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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. 89-91.
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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In the vexation occasioned by one brother I have forgotten the other, & never replied to what you said concerning
Harrys support at Edinburgh. To say
what you say of continuing to remit him his quarterly ten pounds I have only to thank you & feel thankful that there are such men
as you in the world. you say you think it reasonable that my Uncle should pay
his necessary lecture expences &c & no farther, these however are comparatively nothing – his board & lodging make the main
cost. You know how I am circumstanced – I have no debt but to you & that contracted wholly, or almost wholly, on his account. My
historyxxx comminuunt.him <the boy> suffer over-much, a
little sense of suffering will do him good – for his conduct has been very thoughtless & unfeeling. I have a letter from him
written with a sufficient conviction of his own folly & its consequences. he had borrowed ten guineas to pay the lecture fees, on a
promise to repay them at Xmas – & by Xmas the six pounds remaining from his journey – & the five he was to receive from Norwich
would be gone I conclude – so that your last supply was inevitably mortgaged, & he will be pennyless. will a you had will you therefore remit him ten pounds more. As soon as the Lectures are over I will send for him here &
keep him the summer months – this will be some saving – & in the winter, if I find him capable of it as he ought to be, will turn
over some reviewing to him that he may begin to live by the sweat of his brow. Before the next quarter I think my Uncle will make some arrangement for him.
I shall be glad my dear friend when our correspondence can resume its former pleasanter character – when I can tell you of my own goings on & give you my speculations, unmolested by these family cares which it is somewhat hard to have inherited. parental responsibility requires parental love to counterbalance it – but every duty rewards itself in the performance. – Coleridge is set off for his brothers. he had designed to go to Madeira, but expence deterred him. – my brother Tom is going to the West Indies – this grieves me sorely. he is now first Lieutenant – & if he can stand the climate has a fair chance of promotion.
Lord Strangfords
<Our remembrances to Mrs May.