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British Library, Add MS 30928. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 78–80 [in part].
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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I write to you from Stowey & at the same table with Coleridge. this will surprize you – I know not whether you will be equally surprized to hear that Lloyd reported as many unfavourable accounts of me to Coleridge – as he did of Coleridge to me – & manufactured conversations & speeches wholly out of his brain. for this I have the authority of Poole – & his own Letters. they believe him mad – I wonder & learn to be sceptical.
However here I am, & have been some days wholly immersed in conversation. in one point of view Coleridge & I are bad companions for each other, without being talkative I am conversational, the hours slip away & the ink dries upon the pen in my hand.
Edith is very much better. I have seen Ilfracombe & find its beauty consists wholly in the shore scenery – the country is wild open & naked, so we shall go to the South of Devon at once – & set out on Monday or Tuesday next to Sidmouth. the Coleridges are going to Ottery, which is only five miles from Sidmouth so we travel together.
I have seen the Valley of Stones. imagine a vale, almost narrow enough to be called a coombe running between two ranges of hills. on the left the hills are covered with turf. the vale is sprinkled with stones among fern, only in one place piled grotesquely or at any height – yet presenting a singular appearance. the magnificence lies on the Northern side – the hills here are without turf or soil, stript of their vegetable earth – compleatly naked – the very bones of the earth. here the bare stones assume a thousand strange shapes of ruins. I ascended the highest point. at the summit two huge stones inclining against each other formed a portal. in this I lay down. a little platform of level turf – the only piece I saw spread before me. about two yards long, & then the eye fell immediately upon the sea, a giddy depth. you cannot conceive a spot more strange, more impressive. I never before felt the whole sublimity of solitude.
What could have been the origin of this valley? the valley itself is very high above the sea – but if it be the effect of water, & I can conceive no other possible agent, the same inundation which bared the summit of these heights must necessarily have flooded all the lower lands in the kingdom. but even the opposite hills to which I could have shot an arrow are clothed with soil & vegetation. possibly a water spout might have produced this effect. As a poet I could form hypotheses in plenty, but to my shame I am no naturalist. I could learn no tradition – the people do not even suspect the Devil of having had any hand in it.
At the alehouse in the adjoining village I
met with the father of Lean – your reading-society man.
Lymouth a village about a mile from the
Valley of Stones is a place of unequalled beauty. excepting
the Arrabida & Cintra I have seen nothing superiour to
it. two rivers – you know the down-hill rivers of Devonshire
– that make one long water-fall all the way – two rivers
from two coombes join at Lymouth, & where they join
enter the sea, & the sea makes but one murmur roar with the rivers.
the one coombe is richly wooded – the other naked &
stoney. from the eminence which juts out between them is one
of the noblest views I ever saw – the two coombes &
their rivers – their junction – the little village of
Lymouth & the sea – here boundless & with the
variety of sea colours. the road down to Lymouth is dreadful
a narrow path more than a mile in descent on the brink of a
precipice with the sea below. a mound of earth about two
feet high secure the foot traveller but it is gloriously
terrific.
I have no time to day to write to my mother or
Cottle.
desire Cottle
to send me down three small anthologies here immediately,
& for Mr
Poole in the same bx parcel Bayntons book on Ulcers.frank comes for me not to inclose it again & make me pay double for what
would else cost nothing. if he has left out the word
“Annual” the title page shall be cancelled. it is the one
word needful, but I hope you have prevented him.
God bless you. remember us affectionately to your mother.