1910. Robert Southey to Charles Danvers, 23 April 1811 ⁠* 

My dear Charles

I heard of Mr T Southeys death from my Aunt two or three days ago. [1]  Oliver [2]  has not all the property, a good portion is gone to his man Tom. [3]  It was always my opinion that he would leave most of what he had to the Olivers, with which <family> he has been on the closest terms of card-playing intimacy ever since I can recollect. The person in question he knew much better than any of his nephews; & therefore I do not think him very unreasonable in preferring him to them. Of any injustice I fully acquit him. Had it had been an old family property the case would have <been> different, – it would then have been a wrong to those from whom he received it, & to those for whom he held it in trust, – but as it was the matter is very different. “John, says my Aunt, made himself a slave to get this trash, – he has made himself a fool to give it away.” – On our part he deserves no further <heavier> censure than this. But towards my Aunt his conduct has been cruel & unnatural to a degree which nothing but insanity can account for – unfortunately it is not that sort of insanity of which the law takes cognizance.

So Charles if xxxx <Lawyer> Nicholas [4]  xxxxx should have commenced any proceedings against this poor soul in the Courts below on my account I enter a Noli prosequi [5]  xxxxxx. He has done, I suspect, neither good nor evil in this world, & as for this, it is but an error of judgement, & Courts Martial allow that as an excuse, it ought surely to be a much fairer plea in case of <against> sentence of damnation.

I am sorry that our movements suit so ill with each other – & yet I cannot disarrange mine without more inconvenience than ought to be incurred. We shall start the last week in May or the first in June, be about a week on the road, – a month at Streatham & in London, – then to Bath to stay three days with Miss Barker, who is there with Sir Edward Littleton. Then to Bristol that Edith may see George & her sisters. [6]  I have written to my Aunt pressing her to return with us, in which case I will leave Edith at Bristol & go to fetch her, visiting Poole by the way. She writes in great depression of spirits & I fear will hardly be prevailed upon to travel so far from her own country, tho I have promised to convoy her back when she is tired of this – if she tires of it. – We return thro Liverpool, but it will be late in July before we reach that place, & I heartily wish you may prevail on D^r. J. [7]  to let you off.

It is the unmerciful extent of the Register [8]  which has thus thrown me out of my plans. This is very inconvenient to me on many accounts. I am particularly vexed about Hort [9]  – tell him I hope I shall see him next year, – & when I see him at Bristol I will tell him so myself.

No letter from Mr Smith. I fear he is almost past letter writing. [10]  We must try elsewhere. The Xt hospital presentations of which you speak are very few in number, so few that it is hopeless to think of them. If the boy [11]  were old enough the sea would be the surest way of providing for him.

I have been applied to to translate Lucien Buonaparte’s poem! [12] 

God bless you. We are going on well, & I am far more delighted with the campaign in Portugal than I should have been had M^r T. S. left me the whole of his fortune.

Yrs very affectionately

R Southey.

Keswick. April 23. 1811.