The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 17 April 1801
“By the luckiest opportunity, my dear Edith, I am enabled to write and ease myself
of a load of uneasiness. An express is about to leave Faro, otherwise till
Tuesday next there would have been no conveyance. We are at Mr. Lempriere’s, hospitably and kindly
received, and for the first time resting after ten days’ very hard
labour. At Cassillas our letter to Kirwan was of no use,
as he was absent. For mules they asked too much, and we mounted burros to
Azectâo; there no supply was to be found, and the same beasts carried us to
Setubal, which we did not reach till night. The house to which we had an
introduction was deserted, and we lost nothing by going to an excellent
estalagem. Next day it rained till noon, when we embarked, and sailed through
dull and objectless shores to Alcacere: mules to Evora, the distance nine
leagues; at the end
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| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 141 |
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of the first it set in a severe rain, and the coldest
north wind we ever experienced: the road was one infinite charreca, a
wilderness of gum-cistus. We would have stopped anywhere; about six in the
evening we begged charity at a peasant’s house, at the Monte dos Moneros,
three leagues short of Evora, dripping wet and deadly cold, dreading darkness,
and the effects of so severe a wetting, and the cold wind; we got admittance,
and all possible kindness; dried ourselves and baggage, which was wet also;
supped upon the little round curd cheeses of the country, olives, and milk; and
slept in comfort. The morning was fine, but the same wind continued till
yesterday, and has plagued us cruelly by day and by night.
“At Evora we remained half a day; there our night
sufferings began; from thence till we reached Faro we have never slept in one
ceiled room; all tiled so loosely, that an astrologer would find them no bad
observatories; and by no possible means could we keep ourselves warm.
Waterhouse I taught, indeed, by Niebuhr’s example in Arabia, to lie with
his face under the sheets, but it suffocated me. From Evora we took burros to
Beja,—a day and a half; we slept at Villa Ruina: from Viana to that
little town is a lovely track of country, and, except that little island of
cultivation, we have seen nothing but charrecas till we reached Tavira. The
bishop gave us cheese and incomparable wine, and a letter to Father
John of the Palm at Castro: to Castro a day’s journey: on
the road there was a monumental cross, where a man had been eat by the wolves.
John ![]()
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of the Palm is a very blackguard priest, but he was
useful. We had a curious party there of his friends, drinking wine with us in
the room, or rather between th6 four walls where we were pounded, not housed,
for the night; a deputy judge, with a great sword, old as the Portuguese
monarchy, smoking, and handing round his cigar out of his own mouth to the rest
of the company; our muleteer, that was to be, hand and glove with the priest
and the magistrate; and another pot companion. Next day across the, field of
Ourique, and seven long leagues of wilderness; there was no estalagem; in fact,
we were in the wilds of Alentejo, where hardly any traveller has penetrated; we
were again thrown on charity, and kindly received: this was Tuesday. On
Wednesday we crossed the mountains to Tavira, seven leagues,—in the
bishop’s language,—long leagues, terrible leagues,—infinite
leagues: the road would be utterly impassable were it not that the Host is
carried on horseback in these wilds, and therefore the way must be kept open.
As we passed one ugly spot, the guide told us a man broke his neck there
lately. This day’s journey, however, was quite new; wherever we looked
was mountain,—waving, swelling, breasting, exactly like the sea-like
prints of the Holy Land which you see in old Travels. At last the sea appeared,
and the Guadiana, and the frontier towns Azamonte and Castro Marini; we
descended, and entered the garden, the Paradise of Algarve here our troubles
and labour were to end; we were out of the wilderness. Milk and honey, indeed,
we did not expect in this land of promise, but we ex-![]()
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 143 |
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pected every thing else. The sound of a drum alarmed us, and we found Tavira
full of soldiers; the governor examined our pass, and I could not but smile at
the way in which he eyed Roberto
Southey, the negociente, of ordinary stature, thin and long face, a
dark complexion, &c., and squinted at
Waterhouse’s lame legs. For a man in power he
was civil, and sent us to the Corrigidor, to get our beasts secured; this
second inspection over, we were in the streets of Tavira, to beg a
night’s lodging,—and beg hard we did for some hours; at last,
induced by the muleteer, whom she knew, and by the petition of some dozen
honest people, whom our situation had drawn about us, a woman, who had one room
unoccupied by the soldiers, turned the key with doubt and delay, for her
husband was absent, and we wanted nothing but a ceiling. Yesterday we reached
Faro; and to-day remain here to rest. . . . .
“Our faces are skinned by the cutting wind and sun: my
nose has been roasted by a slow fire—burnt alive by sunbeams; ’tis
a great comfort that Waterhouse has no reason to laugh at
it; and even Bento’s* is of a fine carbuncle colour.
Thank God you were not with us; one room is the utmost these hovels contain;
the walls of stone, immortared, and the roofs what I have described them.
“Yet we are well repaid, and have never faltered either
in health or spirits. At Evora, at Beja, at the Ourique field, was much to
interest; and here we are in a lovely country, to us a little heaven. . .
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. . I have hurried over our way that you may know simply
where we have been, and where we are; the full account would be a week’s
work. You will be amused with the adventures of two Irish, and one Scotch,
officers, who came from Gibraltar to Lagos, with a fortnight’s leave of
absence, to amuse themselves; they brought a Genoese interpreter, and
understood from him that it was eleven leagues to Faro, and a good turnpike
road. I write their own unexaggerated account:—they determined to ride
there to dinner, and they were three days on the way, begging, threatening,
drawing their swords to get lodged at night,—all in vain; the first night
they slept in the fields; afterwards they learnt a humbler tone, and got,
between four of them, a shelter, but no beds; here they waited six weeks for an
opportunity of getting back; and one of them was paymaster at Gibraltar; they
were utterly miserable for want of something to do—billiards
eternally—they even bought birds, a cat, a dog, a fox, for playthings;
yesterday embarked, after spending a hundred pieces here in six weeks, neither
they nor any one else knowing how, except that they gave six testoons apiece
for all the Port wine in the place. . . . .
“God bless you! I have a thousand things to tell you on
my return, my dear Edith.
Yours affectionately,
Robert Southey.”
Derwent Coleridge (1800-1883)
The son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he was
rector of Helston in Cornwall, principal of St Mark's College (1841), and a writer on
education. He contributed to
Knight's Quarterly Review.
John Lemprière (1765 c.-1826 c.)
He was British consul at Faro in Portugal, and Pernambuco in Brazil (1809-26).
Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815)
German mathematician and cartographer who traveled in Arabia; he was the father of the
historian.
Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
