Some old divine has said that hell is paved with
good resolutions. If Beelzebub has a
tesselated pavement of this kind in one of his state rooms, I fear I shall be
found to have contributed largely to its unsubstantial materials. But that I
may save one good resolution at least, from being trodden
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I begin in the cloudy evening of a showery, louring, ungenial day,—no desirable omen for one who is about to record the recollections of six-and-forty years. But a most inappropriate one in my case, for I have lived in the sunshine, and am still looking forward with hope.
I cannot trace my family farther back by the church
registers than Oct. 25. 1696, on which day my grandfather
Thomas, the son of Robert
Southey, and Ann, his wife, was baptized at
Wellington, in Somersetshire. The said Robert Southey had
seven other children, none of whom left issue. In the subsequent entries of
their birth (for Thomas was the eldest) he is designated
sometimes as yeoman, sometimes as farmer. His wife’s maiden name was
Locke, and she was of the same family as the philosopher (so called) of that name, who is
still held in more estimation than he deserves. She must have been his
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 3 |
One of them has left the reputation of having been a great
soldier; in the great rebellion I guess it must have been, but I neither know
his name, nor on what side he fought. Another (and this must have been the
Robert with whom my certain knowledge begins) was, as
the phrase is, out in Monmouth’s insurrection. If he had come before
judge Jeffries in consequence,
Nash would never have painted the
happy but too handsome likeness of your god-daughter, which I have risen from
my work ten times this day to look at in its progress; nor would you have
received the intended series of these biographical letters. The entail of my
mortal existence was in no small risk of
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John, the elder brother of this bold reformer and successful runaway, settled as a lawyer in Taunton, and held the office of registrar for the archdeaconry. He married the heiress of the Cannon family, and upon the death of her father fixed his residence at the manor house of Fitzhead in Somersetshire, which was her property. By this marriage he had one son and two daughters. John Cannon Southey, the son, practised the law; one daughter married the last of the Periam family, and survived him; the other married one of the Lethbridges, and had only one child, a daughter. That daughter married Hugh Somerville, then a colonel in the army, and brother to James Lord Somerville; she died in childbed of John Southey Somerville, her only issue.
My grandfather settled at Holford Farm, an estate belonging
to his uncle John, in the parish of Lydiard St. Laurence,
about ten miles north of Taunton, under the Quantock Hills. This removal was
made when John obtained possession of his wife’s
property; the first use he made of it, therefore, seems to have been to
befriend his nephew. And I have discovered another good indication concerning
him; his name appears among the subscribers to Walker’s Sufferings of the Clergy, a presumption at least, that he had some
regard for books, and a right way of thinking. He was very much respected and
beloved. My grandfather regarded him with the greatest reverence, as
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 5 |
The removal from Wellington to a lonely hamlet seems to
have brought my grandfather within the pale of the Established Church, for he
had been bred up as a Dissenter. (The old sword, therefore, was probably
pursuing its old courses when it went into the field in rebellion.)
Aunt Hannah, however, though an inoffensive
kind-hearted woman in other respects, retained so much of the essential acid of
puritanism in her composition, that she frequently chastised her niece
Mary for going into the fields with her playmates on a
Sunday: she and her brothers and sisters,
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My grandfather did not marry till he was forty-five; probably he could not have maintained a family before he was settled upon his uncle’s farm. His wife’s name was Joan Mullens. They had three sons, John, Robert (who was my father), and Thomas, and two daughters, Hannah and Mary, all born at Halford. The boys received what in those days was thought a good education. The elder, being designed for the law (in which his name and family connections would assist him), learnt a little Latin; he lived more with Cannon Southey than with his parents, both in his boyhood and youth, as his sister Mary did with Madam Periam or Madam Lethbridge (this was in the time when that title was in common use in the West of England), being always with one or the other as long as they lived. But Cannon Southey’s House was a bad school for him. He was looked upon as the probable heir of the family after the birth of young Somerville, who was always a weakly child. The two younger brothers were qualified for trade. My father had preserved his cyphering book, and I would have preserved it too, as carefully as any of my own manuscripts, if it had not been lost at the household wreck at his bankruptcy. If you will look in that little treatise of mine upon the “Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education,” you will find a passage at pp. 85, 86, written in remembrance of this cyphering-book, and of the effects which it produced upon me in early boyhood.
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 7 |
When my uncle John was about to begin business as an attorney in Taunton, Cannon Southey, who was then the head of the family, lent him 100l. to start with. “That hundred pounds,” he used to say, with a sort of surly pride, “I repaid, with interest, in six months, and that is the only favour for which I was ever obliged to my relations.” Cannon Southey, however, though not very liberal to his kin, had a just regard to their legal rights, and left his property in trust for his great nephew, John Southey Somerville and his issue, with the intention that if he, who was then a child, should die without issue, the estates should descend to the Southeys; and, that the whole property might go together, he willed his leasehold estates (which would else have been divided among the next of kin) in remainder upon the same contingency to my uncle John and his two brothers, and to the sons of each in succession, as the former branch might fail.
Robert, my father, was passionately fond
of the country and of country sports. The fields should have been his station,
instead of the shop. He was placed with a kinsman in London, who, I believe,
was a grocer somewhere in the city,—one of the eleven tribes that went
out from Wellington. I have heard him say, that as he was one day standing at
this person’s door, a porter went by carrying a hare, and this brought
his favourite sport so forcibly to mind, that he could not help crying at the
sight. This anecdote in Wordsworth’s hands would be worth as much as the Reverie
of poor Susan. Before my father had been
twelvemonths in London his master
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