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Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previously published: Charles Ramos, The Letters of Robert Southey to John May: 1797–1838 (Austin, Texas, 1976), pp. 148–150; Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), IV, pp. 137–140 [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 wrote to you from Lige Liege, up to which time all had gone on well with us. Thank God it is well with
us at present, but your god-daughter has been so unwell, that we were detained six
days at Aix la Chapelle, in a state of anxiety which you may well imagine, & at an Hotel where the Devil himself seemed to
possess the mistress & the greater part of the domestics. Happily I found a physician who had graduated at Edinburgh,
The day after my letter was written we reached Spa, & remained there Sunday & Monday, a pleasant &
necessary pause, – tho the pleasure was somewhat interrupted by the state of my own health, which was somewhat disordered there, –
perhaps the effect of the thin Rhenish wines & the grapes. Tuesday we would have slept at Verviers (the great clothing town)
if we could have found beds, – an English party had preoccupied them, & we proceeded to Herve, a little town half-way between
Liege & Aix la Chapelle, in the old principality of Limbourg. There, for the only time during our journey Edith-May was put to sleep in a different from mine, for it was not possible to
arrange things otherwise. She slept with the servant of the Vardons, – a young woman whom
they have bred up.xxxxx any part of the night owing to a sore throat: – she had gone to bed apparently in
high health & spirits. Being accustomed to see her tonsils swoln to a degree which might have alarmed a person not used to
such see it, I was not uneasy; & having bought some hartshorn to rub it with, we proceeded to Aix la Chapelle –
about 16 miles. – there was indeed no alternative, for any medical advice which could have been found in Herve, would have been
worse than nothing. But the journey over a paved road, was the worst thing which could have been befallen a patient in
an incipient fever, & when we arrived the child was so ill, that after seeing her laid to bed (about one o clock
& in the afternoon) I thought it necessary to go to the Bankers & request them to recommend me to a
physician. You may imagine how painful a time we past. It was necessary for her to gargle every hour, even if we waked her for it,
– but she never slept an hour continuously for the three first nights. Thank God however she seems thoroughly recovered now, we
are at Brussels, & can estimate the good with calmness.
While I was acting as nurse & cook (for we were obliged to do every thing ourselves) our party dined at the
Table d’Hote, & there as the child grew better I found myself in the company of some highly-distinguished Prussian officers.
One of them a Major Dresky,how
to see how they treated us as representatives of our country. Among the toasts which were given, I put this into French – the
Belle Alliance between Prussia & England, – may it endure as long as the memory of the battle: I cannot describe to you the
huzzaing – & hob-nobbing & handshaking with which it was received: But the chief benefit which I have derived was from
meeting with a certain Henry de Forster, a Major in our German Legion,
________
He has promised me to employ this winter in writing his Memoirs – a task which he had once performed, but the
papers were lost in a shipwreck off Santora; he has promised also to come with the MSS (if he lives) to England next summer –
where I hope & expect that the publication will be as beneficial to his immediate interests, as it will be honourable to his
memory. – We left Aix on Tuesday for Maestricht, slept the next night at St Trond, Thursday at Louvaine, &
arrived here to day. Tomorrow I go again with Nash to Waterloo, for the purpose of
procuring drawings of Hougoumont.