The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John May, 20 October 1815
“Brussels, Friday, Oct. 20. 1815.
“My dear Friend,
“I wrote to you from Liege, up to which time all had
gone on well with us. Thank God, it is well with us at present; but your
god-daughter has been so unwell,
that we were detained six days at Aix-la-Chapelle in a state of anxiety which
you may well imagine, and at an hotel, where the Devil himself seemed to
possess the mistress and the greater part of the domestics. Happily, I found a
physician who had graduated at Edinburgh, who spoke English, and pursued a
rational system; and happily, also, by this painful and expensive delay I was
thrown into such society, that now the evil is over, I am fully sensible of the
good to which it has conduced. The day after my letter was written, we reached
Spa, and remained there Sunday and Monday—a pleasant and necessary pause,
though the pleasure was somewhat interrupted by the state of my own health,
which was somewhat disordered there—perhaps the effect of the thin
Rhenish wines and the grapes. Tuesday we would have slept at Verones (the great
clothing town) if we could have found beds. An English party had pre-occupied
them, and we proceeded to Herve, a little town half way between Liege and
Aix-la-Chapelle, in the old principality of Limbourg. . . . .
“When we arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle, your goddaughter
was so ill that, after seeing her laid in bed ![]()
| 138 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 42. |
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(about one
o’clock in the afternoon), I thought It necessary to go to the bankers,
and request them to recommend me to a physician. You may imagine how painful a
time we passed. It was necessary for her to gargle every hour, even if we waked
her for it; but she never slept an hour continuously for the three first
nights. Thank God, however, she seems thoroughly recovered, and I can estimate
the good with calmness. While I acted as nurse and cook (for we were obliged to
do everything ourselves), our party dined at the table d’hote, and there, as the child grew
better, I found myself in the company of some highly distinguished Prussian
officers. One of these, a Major Dresky, is the very man
who was with Blucher at Ligny, when he
was ridden over by the French; the other. Major Petry, is
said by his brother officers to have won the battle of Donowitz for
Blucher. Two more extraordinary men I never met with.
You would have been delighted to hear how they spoke of the English, and to see
how they treated us, as representatives of our country. Among the toasts which
were given, I put this into French: ‘The Belle-alliance between Prussia
and England—may it endure as long as the memory of the battle,’ I
cannot describe to you the huzzaing, and hob-nobbing, and hand-shaking with
which it was received. But the chief benefit which I have received, was from
meeting with a certain Henry de Forster, a major in the
German Legion, a Pole by birth, whose father held one of the highest offices in
Poland. Forster, one of the most interesting men I ever
met with, has been marked for mis-![]()
| Ætat. 42. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 139 |
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fortune from his birth.
Since the age of thirteen he has supported himself, and now supports a poor
brother of eighteen, a youth of high principles and genius, who has for two
years suffered with an abscess of the spleen. Forster
entered the Prussian service when a boy, was taken prisoner and cruelly used in
France, and escaped, almost miraculously, on foot into Poland. In 1809 he
joined the Duke of Brunswick, and was one of
those men who proved true to him through all dangers, and embarked with him.
The Duke was a true German in patriotism, but without conduct, without
principle, without gratitude. Forster entered our German
Legion, and was in all the hot work in the Peninsula, from the lines of Torres
Vedras till the end of the war. The severe duty of an infantry officer proved
too much for his constitution, and a fall of some eighty feet down a precipice
in the Pyrenees, brought on a haemorrhage of the liver, for which he obtained
unlimited leave of absence, and came to Aix-la-Chapelle. I grieve to say that
he had a relapse on the very day that we left him. I never saw a man whose
feelings and opinions seemed to coincide more with my own. When we had become a
little acquainted, he shook hands with me in a manner so unlike an ordinary
greeting, that I immediately understood it to be (as really it was) a trial
whether I was a freemason. This gave occasion to the following sonnet, which I
put into his hands at parting:— “The ties of secret brotherhood, made known By secret signs, and pressure of link’d hand Significant, I neither understand Nor censure. There are countries where the throne |
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| 140 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 42. |
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And altar, singly, or with force combined, Against the welfare of poor humankind Direct their power perverse: in such a land Such leagues may have their purpose; in my own, Being needless, they are needs but mockery, But to the wise and good there doth belong, Ordained by God himself, a surer tie; A sacred and unerring sympathy: Which bindeth them in bonds of union strong As time, and lasting as eternity. |
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“He has promised me to employ this winter in writing
his memoirs—a task he had once performed, but the paper was lost in a
shipwreck. He has promised, also, to come with the MSS. (if he lives) to
England next summer, when I hope and expect that the publication will be as
beneficial to his immediate interests as it will be honourable to his memory.
“We left Aix on Tuesday for Maestricht, slept the next
night at St. Tron, Thursday at Louvaine, and arrived here to-day. To-morrow I
go again with Nash to Waterloo, for the
purpose of procuring drawings of Hougoumont. On Sunday we go for Antwerp,
rejoin the Vardons on Monday night at
Ghent, and then make the best of our way to Calais and London. God bless you,
my dear friend.
Yours most affectionately,
R. S.”
Edward Nash (1778-1821)
English painter who after spending time in India befriended Robert Southey and
accompanied him on his travels.
Thomas Vardon (1817 fl.)
Of Battersea-rise, Greenwich, iron manufacturer; he died before 1851. He traveled on the
Continent with Robert Southey in 1815.
