The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1 May 1800
“Here, then, we are, thank God! alive, and recovering
from dreadful sickness. I never suffered so ![]()
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much at sea,
and Edith was worse than I was; we
scarcely ate or slept at all: but the passage was very fine and short; five
days and a half brought us to our port, with light winds the whole of the way.
The way was not, however, without alarm. On Monday morning, between five and
six, the captain was awakened with tidings that a cutter was bearing down upon
us, with English colours, indeed, but apparently a French vessel; we made a
signal, which was not answered; we fired a gun, she did the same, and
preparations were made for action. We had another Lisbon packet in company,
mounting six guns; our own force was ten; the cutter was a match, and more, for
both, but we did not expect to be taken. You may imagine
Edith’s terror, awakened on a sick
bed—disturbed I should have said—with these tidings! The captain advised me to surround her with
mattrasses in the cabin, but she would not believe herself in safety there, and
I lodged her in the cockpit, and took my station on the quarter-deck with a
musket. How I felt I can hardly tell; the hurry of the scene, the sight of
grape-shot, bar-shot, and other ingenious implements of this sort, made an
undistinguishable mixture of feelings. . . . . The cutter bore down between us;
I saw the smoke from her matches, we were so near, and not a man on board had
the least idea but that an immediate action was to take place. We hailed her;
she answered in broken English, and passed on. ’Tis over! cried somebody.
Not yet! said the captain; and we expected she was coming round as about to
attack our comrade vessel. She was English, however, manned chiefly from
Guernsey, ![]()
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and this explained her Frenchified language. You
will easily imagine that my sensations, at the ending of the business, were
very definable,—one honest simple joy that I was in a whole skin! I laid the
musket in the chest with considerably more pleasure than I took it out. I am
glad this took place; it has shown me what it is to prepare for action.
“Four years’ absence from Lisbon have given
everything the varnish of novelty, and this, with the revival of old
associations, makes me pleased with everything. Poor
Manuel, too, is as happy as man can be to see me once
more; here he stands at breakfast, and talks of his meeting me at Villa Franca,
and what we saw at this place and at that, and hopes that whenever I go into
the country he may go with me. It even amused me to renew my acquaintance with
the fleas, who opened the campaign immediately on the arrival of a foreigner.
We landed yesterday about ten in the morning, and took possession of our house
the same night. Our house is very small, and thoroughly Portuguese; little
rooms all doors and windows,—odd, but well calculated for coolness: from
one window we have a most magnificent view over the river,—Almada hill,
and the opposite shore of Alentejo, bounded by hills about the half mountain
height of Malvern. . . . .
“To-day is a busy day; we are arranging away our things,
and seeing visitors: these visits must all be returned; there ends the
ceremony, and then I may choose retirement. I hurry over my letters, for the
sake of feeling at leisure to begin my employments. ![]()
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The
voyage depriving me of all rest, and leaving me too giddy to sleep well, will,
with the help of the fleas, break me in well for early rising. The work before
me is almost of terrifying labour; folio after folio to be gutted, for the
immense mass of collateral knowledge which is indispensable: but I have leisure
and inclination.
“Edith, who has
been looking half her time out of the window, has just seen ‘really a
decent-looking woman;’ this will show you what cattle the
passers-by must be. She has found out that there are no middle-aged women here,
and it is true; like their climate, it is only summer and winter. Their heavy
cloaks of thick woollen, like horsemen’s coats in England, amuse her in
this weather, as much as her clear muslin would amuse them in an English
winter. . . . .
“Thalaba will soon be finished. Rickman is my plenipotentiary with the booksellers for this.
Pray send me your Plays. . . . . Thalaba finished,
all my poetry, instead of being wasted in rivulets and ditches, shall flow into
the great Madoc Mississippi
river. I have with me your volume, Lyrical
Ballads, Burns, and Gebir. Read Gebir again: he grows upon me.
“My uncle’s
library is admirably stocked with foreign books. . . . . My plan is this:
immediately to go through the chronicles in order, and then make a skeleton of
the narrative; the timbers put together, the house may be furnished at leisure.
It will be a great work, and worthy of all labour.
“I am interrupted momentarily by visitors, like fleas,
infesting a new-comer! Edith’s
spirits are ![]()
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mending: a handful of roses has made her
forgive the stink of Lisbon; and the green peas, the oranges, &c., are
reconciling her to a country for which nature has done so much. We are
transported into your mid-summer, your most luxuriant midsummer!—Plague
upon that heart-stop, that has reminded me that this is a voyage of
prescription as well as of pleasure. But I will get well; and you must join us,
and return with us over the Pyrenees, and some of my dreams must be fulfilled!
“God bless you! Write to me, and some long letters; and
send me your Christabell
and your Three Graces,
and finish them on purpose to send them. Edith’s love. I reach a long arm, and shake hands with
you across the seas.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish poet and song collector; author of
Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect (1786).
Herbert Hill (1750-1828)
Educated at St. Mary Hall, and Christ Church, Oxford; he was Chancellor of the Choir of
Hereford Cathedral, chaplain to the English factory at Lisbon (1792-1807) and rector of
Streatham (1810-28). He was Robert Southey's uncle.
John Rickman (1771-1840)
Educated at Magdalen Hall and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was statistician and clerk to
the House of Commons and an early friend of Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.
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.
Edmund Bayntun Yescombe (1765 c.-1803)
Cornish seaman; he was captain of the King George Lisbon packet, killed while defending
his ship from attack.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Madoc. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805). A verse romance relating the legendary adventures of a Welsh prince in Wales and
pre-Columbian America.
