Material from the Romantic Circles Website may not be downloaded, reproduced or disseminated in any manner without authorization unless it is for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, and/or classroom use as provided by the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended.
Unless otherwise noted, all Pages and Resources mounted on Romantic Circles are copyrighted by the author/editor and may be shared only in accordance with the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Except as expressly permitted by this statement, redistribution or republication in any medium requires express prior written consent from the author/editors and advance notification of Romantic Circles. Any requests for authorization should be forwarded to Romantic Circles:>
By their use of these texts and images, users agree to the following conditions:
Users are not permitted to download these texts and images in order to mount them on their own servers. It is not in our interest or that of our users to have uncontrolled subsets of our holdings available elsewhere on the Internet. We make corrections and additions to our edited resources on a continual basis, and we want the most current text to be the only one generally available to all Internet users. Institutions can, of course, make a link to the copies at Romantic Circles, subject to our conditions of use.
British Library, Add MS 30927. Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), II, pp. 2–5 [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.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
Ever since you left us have I been hurried from one job to another. you know I expect a parcel of books when you went
away they came & I had immediately to kill off one detachment.
I am sorry it is low water with you – & that we cannot set you afloat. we are heavily laden & can with hard
work barely keep above water. I have been obliged to borrow. by & by we shall do better but we are just now at the worst – &
these cursed taxes
We had an odd circumstance happened to us on Wednesday. just as we were beginning breakfast a well dressd woman, in a
silk gown, & muff, entered the room. I am come to take a little breakfast said she – down she laid her muff, took a chair & come & sat down by the fire. We thought she was mad – but she lookd so stupid that we soon
found that was not the case. sure enough breakfast she did – I was obliged then to go down & laugh. my mother & Edith behaved very
well, but Margery could not come into the room. When the good Lady had done she
rose & askd what she had to pay? – nothing Maam said my mother. nothing?
why how is this? – I don’t know how it is said my Mother & smiled, but so
it is. What – do’nt you keep a public? no indeed Maam – so we had half a hundred apologies, & the
servant had a shilling, we had a good morning laugh for ourselves & a good story for our friends & she had a very good
breakfast. I wish you had been here.
Harry is going to a Mr Maurice, a gentleman who takes only a few pupils, at Normanston, near Lowestoff, Norfolk <Suffolk I know not which>. you may perhaps know Lowestoff as the most easterly point of the island. it is a very fortunate situation for him.
The frost has stopt the pump & the press. my Letters
I do not know where Lloyd is. it is long since I have heard from him. indeed my own employments make me a vile correspondent.
The Old Woman of Berkeley cuts a very respectable figure on horseback, & Beelzebub is so well admirably drawn that one would have suppose he had sat for his picture.
My Mother is in the College Green – I wish she were any where else. she always leaves it in most wicked spirits. tis a miserable house & neither man or beast is happy in it.
I know not how you exist this weather. my great coat is a lovely garment my mother says, & but for it I should I believe be found on Durdham Down in the shape of a great icicle. at home the wind comes in so cuttingly in the evenings that I have taken to wear my Welsh wig; to the great improvement of my personal charms. Edith says I may say that.
I shall make a ballad upon the story of your shipmate the marine, who kept the fifth commandment
y. 1799.
A happy new year!