665. Robert Southey to Barbara Seton [fragment], [24 March 1802]

665. Robert Southey to Barbara Seton [fragment], [24 March 1802] ⁠* 

Last evening by accident I sate next your Uncle Mr Berry [1]  at the Chemical Lecture. [2]  There did not need this to put me in mind of you – we had that morning been talking how, just a year since, we landed at Lisbon from the Tagus. But Mr Berry told me you were ill & that tidings has spurred me to write that I may the sooner hear you are better.

Notes

* MS: MS untraced; text is taken from Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, ‘Robert Southey and Miss Seton’, Times Literary Supplement (1937). Southey’s letters to Seton were advertised for sale in Kyrle Fletcher’s catalogue no. 57 (1937), Item 332. Their purchaser and current location is unknown
Previously published: Ifan Kyrle Fletcher, ‘Southey and Miss Seton’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 1870 (4 December 1937), 928. BACK

[1] Robert Berry (d. 1817), father of Mary (1763-1852; DNB) and Agnes (1764-1852; DNB) Berry, had married Elizabeth Seton (d. 1767), sister of Barbara Seton’s father. BACK

[2] Davy’s ‘Course of Lectures on Chemistry’, at the Royal Institution, London, had begun on 21 January 1802. BACK

Addressee

Seton, Barbara (dates unknown)
The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Two
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