/ Staffordshire
Postmark: [partial] A. MA. 30 804
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Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967),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. 117.
Unpublished. Back
1. Slang, based on the locals’ unique accent, for the city of Birmingham. Back
2. A town near Penkridge and Birmingham, in Staffordshire. Back
3. A town six miles north of Stafford. Back
4. A reference to the anniversary of the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. Southey’s republican poem on this subject, ‘May 29 – Ode’, appeared anonymously in the Morning Post, 29 May 1798. Back