3367. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [started before and continued on] 18 October 1819
3367. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [started before and continued on] 18 October 1819*
In nomine Diaboli [1]
What is become of you?
I have a great mind to advertise you in the Hue & Cry, [2] as lost, stolen or strayed, with a description of your person, taken from Nashs portrait downstairs & aided by Mrs Coleridge’s recollections.
Dumb beast is an expression of pity, – but dumb-dog is an appellation of reproach, of vituperation & of wrath, – & therefore do I dumb-dog thee!
I will abuse thee thro the whole Chriscross row –
Abominable Base Bedford; Careless Detestable Correspondent; Detestable Dapple; Evil Epistolist; False Fellow; Grievous Grosvenor; Hateful, Idle, Jackanapes; Killcrop; Lazy, Monster; Nasty, Obstinate, Pitiful, <Queer> Rascally, SCARECROW! Terrible Ugly Villain! Wicked Xecrable Ysacre & Zany!
I could find in my heart to send for Mrs Coleridge & ask her to help me to abuse you.
What? is the manufactory of paper at a stand, – are their no rags among the Radicals to supply the mills? has the dry season parched up all the ink in the south? – or have the Geese & Ganders entered into a resolution to grow no more quills, as the Reformers <have done> to drink no more gin? [3]
Well, thought I at Glasgow, as there is no letter from Bedford here, I shall find one when I reach home. [4] And I have been at home more than a fortnight, – & whether Bedford is above ground or below, in England or in France, or half-seas over, – I know no more than the Man in the Moon.
–––––
It happens oddly enough that I am as much in the dark about every body else in London, & all my own concerns there as about you, not having received a single letter from thence since my return. I found a parcel from Gifford which was a month old. The date gave me a good plea for declining to write a paper on the State of Affairs as he wished me to do. [5] Of what use is it to prescribe drastics when a parcel of Old Women are afraid to administer them? – And as for alteratives they may be given with better effect thro another medium than in the QR. [6] – However I have not been idle. Lord Lonsdale has been with me about an Address, [7] – & I have endeavoured to impress upon him the necessity of two measures, – the repeal of Mr Fox’s law of libel, [8] – & making transportation the punishment for sedition & blasphemy. I told him also that there would be no more difficulty in carrying whole measures than half ones; for the opposition will be just as violent against one as against the other. – The Address originated here with Calvert & myself, – but this is between you ourselves.
———
Monday 18 Oct.
I see by this days paper that Lord Somerville is dead. [9] His life might have been thought a better one than mine. Some years ago he sold the property which is entailed upon me, – & I believe it is <not> worth the trouble of Litigation, – to say nothing of the expence. However I must enquire into it.
In justice to my daughter Bertha I must tell you that when she heard my alphabet Abecedarian vituperation of your Abominableness, she said it was a shame, & that I was not right to send it.
I cannot say that my head is perfectly as it should be, tho Edmondson dismissed me from under his hands some four or five days ago. There is still a little hole which does not appear to have skinned over.
Heaven knows what is become of my third volume! [10] – I am now busy upon Wesley [11] xx of which there is half a volume to write, – & I must moreover work hard for ways & means. Gifford has a curious paper <(the Monastic Orders)> upon the insertion of which in the next number I depend, – as a matter of some consequence. [12] I xxx shall review Marlboroughs Memoirs [13] immediately, – & am about to write to Murraylemagne for certain books which will enable me to extend the paper upon the New Churches. [14]
God bless you
RS.
Notes
* Address: To/ G. C. Bedford Esqre/ Exchequer/
Westminster
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: [partial] E/ OC 21/ 1819
Endorsements: 18. Octr. 1819; 18. Octr. 18 1819
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. d. 47.
ALS; 4p.
Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert
Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp. 146–148 [in part]. BACK
[2] The Hue and Cry, and Police Gazette (1772–present) was a weekly magazine containing details of crimes, suspects and stolen property. BACK
[3] Radicals were urging their supporters to protest against the government by abstaining from buying taxed commodities, such as tea, coffee, tobacco and alcohol, so producing a decline in the State’s revenue; see Carlisle Patriot, 6 November 1819, for an account of a local meeting to promote this aim. BACK
[4] Southey had toured Scotland from 17 August until 1 October 1819. For his record of events, see Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819, ed. Charles Harold Herford (1929). BACK
[7] Following the ‘Peterloo’ Massacre of 16 August 1819, Whigs in Cumberland organised a County Meeting on 13 October 1819 to protest at the local authorities’ actions and send an Address to the Prince Regent. Southey drew up a conservative response – an Address to the Prince Regent denouncing the radicals and calling for curbs on the press. It was not proceeded with, and the government’s supporters in Cumberland produced a more moderate document. BACK
[8] See Southey to William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, [15 October 1819], Letter 3364. The Libel Act (1792), promoted by Charles James Fox, made juries, rather than judges, mainly responsible for determining whether a publication was libellous. BACK
[9] John Southey Somerville, 15th Lord Somerville (1765–1819; DNB), agricultural reformer and third cousin of Southey, had died on 5 October 1819. This produced a further round of legal tangles over the Fitzhead estate in Somerset, which Somerville had inherited from his great-uncle, John Cannon Southey (d. 1768). BACK
[10] The third volume of Southey’s History of Brazil (1810–1819) had been delayed by a missing proof. BACK
[12] Southey’s review of Thomas Fosbrooke (1770–1842; DNB), British Monachism; or, Manners and Customs of the Monks and Nuns of England (1817), Quarterly Review, 22 (July 1819), 59–102. BACK
[13] Southey’s review of William Coxe, Memoirs of John Duke of Marlborough, with his Original Correspondence; Collected from the Family Records at Blenheim, and Other Authentic Sources. Illustrated with Portraits, Maps, and Military Plans (1818–1819) appeared in Quarterly Review, 23 (May 1820), 1–73. BACK