The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 23 July 1812
“We left St. Helen’s after an early breakfast on
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| Ætat. 38. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 345 |
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Tuesday, with Tom in company; looked at Raby and Bernard Castle, and made our
way to the porter’s lodge at Rokeby. . . . . A sturdy old woman, faithful
to her orders, refused us admittance, saying that if we were going to the Hall
we might go in, but if not we must not enter the grounds; nor would she let us
in till we had promised to call at the Hall. Accordingly, against the grain, in
observance of this promise, to the house I went, and having first inquired if
Walter Scott was there, requested
permission to see the grounds. Mr.
Morritt was not within, but the permission was granted; and in
ten minutes after, the footman came running to say we might see the house also,
and we might fish if we pleased. I excused myself from seeing the house, saying
we were going on, and returning a due number of thanks, &c. But presently
we met Mr. and Mrs.
M. in the walk by the river side, and were, as you may suppose,
obliged to dine and sleep there; their hospitality being so pressed upon us
that I could not continue to refuse it without rudeness. Behold the lion, then,
in a den perfectly worthy of him, eating grapes and pears and drinking claret.
The grounds are the finest things of the kind I have ever seen. A little in the
manner of Downton, more resembling Lowther, but the Greta at Rokeby affords
finer scenery than either. There is a summerhouse overlooking it, the inside of
which was ornamented by Mason the poet:
one day he set the whole family to work in cutting out ornaments in coloured
paper from antique designs, directing the whole himself. It is still in good
preservation, and will, doubtless, be preserved as long as a rag re-![]()
| 346 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 38. |
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mains. This river, in 1771, rose in the most
extraordinary manner during what is still called the great flood. There is a
bridge close by the summer-house at least sixty feet above the water; against
this bridge and its side the river piled up an immense dam of trees and
rubbish, which it had swept before it; at length down comes a stone of such a
size that it knocked down Greta Bridge by the way, knocked away the whole mass
of trees, carried off the second bridge, and lodged some little way beyond it
upon the bank, breaking into three or four pieces. Playfair the other day estimated the weight of this stone at
about seventy-eight tons; the most wonderful instance, he said, he had ever
heard of of the power of water. Before this stone came down, one of the trees
had blocked up an old man and his wife who inhabited a room under the
summer-house; the branches broke their windows, and a great bough barred the
door, meantime the water, usually some twenty feet below, was on a level with
it. The people of the house came to their relief, and sawed the bough off to
let them out, and the windows remain as they were left, a memorial of this most
extraordinary flood.
“Mr. Morritt’s
father bought the house of Sir
Thomas Robinson, well known in his day by the names of
Long Robinson and Long Sir
Thomas. You may recollect a good epigram upon this man:—
It shall be witty,—and it sha’nt be long.’ |
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Long Sir Thomas found a portrait of Richardson in the house: thinking
Mr. Richardson a very unfit personage to be suspended
in effigy among lords, ![]()
| Ætat. 38. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 347 |
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ladies, and baronets, he ordered
the painter to put him on the star and blue riband, and then christened the
picture Sir Robert Walpole. You will
easily imagine Mr. Morritt will not
suffer the portrait to be restored. This, however, is not the most
extraordinary picture in the room. That is one of Sir
T.’s intended improvements, representing the river, which
now flows over the finest rocky bed I ever beheld, metamorphosed by four dams
into a piece of water as smooth and as still as a canal, and elevated by the
same operation so as to appear at the end of a smooth shaven green.
Mr. M. shows this with great glee. He has brought
there from our country the stone fern and the Osmunda regalis.* Among his
pictures is a Madonna by Guido; he
mentioned this to a master of a college, whose name I am sorry to say that I
have forgotten, for the gentleman in reply pointed to a picture above
representing an aunt of Mr. Morritt’s (I believe),
dressed in the very pink of the mode, and asked if that lady was the Madonna!
“I am sorry, too, that I forgot to ask if this was the
lady whose needle-work is in the house. Mr.
M. had an aunt who taught
Miss Linwood. Wordsworth thought her pictures quite as good.
In one respect they may be better, for she made her stitches athwart and
across, exactly as the strokes of the original pictures. Miss
L. (Mr. M. says) makes her stitches all in
one way. This lady had great difficulty about her worsted, and could only suit
herself by buying damaged quantities, thus obtaining shades
* The largest of the fern tribe, growing to the
height of five and six feet—a rare plant even in its own
districts. The finest specimens are on the river Rotha. |
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| 348 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 38. |
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which would else have been unobtainable. The colours
fly, and, in order to preserve them as long as possible, prints are fitted in
the frames to serve as skreens. The art cost her her life though at an advanced
age; it brought on a dead palsy, occasioned by holding her hands so continually
in an elevated position working at the canvas. Her last picture is hardly
finished; the needle, Mr. M. says, literally dropt from
her hands,—death had been creeping on her for twelve years. God bless
you!
Mary Linwood (1755-1845)
Maker of pictures in needlework which she exhibited in her museum at Leicester
Square.
William Mason (1725-1797)
English poet, the friend and biographer of Thomas Gray; author of
Odes (1756),
Elfrida (1752), and
The
English Garden (4 books, 1772-81).
Anne Morritt (1826-1797)
Needlework designer; she was the aunt of Walter Scott's friend John Bacon Sawrey Morritt
of Rokeby.
John Sawrey Morritt (1738 c.-1791)
Of Rokeby, son of Bacon Morritt; educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, he purchased
Rokeby Park in 1769 and was High Sheriff of Yorkshire, 1778-1779. He was a friend of the
poet William Mason.
Katherine Morritt [née Stanley] (d. 1815)
The daughter of the Reverend Thomas Stanley, rector of Winwick in Lancashire; in 1803 she
married John Morritt of Rokeby.
John Playfair (1748-1819)
Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University and Whig man of letters who contributed
to the
Edinburgh Review.
Guido Reni (1575-1642)
Of Bologna; Italian baroque painter.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
English printer and novelist; author of
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1739) and
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady
(1747-48).
Sir Thomas Robinson, first baronet (1702 c.-1777)
English architect, architect, connoisseur, MP, governor of Barbados, and friend of Lord
Chesterfield. He sold the family estate at Rokeby in 1769.
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.
Thomas Southey (1777-1838)
The younger brother of Robert Southey; he was a naval captain (1811) and afterwards a
Customs officer. He published
A Chronological History of the West
Indies (1828).
Robert Walpole, first earl of Orford (1676-1745)
English politician whose management of the financial crisis resulting from the South Sea
Bubble led to his commanding career the leader of the Whigs in Parliament (1721-42).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
