2817. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 29 June [1816]
2817. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 29 June [1816]*
My dear Grosvenor
The Liqueurs are arrived, & if you will come after them as soon as you can, you shall have a glass of the Saffron Elixir of Life every day as long as it lasts. [1]
Murray will have a parcel to send me soon, & my Governess’s splendid copy [2] may come by that opportunity. We look hourly for Mr Nash. – I received my sets of the Lay, & thereby learnt that the aweful ceremony had taken place. [3] It has not been advertised in the Courier, so I do not yet know the price of the book. [4] I want this & the Pilgrimage reviewed for the lucre of gain, – inasmuch as a review might carry off half an edition, or a whole one, & thereby give me more than a years salary; – it is soon done, – four or five pages of quotations strung together. [5]
God bless you
RS.
29 June.
How is your Mother? I have my annual cold, & Kate has for some time been out of health without any obvious apparent disease
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ 9 Stafford Row./ [in another
hand] W.G.
Endorsement: 29 June 1816
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 25. ALS; 2p.
Unpublished.
Dating
note: Year from endorsement. BACK
[1] In his letter to Bedford of 1 June 1816 (Letter 2802), Southey had asked for liqueurs he had enjoyed when in the Low Countries in 1815 to be sent him. Bedford had obliged and Southey was now enjoying ‘Elixir Stomachique’, containing saffron. BACK
[2] The Lay of the Laureate. Carmen Nuptiale (1816), no. 2694 in the sale catalogue of Southey’s library, was described as ‘elegantly bound in morocco, lined with silk, richly tooled, and gilt leaves.’ BACK
