950. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 8 June 1804
950. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 8 June 1804 *
I arrived safely. how many years purgatory you are to undergo for the disappointment you occassioned must be left to some merciful Catholic Casuist to determine. [1] the Evangelicals would not let you off for any thing short of half eternity – & were the punishment at my discretion or Ediths – or Mrs Lovells – you would certainly be sentenced to vigorous carts-tailing [2] perhaps to travel in that fashion to Keswick instead of by the stage coach.
You left me to make your excuses – which I assure you turned out a very botched & boggling piece of business.
How I got home is a narrative which may be useful to you as example – if you can stand the fatigue. before 12 the mail reached Manchester, & I set off at half after two in another mail – from the same inn, which in twelve hours carried me to Kendal. from thence in chases I reached home before nine on this Tuesday evening.
I have no leisure to write more now. all are well – the Edithling healthy & promising to be like me – the extract from Mrs Cockburne [3] you will bring with you as there is no hurry, & therefore postage may be spared – if you chuse to make such an abstract of her life & merits as will fill a common novel page & half, in terms pert & pertinent, so much the better
Remember me to your sisters & to Frederick. [4] I wish him success in fishing for the wife of the great Jack – who must I presume be called the Great Gill. [5] You may then make a song how Jack & Gil Went to the Mill.
farewell
RS.
Friday June 8. 1804.
Notes
* Address: To/ Miss
Barker/ Congreve/ Penkridge/ Staffordshire
MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’
(unpublished PhD, Harvard, 1967), pp. 119–120.
Unpublished. BACK
[1] Southey had visited Barker at her home in Staffordshire, but she had failed to carry out her plan of travelling on with him to Keswick. BACK
[2] An archaic punishment: women convicted of immorality could be sentenced to be whipped while walking at the rear of a cart. BACK
[3] Extracts from the poetry of Catherine Cockburne (1679–1749) appear in Southey’s Specimens of the Later English Poets, 3 vols (London, 1807), II, pp. 119–123. BACK
