536. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 8 July [1800]
536. Robert Southey to Mary Barker, 8 July [1800] *
I write a few lines by you. so few that only the opportunity of a private hand could excuse them.
You will find at Congreve a copy of Joan of Arc [1] which will arrive as soon as you can do. It will be an earlier remembrancer than the Packet could bring you. &, when you see Thalaba, it will serve like a bad drawing – to show improvement. [2] I am not however ashamed of it.
If you go thro Plymouth & the fleet be there I have a brother on board the Bellona who will show you what is to be seen. Lieutenant Thomas Southey: he is better than the breed of Sailors in general. only send to him in my name, & he will have brains enough in two minutes to see that you are not a mere Lisbon acquaintance.
God bless you. I love Cintra dearly – but I would rather the rock [3] went to England than you.
R.S.
Tuesday July 8.
Do not fail – or delay – to inform us of your arrival. I will watch all the seeding flowers – & send you my Wall & the Cork Tree [4] in most accurate painting.
[The first letter I ever received from dear Southey MSlade
nee Barker] [5]
Notes
* Address: To/Miss Barker
[Bath]
MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Robert
Galloway Kirkpatrick Jnr, ‘The Letters of Robert Southey
to Mary Barker From 1800 to 1826’ (unpublished PhD,
Harvard, 1967), pp. 1–2
Previously published: H.
Spencer Scott, ‘Some Southey Letters’, Atlantic
Monthly, 89 (1902), 36 [in
part]. BACK
