668. Robert Southey to Charles
Danvers, 5 April 1802
*
Monday. April 5. 1802.
My dear Danvers
I write this letter in the hope that it may reach you before Losh visits Bristol – taking it for
granted that he will call upon you. should it so prove, will you ask him in my
name, if he could give William
Taylor a letter of introduction to Benjamin Constant? [1] he is a man whom Wm T. is
desirous of knowing – & the more so as he visits at houses to which he has
already passports Madame Condorcet [2] – & Madame Staëls. [3] I had often designed to ask Losh & as often forgot it. it may
be directed to me.
Our long meditated visit to Theobolds [4] takes place
tomorrow. it will not I think keep us more than three days.
Biggs is setting the first sheet
of Chatterton. [5] the
copy of Rowley which was once Herbert
Crofts has been lent me. it contains many m.s.s. notes, & also two
poems by Chatterton in Crofts
writing – which I shall publish with some pleasure, to make the rascal serve the
book against his will. Biggs’s
new types under my direction will make a beautiful work, as I have taught him
how to make the glossary ornament the page – which in every other edition it
disfigures. twill be a troublesome business over.
Edith continues to mend. xxx I spoke of lodging near
you instead of being with you, because we are no longer unincumbered.
We have a servant – & we have also Mrs Lovell. this makes all visiting quite out
of the question. if we can lodge Mrs L & Bella [6] seperately
for a few days while we look out more leisurely – I shall be very glad to be
your guest again, your parlour has been the scene not only of my pleasantest but
also of my best employed hours.
Old Lovell now consents to allow
twenty pounds for Roberts support
for one year – till he can (if he can) be got into Christs Hospital. [7] the truth is the old rascal thinks to make
me support his sons widow & child. by the blessing of God I hope to see him
& tell him my opinion of his conduct.
Edith mends – but she is in a
strange state of health.
Tonight I have the two greatest Welshmen coming to give me some
remarks on my Welsh manners in Madoc. Owen, & Edward Williams the Welsh Bard. [8] my poetry is quite dead & buried in
London. it will not thrive in this atmosphere – I have not written a line since
the beginning of the year. in fact historical labour [9] so satisfies indolence & all industry at once that it
weans me from other pursuits. there is always the amusement & employment of
reading – never the troub effort of invention.
However something will grow in a fallow fields, & I feel certain sprouts are
about to vegetate. the spirit is beginning to move me – & I suppose ere long
I shall fall in good earnest to work & gallop thro a few more books of
Kehama. [10]
My letter at last is gone to King. I have begged him to make a drawing for the vignette to one of
the volumes, of the inside of the room wherein the Rowleyan Manuscripts are said
to have been found. [11] the old Trunk,
& the old room with its window will make a good subject, & it will suit
better than any other possible device. Rickmans drawing of the Church goes for the other Volume. [12]
Carlisle will think of your
brother. [13] I am
fearful the scheme is not a very feasible one, for apothecaries & druggists
are numerous every where in London, & connections must at first be
necessary.
Burnett is about to leave Lord
Stanhope who has very handsomely given him a years salary. [14]
Coleridge is safe at Keswick – the cloathes & books which
he wisely entrusted to follow him by stage-coaches round by way of York are not
arrived of course – & of course he will lose them. Of his plans we only hear
from Mrs
Coleridge that he means to keep another servant & a horse. I have
little doubt that he is deranged. the conduct about his wife while he was in
town is utterly inexcusable – & now he is gone home to her – as tho he had
abused her to all his most common acquaintance! –
I am daily expecting money to remit to you – my Uncle has not written to me
lately. I doubt whether he will [MS obscured] Portugal after all – & wonder
whether the old saddles & hal[MS obscured] to be sent back again. the old
guns are valuable one.
Mrs Tyler has
written to Harry to demand
from me five tablespoons – a piece of cambric designed for stocks for my Uncle – & the money for produced by the sale of the furniture in
Westgate Buildings. [15] she adds that a statement only of the heads of the ill usage
she has received from my family would fill a quire of paper – & that she is
almost out of her senses. I have directed Harry to reply that she must
apply immediately to me if she wants any thing answered.
that Edith will make my Uncle’s stocks – & that
the less she says of money matters the better for her own credit.
Our love to Mrs Danvers. we shall hope to see her in May.
God bless you –
yrs affectionately
Robert Southey.
N.B. Keep a hedge-hog in your garden to eat the
grubs.
Notes
* Address: To/ Mr Danvers/
Kingsdown/ Bristol./ Single
Stamped: [partial, illegible]
Postmark:
CAP/ 5/ 1802
MS: British Library, Add MS
47890
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767-1830),
Swiss-born philosopher, writer and French politician. Losh had published a
translation of Constant’s Observations on the Strength of the Present
Government in France in 1797. BACK
[2] Sophie
de Condorcet (1764-1822), the widow of the mathematician and philosopher
Maire Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794). She
hosted a noted Parisian salon. BACK
[3] Anne-Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein
(1766-1817), influential author, thinker and hostess, and a close friend of
Constant’s. BACK
[4] Theobalds was the home in Hertfordshire of Mrs Dolignon and
the Miss Delameres, childhood friends of Southey. BACK
[5] Southey and Joseph
Cottle’s planned subscription edition of the works of Thomas Chatterton
(1752-1770; DNB), eventually published in 1803. BACK
[6] The Southeys’ servant, she died in 1804. BACK
[7] Robert Lovell Jnr was not sent to school at
Christ’s Hospital, London. BACK
[8] The poet and forger Edward Williams (1746-1826;
DNB), who published in English and Welsh and used the
pseudonym Iolo Morganwg. BACK
[9] Southey was working on his projected ‘History of
Portugal’. BACK
[10] The Hindu romance The
Curse of Kehama was not published until 1810. Southey began Book
2 on 4 June 1802. BACK
[11] The muniment room in
St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, where Thomas Chatterton had supposedly
discovered manuscripts by the monk Thomas Rowley (c. 1400-1470). John King’s
drawing was used for the engraving opposite the title page of The
Works of Thomas Chatterton, 3 vols (London, 1803), II,
unpaginated. It was entitled ‘Interior of the Room in Redcliff Church where
Rowleys Manuscripts were Said to have been Deposited’. BACK
[12] Rickman’s drawing did not appear in Southey and
Cottle’s edition; see Southey to Joseph Cottle, 24 June 1802, Letter
684. BACK
[13] Probably the surgeon and
apothecary, John Danvers (d. 1812), then of Woolwich, London, declared bankrupt in
The National Register (3 July 1808), 426. BACK
[14] Burnett had been employed as tutor to Charles
Stanhope (1785-1809) and James Stanhope (1788-1825), younger sons of the
controversial politician and inventor Charles (‘Citizen’) Stanhope, 3rd Earl
Stanhope (1753-1816; DNB). The boys’ flight from their
father’s house had rendered his post redundant. BACK
[15] Presumably money
raised by the sale of furniture belonging to Southey’s late mother,
Margaret, when she gave up her boarding house at Westgate Buildings in Bath
in 1798. BACK
