306. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [either c. 11 April or c. 11 May 1798]

306. Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, [either c. 11 April or c. 11 May 1798] ⁠* 

My dear Grosvenor

I wrote to you some time ago desiring you to buy some parsnips [1]  for a friend here; now my dear Sir Dilatory Dawdle, we should wait with considerable patience if the spring would wait too – but the Spring will not wait; – & so I am daily asked for the parsnips. I pray you send them.

You are a very good for nothing fellow Grosvenor Bedford – or you would have said something in reply to when I wrote to tell you to come here. however God bless you & mend you.

So no more at present

from yrs as in duty bound

Robert Southey.

Oh – a man [2]  whom I never saw or heard of has just written to ask me to write him a sonnet upon – What? for a ducat. so guess & then turn over.

A Manks Herring

The herrings caught in Port Iron, Isle of Man being richer in quality than the English ones.

I have a great to frank up his letter to Wynn

it had


Notes

* Address: To/ G C Bedford Esqr / Exchequer / London
Stamped: BRISTOL
Postmark: [partial] 11/ 98
MS: Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Lett. c. 23. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.
Dating note: This letter was written some time after Southey’s letter to Bedford of 30 March 1798 (Letter 300), asking him to procure some sugar parsnips. BACK

[1] Southey had asked him to procure some sugar parsnips. The friend was probably Mrs Jardine, the widow of David Jardine (1766–1797), Minister of the Trim Street Unitarian Chapel, Bath; see Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 30 March 1798, Letter 300. BACK

[2] Unidentified. BACK

People mentioned