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Bodleian Library, MS Don. d. 3. 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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Your bird arrived duly – & your letter after it. it my Mother was too ill too enjoy
it – she has been one day better – one day worse – just able to rise from her
bed & sit up an hour in the evening. your prescription – I wish she were
well enough to need it! – for this last fortnight we have been retarding the
progress of a diarrhœa by opium. still it continues – she has been at time
delirious – she is more drowsy than only the opium would
make her – her appetite wholly gone. there exists but a possibility of her
recovery. happily there is no pain whatever.
I am glad you are not here. our home is now a comfortless one.
& Edith is herself so very
unwell – that instead of being a nurse to the sick – I daily apprehend that she
herself will need attendance. withall her spirits are dreadfully depressed – the
more so for the effort made to subdue them in my mothers presence – . Mrs Lovell is
here – we should else be wretchedly situated. our servant too is attentive.
Did you not receive a letter of some length which I wrote about a
month ago
Burnett is fortunate. he goes to
Lord Stanhope
I am doing little. Corry does not employ me – but he takes up my times – he is very civil – so after gossipping away a
year in his company we doubtless shall seperate. I have many interruptions at
home – & what is worse an interrupted mind. thro the day an incessant
anxiety for my Mother & thro
the night an alarm at every stirring in her room. poor Tom knows not of her illness – &
in all human probability his first news will be of her departure. It is well
Harry that you are not
here. – I myself continue well & feel no evil from the climate. the weather
has been favorable. yet my ties to this country are being daily loosened – one
goes after another. – the old leaves are dropping from the family tree – & I
see no bud upon its branches! –
My books grow dearer to me – I cling to them with a comfortless feeling that it is the only safe attachment – that they are the friends whom there is no danger of losing – who must survive me––
My Mother has long had a
superstition that she should die next year – because she was born in 52 – married in 72 – widowed in
92 – these forebodings are out of the reach of
reason – & they defy medicine
y. 1. 1802.