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British Library, Add MS 30927. Not previously published.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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[start of section in Edith Southey’s hand]
The Sailor
Who had served in the Slave Trade.
___________
[End of section in Edith Southey’s hand]
This my dear Tom which Edith has copied for you is a true story. it is about six weeks since
a friend
Now Tom about yourself. This day fortnight I go to London to keep a term. my stay cannot exceed a fortnight, then I will enquire your time for you at the Admirality, so when you write next let me know exactly what I am to ask. Now it will be just as well for you to visit us here as if we were in London, & if you can get leave I should think you might spend your Christmas better at Martin hall than in dock. As your time is so limited at home always, I do not wish you there till I am returned from London. but the earlier you can meet me after my return the better – only you should contrive to be here at Xmas. It will not do to keep this house longer than the twelvemonths, but it is so comfortable a place that I should be sorry if you did not see it. you will like to remember it, even in the nakedness of winter.
I have had a delightful weeks walk with Danvers, but the best adventure ‘as how we are taken up for spies’, shall be reserved till we meet. it has been a fine fund of merriment for us & you shall not share it at a distance.
It is not I think worth while to send you my second edition of
poems, till it can be accompanied with the second volume. of which one sheet is
already printed.
The better please, the worse displease; I ask no more.
unless you prefer what John Bunyan says of his Pilgrims Progress,
You should have been here during the season of currants & raspberries – or to have assisted in squailing down the walnuts. however there is still a besom or two in the walnut tree which you may exert your ingenuity to dislodge.
Edith is but poorly. my Mother continues well, &
grows fat. – you blundered in your direction to Lloyd he is at Caius College Cambridge, not Oxford. he tells me I can get to him from
London for four shillings & if so I think I shall visit him for a couple of
days shortly.
You need not be anxious about your time. peace is more distant
than ever, & the war seems likely to outlast you & I. it will hold as
long as the Public Purse holds. heavy taxes are coming
You do not say if you have received the Old Woman of
Berkely.