499. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 21 March 1800*

My dear Grosvenor

I am going to Lisbon – & with all speed. my arrangements are making to leave this place on Monday fortnight – on my way to Falmouth. climate will I trust cure me.

You laid by for me a copy of Musæus1 for my Uncle, will you be kind enough to get it bound, & send it to me here? they will bind [MS cut] in London than I could have it done. [MS cut] good spirits. & I have a definite & important object in view [MS cut] to write the History of Portugal,2 a work in which I will bestow [Ms cut] labour & which, if not miserably self-deceivd, I can do as [MS cut] it ought to be done.

Wynn has been with me – we went to Berkely together & met The Old Woman.3 she muttered God bless ye my children – God bless ye my children – twice she muttered these words – & as she that instant a cart took the wheel of our chaise – & if St David4 himself had not miraculously interposed in the shape of the reins ––––

But I am hugely busy, & allowed myself only half a sheet. my time & paper running equally short – So

God bless you Grosvenor – yrs here, there & everywhere Robert Southey.

March 21. 1800.

Notes

Address: To/ Grosvenor Charles Bedford Esqr/ Exchequer/ Westminster
Stamped: [partial] TOL
Postmark: [illegible]
Endorsement: 21 March 1800
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. ALS; 2p.
Previously published: Adolfo Cabral (ed.), Robert Southey: Journals of a Residence in Portugal 1800-1801 and a Visit to France 1838 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 66–67. Back

1.  Grosvenor Bedford’s translation, The Loves of Hero and Leander (1797). Back

2.  Southey’s uncompleted ‘History of Portugal’. Back

3.  The central figure in ‘A Ballad Shewing How an Old Woman Rode Double and Who Rode Before Her’, Poems, 2 vols (Bristol, 1799), II, pp. [143]–160. Back

4.  St David (6th century), Bishop and patron saint of Wales. Southey is referring to the legend that St Aidan, one of David’s disciples, preserved a pair of oxen and a cart from harm when they fell over a cliff into the sea, by making the sign of the cross over them. Back