The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to C. W. W. Wynn, 23 August 1817
. . . . . They tell me, both here and in town, that
travelling has fattened me. Certainly it agreed with my bodily health most
admirably; whether it be attributable to early rising, continual change of air,
or copious libations of good wine, or to all these. The early rising is
unluckily the only practice which it would be possible to continue here. As for
the wine*, when I
* Let not the reader suppose from this and other
commendations of the juice of the grape, that my father was inclined to
over-indulgence therein; for no man was ever more strictly temperate.
Indeed, his constitution required more generous living than he
ordinarily gave it; and part of the benefit he always derived from
continental travelling was, as he here intimates, from his partaking
more freely of wine when abroad than in the regularity of his domestic
life. |
![]()
![]()
| Ætat. 43. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 277 |
![]()
think of the red wines of Savoy (the Montmelian in
particular), and the white wines of the Rhine and the Moselle, I feel something
as the children of Israel did when they remembered the flesh-pots of Egypt.
Were I to settle anywhere on the continent, Switzerland should be the country,
and probably Lausanne the place. There are lovelier places in the Oberland of
Berne, and the adjacent small cantons; but Lausanne has all those comforts
which are desirable, and there is as good society in the canton of Vaud as need
be desired. We could not gain admittance into Gibbon’s garden, though his house belongs to a banker on
whom we had bills. The assigned reason for refusing was, that the way lay
through a chamber which was occupied by an invalid. I confess that I doubted
this, and could not believe that the only way into the garden should be through
a bed-chamber. This was a mortifying disappointment. As some compensation,
however, our own apartments were not more than 100 yards off, and opened upon a
terrace which commanded exactly the same view of the lake and mountains, with
no other difference of foreground than a hundred yards will make in looking
over gardens and groves of fruit-trees. . . . .
“Does this country, you will ask, appear flat and
unprofitable after Alpine scenery? Certainly not. It has lost very little by
the comparison, and that little will soon be regained. Skiddaw is by much the
most imposing mountain, for its height, that I have yet seen. Many mountains,
which are actually as high again from their base, do not appear to more
advantage. I find here, as Wordsworth
and Sir G. ![]()
| 278 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 43. |
![]()
Beaumont had told me I should, the charm
of proportion, and would not exchange Derwentwater for the Lake of Geneva,
though I would gladly enrich it with the fruit trees and the luxuriant beauties
of a Swiss summer. Their waterfalls, indeed, reduce ours to insignificance. On
the other hand, all their streams and rivers are hideously discoloured, so that
that which should be one of the greatest charms of the landscape, is in reality
a disgusting part of it. The best colour which you see is that of clean
soap-suds; the more common one that of the same mixture when dirty. But the
rivers have a power, might, and majesty which it is scarcely possible to
describe.
“God bless you, my dear Wynn!
Yours most affectionately,
R. S.”
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Author of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-1788).
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.
Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775-1850)
The son of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fourth baronet; educated at Westminster and Christ
Church, Oxford, Robert Southey's friend and benefactor was a Whig MP for Old Sarum (1797)
and Montgomeryshire (1799-1850). He was president of the Board of Control (1822-28).
