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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 62-63. 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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I wrote to you yesterday in haste & since that, Edith has been seized with what would have been fever if it had not been stopt in time. Of course it delays our departure, but I trust not later than Monday. Thoroughly comfortless as this house is become I know not whether this illness should altogether be considered as a misfortune – bodily suffering in some degree acts as an antidote against worse feelings. in all probability she has brought it on herself by refusing to take food for almost three days – now she takes medicines more patiently than she ever did (you know her mulishness of old) – in the hope of getting well & departing.
I too am suffering for want of uniform self
command. my eyes which God created for the purpose of
reading & writing I used as water works with a womanly
profusion by fits, the one presently became sore – &
warm salt water proved a most vile collyrium. let what will
happen, grief must find some other vent in me. You see the
original sin begins to appear again in me. in truth I can be
chearful & joyous even now, & shall soon be
contented – but to be as happy as I was four weeks agone –
so calmly & completely happy, & so awake to that
happiness as to break out into fits of boyish sportiveness
as I then did – O Christ it must be a long time before that
blessed state be restored to me. the pain of amputation is
over – but God knows how I miss the limb! & I could
& would go on but these damned hydraulics begin to work,
& if I cry I must actually roar. I never before
understood the force of Quarles’s quaint phrase to be
pickled in the brine of one’s own tears.
The post before our departure I will send off a letter annunciatory. I purpose staying in Cumberland some time if my health stands the climate. perhaps till I go to dear dear Portugal. if things go on smoothly I shall be able to keep a jack ass there – & you shall come up & ride him before the winter be over.