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MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 312–316.. Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 137–139 [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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You will be beginning Senhora to wonder that you hear no news from Keswick, & it is well that I have not bad news to communicate. Herbert has had the croup, – the particulars I shall not relate because I do not like to remember them. – thank God the disease was speedily subdued, & he is now recovering from the remedies. The marks of the blister are disappearing from the throat, & his complection to day has a healthier colour than it has had since he was waked out of his sleep to have six ounces of blood taken from the jugular vein. We have as you may well suppose, gone thro much anxiety. I have but four of the fourteen, yet & they bring with them a good deal of uneasiness, – nevertheless I’se for the whole number. Piggarel is not, but you know her of old, & I do not find that all her grumbling about them before they come makes her like them a jot the less when they are here. Bertha thrives, & Nurse says she is a beauty, which is more than I can say. Emma is grown a bonny wench, – & as for your truly begotten god-daughter she is taller than Sara. I hope you will be pleased to hear that she takes after her father, & professes a determination never to learn to dance, – tho her cousin dances all morning at the dancing-masters & all the evening at home.
We go on increasing in grandeur, – & the only thing I do not like in your Teddesleyficationgetting my lease, in which that house is included, – of course for the only purpose of
securing myself against an unpleasant neighbor. But Jackson has built another
adjoining the wood-house, – poor man, thinking all along that he was accommodating us, – calculating that Coleridge would occupy his present tenement, & he himself remove into the
new one. The shell is compleated, the only thing which makes me regard it with any complacency, is a sort of dream, that one of
these days you may perhaps take up your abode there,
Mr. White wrote me an intimation of Miss Seward’s death.
Burnett I hear is in a deep decline. God have mercy on him, never was a good heart so wofully corrupted by a vain head. It grieves me to think how differently this intelligence affects me from what it would once have done. He is better dead than living, – but it is shocking that I should think so. I think there was a time when that mans heart was as pure & innocent as the heart of man could be. That so beautiful a flower should have had its fruit so cankered! The question whether it would have been otherwise if he had never known me will occur to many persons. On that score I have nothing to repent. I set him no example but what was good. As long as he loved me he loved what was good.
I expect daily to hear of Harry’s marriage with Mary Sealy. – God bless you. I suppose Sir E. is in town & therefore do not inclose the letter