“For these last three weeks you have been ‘poor Tom,’ and we have been lamenting the capture of the Sylph, and expecting a letter from you, dated ‘Ferrol.’ The newspapers said you had been captured and carried in there; and I have written word to Lisbon, and my uncle was to write to Jardine, at Corunna; and my mother has been frightened lest you should have been killed in an action previous to your capture;—and after all it is a lie!
“Five weeks were we at Exeter. I wrote to you,
directing Torbay, and I walked round Torbay. You cruised at an unlucky time.
However, if you have picked up an hundred pounds, I am glad we did not meet. We
are in Hampshire, and shall get into our
| Ætat. 25. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 31 |
“Our dwelling is now in a revolutionary state, and will, I hope, be comfortable. Small it is, and somewhat quaint, but it will be clean; and there is a spare bed-room, and a fish-pond, and a garden, in which I mean to work wonders: and then my bookroom is such a room, that, like the Chapter House at Salisbury, it requires a column to support the roof. . . . .
“But you ought to have been taken, Tom; for consider how much uneasiness has been thrown away; and here were we, on seeing your hand-writing, expecting a long and lamentable, true and particular, account of the loss of the Ville de Paris, the lapelles, the new shirts, books, and all the lieutenant paraphernalia; and then comes a pitiful account of a cruise, and 100l. prize-money, instead of all these adventures!
“There was my mother working away to make a new shirt, thinking you would come home shirtless, breechesless, all oil, one great flea-bite, and able to talk Spanish.
“I have no news to tell, except that we expect
Harry home for the Christmas
holidays. Concerning my own employment, the Dom Daniel romance is rechristened,
anabaptized Thalaba the
Destroyer,
| 32 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 25. |
