Sunday
Tom is safe –
& so I suppose you know. [1] your last
crossed mine upon my
<the> road – I should have written since, but the
business of settling first interrupted me, & illness
afterwards. I am miserably unwell – in pain in every
possible part – from my head to the very termination of the
rectum, sore all the way. a bowel-complaint has in three
days reduced me to almost a palsied debility – & this is
not the worst – for I had before & still have certain
achings, physical ones – at the heart, that puzzle me to
account for them. a settled dull obtuse aching just enough
to attract continual attention – & show that all is not
as it should be. If this continues I shall take advice of
Beddoes or
go to him.
Think Grosvenor – a poor fellow who does not
know the first elements of Euclid kept all day & night
at fluxions! [2]
Wednesday
Thank God Nature has stopt the sluices. but I
am weaker than bad swipes. [3] & so sore! & so
exhausted with sleeplessness & head ache! & fever!
& want of appetite! & then this clinging heart
complaint – do you wonder that I should be hipped? Write me
a letter Grosvenor give me some matter to interest me &
snatch the ten minutes employed in reading it from the
tedious uniformity of a day of confinement. it is now many
months since I have been well. would to God there were peace
that I might try the climate of France or Italy.
I meant to have scrawled thro the sheet but
my intellect is as empty as my intestines.
God bless you
yrs, whilst any of him
remains
Robert Southey.
Burton. near Ringwood.
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqr/ Exchequer/ Westminster/
Single
Stamped: CHRIST CHURCH
Endorsement:
Novr 1799
MS: Bodleian
Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23
Unpublished.
Dating
note: References to Southey’s illness in this letter
suggest a date very close to that of his letter to
Humphry Davy of 12 November 1799 (Letter
454). BACK
[1] Newspaper reports confirmed Tom Southey’s
ship, the Sylph, had not been
captured, but had safely returned to Plymouth after a
long cruise; see, for example, Morning
Chronicle, 26 October 1799. BACK
[2] Euclid
(fl. 300 BC), Greek mathematician, author of the
Elements. ‘Fluxions’ was a 17th and
18th-century mathematical term for what are now called
‘derivatives’, as well as a term for bowel
movements. BACK
