306. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [either c. 11 April or c. 11 May 1798]*

My dear Grosvenor

I wrote to you some time ago desiring you to buy some parsnips¹ for a friend here; now my dear Sir Dilatory Dawdle, we should wait with considerable patience if the spring would wait too – but the Spring will not wait; – & so I am daily asked for the parsnips. I pray you send them.

You are a very good for nothing fellow Grosvenor Bedford – or you would have said something in reply to when I wrote to tell you to come here. however God bless you & mend you.

So no more at present from yrs as in duty bound Robert Southey.

Oh – a man² whom I never saw or heard of has just written to ask me to write him a sonnet upon – What? for a ducat. so guess & then turn over.

A Manks Herring

The herrings caught in Port Iron, Isle of Man being richer in quality than the English ones.

I have a great to frank up his letter to Wynn

it had

Notes

Address: To/ G C Bedford Esqr / Exchequer / London
Stamped: BRISTOL
Postmark: [partial] 11/ 98
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: This letter was written some time after Southey’s letter to Bedford of 30 March 1798 (Letter 300), asking him to procure some sugar parsnips. Back

1. Southey had asked him to procure some sugar parsnips. The friend was probably Mrs Jardine, the widow of David Jardine (1766–1797), Minister of the Trim Street Unitarian Chapel, Bath; see Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 March 1798, Letter 300. Back

2. Unidentified. Back