536. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 8 July [1800]
*
I write a few lines by you. so few that only
the opportunity of a private hand could excuse them.
You will find at Congreve a copy of Joan of
Arc [1] which
will arrive as soon as you can do. It will be an earlier
remembrancer than the Packet could bring you. &, when
you see Thalaba, it will serve like a bad drawing – to show
improvement. [2] I am not however ashamed of it.
If you go thro Plymouth & the fleet be
there I have a brother on board the Bellona who will show
you what is to be seen. Lieutenant Thomas Southey: he
is better than the breed of Sailors in general. only send to
him in my name, & he will have brains enough in two
minutes to see that you are not a mere Lisbon
acquaintance.
God bless you. I love Cintra dearly – but I
would rather the rock [3] went to
England than you.
R.S.
Tuesday July 8.
Do not fail – or delay – to inform us of
your arrival. I will watch all the seeding flowers –
& send you my Wall & the Cork Tree [4] in most accurate painting.
[The first letter I ever received from dear Southey MSlade
nee Barker] [5]
Notes
* Address: To/Miss Barker
[Bath]
MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Robert
Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey
to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD,
Harvard, 1967), pp. 1–2
Previously published: H.
Spencer Scott, ‘Some Southey Letters’, Atlantic
Monthly, 89 (1902), 36 [in
part]. BACK
[1] Southey had
sent a copy of Joan of Arc (1798) to Mary
Barker’s home at Congreve, Staffordshire. BACK
[2] The
Islamic romance Thalaba the Destroyer
(1801). BACK
[3] The Sierra, or mountain of Cintra. BACK
[4] Mary Barker was an
amateur painter and may have been teaching Southey
to paint. BACK
[5] The first … Barker: Marginal
annotation in hand of Mary Barker; as Mary Barker
signs herself ‘Slade’, this was written after her
marriage in 1830. BACK
