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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), I, pp. 112–117 [dated July 23 1801].
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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Your letter reached me safely. The Aveiro conspiracy
On Monday next we go to Cintra. The summer is arrived, and we have had some days more oppressively hot than I had ever before experienced, accompanied with the hot wind, a sort of bastard siroc, which you must remember, and which it is much more agreeable to remember than to feel.
The disappointment of having a burning face fanned by a wind that
heats it, has been useful to me. I had described desert sufferings, and can now
retouch and heighten the picture. To-day we have had the fine fresh breeze
which, in the West Indies, they call the doctor, – a good seamanly phrase, well
expressing its healing comfort. The nights are miserably hot. I thirst after
Cintra, and on Monday hope to hear
once more the sound of running water. We shall be fortunate in having a pleasant
neighbour there, in one of the birds of passage that chance sends to Portugal, a
Miss Barker, who is here with a
convalescent aunt,
We were at the museum on Monday last. There are the head and hands of one of our cousin ouran-outangs there, which I remember to have heard of some years ago. The poor fellow who owned them was walking quietly with a stick in his hand. A European saw him and shot him. He was more like the human animal than any ape that had been seen before. Unless you remember the face, you will hardly believe how human it is, – with black eyebrows and a woolly head like a negro’s. I could and would have given a conscientious verdict of wilful murder against the man who shot him – the cruelty pains me; and yet I smile at the impudence of a Portuguese in presuming to kill an ouran-outang as his inferior.
You imagine that we live much with the Hares.
We live mostly to ourselves, seeing something of everybody, and
much of no one except my uncle.
At the only two parties which I have attended, I was engrossed, much to my
satisfaction, by Koster, a
man more conversable than most of the English here, and whose opinions call
forth somewhat more freedom of conversation than I allow myself elsewhere. We
have dined at Mr. Walpole’s,Corpo de Dios
from Miss Stevens’s,lieutenants live too much with the emigrants, and observe too rude a
retirement towards the English.
Of the books which I have met with, none has amused me so much as
a metrical Life of Vieyra, the painter, written by himself.the habit of turning water into wine – “he
did not do it once only, like Christ at Cana,” says the Jesuit; “and when the
sun was too hot he called the birds to fly over his head and screen him, which
was a much more elegant (gracioso) miracle than the cloud
that shadowed the children of Israel!”
At Cintra I design to read
the Ordinançoês de Affonso V.,
To-morrow is the first bull-fight, and my uncle’s man
Monday, June 23rd.I am not quite sure that my curiosity in once going was
perfectly justifiable; but the pain inflicted by the sight was expiation
enough.
I have not applied to Mr. Coppendale
Mr. WorthingtonKing
George, which sailed between Falmouth and Lisbon.