“First, I have to thank you for your letter and your poem; and, secondly, to explain why I have not done this sooner. We were a long time without knowing where you were, and, when news came from Miss Barker that you were in London, by the time a letter could have reached you you were gone; and, lastly, Mr. Jackson wrote to you to Bristol. I will now compose an epistle which will follow you farther west.
“Bona Marietta hath had
kittens; they were remarkably ugly, all taking after their father Thomas, who there is reason to believe was either
uncle or grandsire to Bona herself, the prohibited
degrees of consanguinity which you will find at the end of the Bible not being
regarded by cats. As I have never been able to persuade this family that
catlings, fed for the purpose and smothered with onions, would be rabbits to
all eatable purposes. Bona Marietta’s ugly
progeny no sooner came into the world than they were sent out of it; the river
nymph Greta conveyed them to the river god Derwent, and if neither the
| Ætat. 33. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 101 |
“We have been out one evening in the boat,—Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Wilson, and the children,—and kindled our fire upon the same place where you drank tea with us last autumn. The boat has been painted, and there is to be a boat-house built for it. Alterations are going on here upon a great scale. The parlour has been transmogrified. That, Hartley, was one of my mother’s words; your mother will explain it to you. The masons are at work in my study; the garden is enclosed with a hedge; some trees planted behind it, a few shrubs, and abundance of currant trees. We must, however, wait till the autumn before all can be done that is intended in the garden. Mr. White, the Belligerent, is settled in the General’s house. Find out why I give him that appellation.
“There has been a misfortune in the family. We had a
hen with five chickens, and a gleed has carried off four. I have declared war
against the gleed, and borrowed a gun; but since the gun has been in the house,
he has never made his appearance. Who can have told him of it? Another hen is
sitting, and I
| 102 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 33. |
“The weather has been very bad; nothing but easterly winds, which have kept every thing back. We had one day hotter than had been remembered for fourteen years: the glass was at 85° in the shade, in the sun in Mr. Calvert’s garden at 118°. The horses of the mail died at Carlisle. I never remember to have felt such heat in England, except one day fourteen years ago, when I chanced to be in the mail-coach, and it was necessary to bleed the horses, or they would have died then. In the course of three days the glass fell forty degrees, and the wind was so cold and so violent that persons who attempted to cross the Fells beyond Penrith were forced to turn back.
“Your friend Dapper, who
is, I believe, your god-dog, is in good health, though he grows every summer
graver than the last. This is the natural effect of time, which, as you know,
has made me the serious man I am. I hope it will have the same effect upon you
and your mother, and that, when she returns, she will have left off that evil
habit of
| Ætat. 33. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 103 |
“Remember me to Mr. Poole, and tell him I shall be glad when he turns laker. He will find tolerable lodgings at the Hill; a boat for fine weather, good stores of books for a rainy day, and as hearty a shake by the hand on his arrival as he is likely to meet with between Stowey and Keswick. Some books of mine will soon be ready for your father. Will he have them sent anywhere? or will he pick them up himself when he passes through London on his way northward? Tell him that I am advancing well in South America, and shall have finished a volume by the end of the year. The Chronicle of the Cid is to go to press as soon as I receive some books from Lisbon, which must first be examined. This intelligence is for him also.
“I am desired to send you as much love as can be enclosed in a letter: I hope it will not be charged double on that account at the post-office: but there is Mrs. Wilson’s love, Mr. Jackson’s, your Aunt Southey’s, your Aunt Lovell’s, and Edith’s; with a purr from Bona Marietta, an open-mouthed kiss from Herbert, and three wags of the tail from Dapper. I trust they will all arrive safe, and remain.
