The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to Edith Southey, 7 July 1825
“Leyden, Thursday, July 7. 1825.
“. . . . . This is our manner of life. At eight in the
morning Lodowijk knocks at my door. My
movements in dressing are as regular as clockwork, and when I enter the
adjoining room breakfast is ready on a sofa-table, which is placed for my
convenience close to the sofa. There I take my place, seated on one cushion,
and with my leg raised on another. The sofa is covered with black plush. The
family take coffee, but I have a jug of boiled milk. Two sorts of cheese are on
the table, one of which is very strong, and highly flavoured with cummin and
cloves; this is called Leyden cheese, and is eaten at breakfast laid in thin
slices on bread and butter. The bread is soft, in rolls, which have rather skin
than crust; the butter very rich, but so soft that it is brought in a pot to
table, like potted meat. Before we begin Mr.
B. takes off a little gray cap, and a silent grace is said, not
longer than it ought to be; when it is over he generally takes his wife’s
hand. They sit side by side opposite me; Lodowijk at the
end of the table. About ten o’clock Mr. Droesa comes
and dresses my foot, which is swathed in one of my silk handkerchiefs. I bind a
second round the bottom of the pantaloon, and if the weather be cold I put on a
third: so that the leg has not merely a decent, but rather a splendid
appearance. After breakfast and tea Mrs.
B. washes up the china herself at the table. Part of the morning
Mr. B. sits with me. During the rest I read Dutch, or,
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| Ætat. 51. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 225 |
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present, retire into my bed-room and write.
Henry Taylor calls in the morning,
and is always pressed to dine, which he does twice or thrice in the week. We
dine at half-past two or three, and the dinners, to my great pleasure, are
altogether Dutch. You know I am a valiant eater, and having retained my
appetite as well as my spirits during this confinement, I eat every thing which
is put before me. Mutton and pork never appear, being considered unfit for any
person who has a wound, and pepper for the same reason is but sparingly
allowed. Spice enters largely into their cookery; the sauce for fish resembles
custard rather than melted butter, and is spiced. Perch, when small (in which
state they are considered best), are brought up swimming in a tureen. They look
well, and are really very good. With the roast meat (which is in small pieces)
dripping is presented in a butter-boat. The variety of vegetables is great.
Peas, peas of that kind in which the pod also is eaten, purslain, cauliflowers,
abominations*, kidney beans, carrots, turnips,
potatoes. But besides these, many very odd things are eaten with meat. I had
stewed apples, exceedingly sweet and highly spiced, with roast fowl yesterday;
and another day, having been helped to some stewed quinces, to my utter
surprise some ragout of beef was to be eaten with them. I never know when I
begin a dish whether it is sugared, or will require salt; yet every thing is
very good, and the puddings excellent. The dinner lasts very long. Strawberries
and cherries always follow. Twice we had cream with
* Broad beans, which he always so
denominated. |
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the strawberries, very thick, and just in the first stage
of sourness. We have had melons also, and currants; the first which have been
produced. After coffee they leave me to an hour’s nap. Tea follows.
Supper at half-past nine, when Mr. B. takes milk, and I a
little cold meat with pickles, or the gravy of the meat preserved in a form
like jelly; olives are used as pickles, and at half-past ten I go to bed.
Mr. B. sits up till three or four, living almost
without sleep.
“Twice we had a Frisian here, whom we may probably see
at Keswick, as he talks of going to England on literary business. Halbertsma* is his
* “Mr.
Halbertsma is a very good and learned man, who has
particularly directed his attention to the early languages of these
countries, and is now planning a journey to England for the purpose
of transcribing some MSS of Junius’, which are at Oxford. He speaks
English, and made his first essay at conversing with an Englishman
with me. His pronunciation was surprisingly good, considering that
till that moment he had never heard English spoken by an
Englishman. But the Frisians have nothing in their own language
which it is necessary for them to forget: he read me some verses in
their tongue that I might hear the pronunciation. To my ear they
were much less harsh than the Dutch, being wholly free from
gutturals. The language, however, is regarded as a barbarous
dialect.” I subjoin a few other extracts from his
Journal:— “Very few of the Mennonites retain the
orthodox faith of their fathers. In this generation they have
generally lapsed into Socianism, which, with other kindred isms,
prevails extensively in Holland. Pantheism being the stage to which
the speculative Atheists in this country proceed. Another people,
like the unbelievers in England, all act in favour of Romanism and
in league with it. Their principle is, that superstition is
necessary for the vulgar; so they would have a papal establishment,
with infidel priests and an indifferent government. The Romanists
are palpably favoured, and visibly increase in numbers. At the
Fête de Dieu, the king committed the gross
offence to his own religion of having his palace decorated in
honour of the procession. This could not gratify his Romish
subjects so much as it has disgusted all those who know how to
appreciate the blessings of the Reformation. For the great body of
the Dutch people are attached to that religion, the enjoyment of
which their ancestors purchased so dearly.
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name, and he is a Mennonite* pastor at Deventer. Twice we
have had the young Count Hoogmandorp, a fine young man,
one of the eight who for six weeks watched day and night by Mr. B. in his illness; and once a
Dr. Burgman, a young man of singular appearance and
much learning, drank tea here. My host’s conversation is amusing beyond
anything I ever heard. I cannot hope to describe it so as to
“The government has followed that base
policy which all restored kings seem to follow, as if to show, if
persons alone were to be considered, how little they have deserved
their restoration. The old enemies of the House of Orange are
favoured and preferred; the old friends, true servants and
sufferers in their cause, are left with their sufferings for their
reward. The system of Liberalism prevails; the Press is made an
engine of mischief here as in England; and everything that
presumptuous ignorance and philosophism can do, is doing to
undermine the religion and morals of the people.
“During the triumph of the anti-stadtholder
faction, popular feeling manifested itself in some odd ways. The
body of the people have always been gratefully attached to the
House of Orange, as it became them to be. To prevent all
manifestation of that feeling, the ruling faction forbade the
market women to expose carrots for sale. They were enjoined, on
pain of fine, to keep them covered under other greens. Carrotty
cats were hunted down to be extirpated, and marigolds rooted up by
men sent for the purpose. Of course such measures provoked the
spirit which they were desired to suppress. The fishwomen cried
orange-salmon through the streets, marigold seeds were scattered
everywhere, and particularly in the gardens of the factious, and
pigeons were dyed orange colour and let fly. The two latter tricks
excited some superstitious feeling.
“The University here has sadly declined.
There are not thirty professors, and not more than 300 students.
The want of able men and the appointment of unfit ones, has
occasioned the decline. Freshmen are called greens, and a ceremony
was (and perhaps is) used in ungreening them, and admitting them to
their full academical privileges. Bread, according to its degree of
fineness, was called in military and academic towns, from the rank
of those who might be supposed to eat it, cadet’s,
captain’s, or colonel’s bread; and here, from
greens’ up to professor’s bread; the sort above which
was called prophet’s. If a fisherman offered for sale a
remarkably fine and large fish, a haddock, for example, he will say
it is a professor among haddocks.”—From
his Journal. * The Mennonites were Dutch Baptists. |
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make you conceive it. The matter is always so interesting,
that it would alone suffice to keep one’s attention on the alert; his
manner is beyond expression animated, and his language the most extraordinary
that can be imagined. Even my French cannot be half so odd. It is English
pronounced like Dutch, and with such a mixture of other language, that it is an
even chance whether the next word that comes be French, Latin, or Dutch, or one
of either tongues shaped into an English form. Sometimes the oddest imaginable
expressions occur. When he would say ‘I was pleased,’ he says
‘I was very pleasant;’ and instead of saying that a poor woman was
wounded, with whom he was overturned in a stage-coach in England, he said she
was severely blessed. Withal, whatever he says is so full of information,
vivacity, and character, and there is such a thorough good nature, kindness,
and frankness about him, that I never felt myself more interested in any
man’s company. Every moment he reminds me more and more of Dr. Bell.
“I gather by one word which dropt from him that
Mrs. B. is his second wife. They are
proud of each other, as well they may. She has written a great many poems, some
of which are published jointly with some of his, and others by themselves. Many
of them are devotional, and many relate to her own feelings under the various
trials and sufferings which she has undergone. In some of them I have been
reminded sometimes of some of my own verses, in others of Miss Bowles’s. One would think it almost
impossible that a person so meek, so quiet, ![]()
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so retiring,
so altogether without display, should be a successful authoress, or hold the
first place in her country as a poetess. The profits of literature here are
miserably small. In that respect I am in relation to them what Sir Walter Scott is in relation to me. Lodowijk (thus the name is spelt) is a nice
good boy, the only survivor of seven children. He is full of sensibility, and I
look at him with some apprehension, for he is not strong, and I fear this
climate, which suits his father better than any other, is injurious to him.
Tell Cuthbert that the
oyevaar has paid him another visit, and that
Lodowijk’s other playmate is a magnificent tabby
cat, as old as himself, who, however, is known by no other name than puss,
which is good Dutch as well as English.
“English books are so scarce here, that they have never
seen any work of mine except Roderick. Of course I have ordered over a complete set of my poems
and the History of Brazil,
and as E. May is in London I have
desired her to add, as a present from herself to Mrs. B., a copy of Kirke White’s Remains. I can never sufficiently show my sense
of the kindness which I am experiencing here. Think what a difference it is to
be confined in an hotel, with all the discomforts, or to be in such a family as
this, who show by every word and every action that they are truly pleased in
having me under their roof.
“I manage worst about my bed. I know not how many
pillows there are, but there is one little one which I used for my head till I
found that it was intended for the small of my back. Every thing ![]()
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else I can find instruction for, but here is nobody to
teach one how to get into a Dutch bed, or how to lie in one. A little bottle of
brandy is placed on the dressing-table, to be used in cleansing the teeth.
Saffron is used in some of the soups and sauces. The first dish yesterday was
marrow in a tureen, which was eaten upon toast. I eat every thing, but live in
daily fear of something like suety pudding or tripe. About an hour before
dinner a handsome mahogany case containing spirits is produced; a glass waiter
is taken out of it, and little tumblers with gilt edges, and we have then a
glass of liqueur with a slice of cake. Deventer cake it is called; and an odd
history belongs to it. The composition is usually intrusted only to the
burgomaster of that city, and when the baker has made all the other ingredients
ready the chief magistrate is called upon, as part of his duty, to add that
portion of the materials which constitute the excellence and peculiarity of the
Deventer cake. I shall have much to tell you, for I know not where I have heard
so much to amuse, so much to affect, so much to interest and inform me as since
I have been a prisoner here. . . . .
“Love to the children. God bless you, my dear Edith!
Your affectionate Husband,
R. S.”
Andrew Bell (1753-1832)
Scottish Episcopalian educated at St. Andrews University; he was the founder of the
“Madras” system of education by mutual instruction; Robert Southey was his
biographer.
Willem Bilderdijk (1776-1830)
Dutch poet and scholar; a political conservative, he was at one time librarian to Louis
Bonaparte.
Junius (1773 fl.)
Anonymous political writer who attacked the king and Tory party in the
Public Advertiser, 1769-1772. There is persuasive evidence that he was Sir Philip
Francis (1740-1818).
Charles Cuthbert Southey (1819-1888)
Son of Robert Southey whose
Life and Correspondence (1849-1850) he
edited. Educated at Queen's College, Oxford, he was curate of Plumbland in Cumberland,
vicar of Kingsbury Episcopi, Somerset (1855-79) and Askham, near Penrith (1885).
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.
Sir Henry Taylor (1800-1886)
Poet, writer for the
Quarterly Review, and autobiographer; he was
author of the tragedy
Philip van Artevelde (1834).
