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British Library, Add MS 47890. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849-1850), II, pp. 244-248 [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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Tom – (you see my hand slipt down too soon after the address to
the place for beginning the letter.) I have just received yours & regret
that I did not write sooner upon a reasonable calculation that convoys are even
more uncertain than packets. A letter per bottle, I see by the newspapers,
thrown in on the way to the West Indies. – if I recollect right in Lat. 47 – has
found its way by the Isle of Sky, having travelled five miles per day against prevalent winds – therefore a current is certain.
I hope you will received my last time enough to save Henry
Of Edward & his Exeter friends & Exeter creditors I have heard nothing more. I also like you am vexed – perhaps more vexed than you, being more hopeless of the boy, & more convinced that there is some radical & incurable defect in his nature. that total want of all diffidence – of all shame which has been apparent in him even from his infancy, is to me something frightful & monstrous. it is as much a defect in moral organization as it is in the bodily frame to be born without head or feet, & God knows a thousand-fold worse in its consequences. No doubt he is returned to his infamous Aunt. you need be under no uneasiness for his immediate fate. but that such a boy can ever turn out well & occasion any thing but grief & shame to his relatives, or obtain any thing but sorrow & shame for himself is according to all my foresight utterly impossible.
For Gods sake adapt your mode of living to the climate you are
going to, & abstain almost wholly from wine & spirits. General
Peché,
Edith will go on with Madoc for
you, & a letter full shall go off for Barbadoes this week. my last set you
upon a wide field of inquiry. I know not what can be added, unless you should be
at St Vincents, where the Caribsthat
they may breed, & any other monsters. birds lose their beauty,
& I would not be accessory to the death of a humming bird for the sake of
keeping his corpse in a cabinet. but with crocodiles, sharks & land crabs it
is fair play – you catch them or they you. Your own eyes will do all that I
could direct them. how unfortunate that neither of us can draw! I want drawings
of the trees.
Thompson the friend of Burns; whose correspondence with him about
songs fills the whole fourth volume – has applied to me to write him verses for
Welsh airs.
We shall not think of holding any part of St
Domingo.
I trust this will reach you before your departure. write immediately on your arrival & afterwards by every packet – for any omission will make me uneasy. I will not be remiss on my part, & Madoc will furnish a pretty large cargo. I design to print it this summer & have already told my friend to procure me subscribers – but this is done rather to give me a satisfactory answer to them who say why do you not publish by subscription – than with any hopes of success.