“You will have known, before ibis can arrive, that your Bristol despatches reached me. That I have not written sooner, is the fault of the wind. We have been three weeks without a packet; and, now we have one, my letters may probably be detained for want of a conveyance to Lisbon. Poor Peggy?* I am impatient for letters: your last was a troubling one, and undid half that Portugal had done for me. However, I am materially amended. Tom writes that she is better; but I know the nature of the disease too well to hope so easily, perhaps, as you and he may have done: however, other diseases there are, undistinguishably similar in their symptoms, which are sometimes mistaken for this, and the patient is said to have recovered from a consumption, when his lungs have been sound all the while.
“We have been here about two months, living alone, and riding jackasses. My uncle is sadly confined in Lisbon: the soldiers’ children die as fast as they are born, from inattention or bad management, one of the million war-evils!—and he must bury them. We have acquaintance out of number, but no friends: of course I go among these people no oftener than absolute decorum requires. Patty Collins’s niece has more brains than three parts of
* His cousin, Margaret Hill, at this time in very ill health. |
| 100 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“We have three servants here, a man, and maid, and a boy; all good servants for the country. . . . .
“The Roman Catholics have contrived to rank nastiness among Christian virtues, and they practise no other so universally. The poor Moriscoes in Spain were forbidden to use their baths, because it was a Turkish custom. Certain of the austerer monks would think it wicked to kill any of their vermin; others wear no linen, and sleep in their woollen dress from one year to another,—fine, fat, frying friars, looking as oily as Aaron’s beard in the sun. I should like to catch a Quaker and bring him here among filth and finery.
“Since we left Lisbon I have written scarcely any letters, and have a week’s work to settle my accounts with Tom: tell him that Thalaba has monopolised me; that by the King George, in her next voyage (about three weeks hence), I send over his copy, together with that for the press. Except to Bristol and to Tom, I have neglected all my other correspondents. Actually I have not time: I must ride; I am visited; and the correcting Thalaba and transcribing it is a very serious job.
“The French! You are probably alarmed for
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 101 |
“By the next packet I shall write, and send to
Biddlecombe his year’s rent.
When we return, I shall immediately take a house in London, or near it: for a
summer or two. Burton may do; but, if Rickman leaves Christchurch, I must look for a situation where
there is better society. I wish I could settle here; the climate suits me so
well, that I could give up society, and live like a bear by sucking my own
paws. You like the Catholics: shall I give you an account of one of their Lent
plays upon transubstantiation, which is lying on the table? It begins by the
Father turning Adam out of doors. ‘Get out of my
house, you rascal!’ Adam goes a-begging, and
bitterly does he complain that he can find no house, no village, no body to beg
of. At last he meets the Four Seasons, and they give him a spade, and a plough,
&c., but nothing to eat. Then comes Reason, and tells him to go to law with
his Father, who is obliged to find him in victuals. Adam
goes to law; an Angel is his counsel, and the Devil pleads against him. He wins
his cause: and the Father settles upon him oil—for extreme unction; lamb;
and bread and wine. Up comes the Sacra-
| 102 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 26. |
“But you are crying out already, and are satisfied with the specimen. Farewell! We are going on well; only Edith’s burro fell with her, and threw her overhead down hill, and she is now lame with a bruised knee: she excels in ass-womanship; and I am hugely pleased with riding sideways, and having a boy to beat the John and guide him.
“Harry must
forgive me: I do not forget him, and will write very soon; but the interruption
it
| Ætat. 26. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 103 |
