William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. VII. 1806-1811
William Godwin to Mary Jane Godwin, 2 September 1811
“Newport, I. Of Wight, Sep. 2.
“I have not passed a pleasant day since I left Bognor
till today. Portsmouth is detestable, and Ryde to me insipid. Dr Stoddart showed me a pretty park, and a
pretty garden, and two pretty villas, dearly looked upon by gaping strangers,
but this to me is nothing. I except, however, the voyage from Portsmouth to
Ryde, six miles in length, and one hour in duration. This was delicious. But
to-day I am this moment come from Carisbrooke Castle, a beautiful ruin in the
first place, and in the second, the ![]()
![]()
prison in which
Charles I. was imprisoned for some
months, and from which, with a short interval, he was conducted to his trial.
They show a window through which he is said to have attempted his escape. I
have just passed by the school-house where he is said to have met the
Commissioners of Parliament, and made his last experiment for re-ascending the
throne. There a monarch was arraigned, and now a school boy. It is with great
regret that I refrain from risking a visit to the schoolmaster, and trying to
make him talk over old times, and show me old walls. . . . The whole of this
letter has been written in coffee rooms, where it is difficult to preserve the
thread of narrative, but impossible to write sentiment. From Southampton I will
endeavour to mix both; but I cannot help wishing briefly to put down my
feelings in situations which I have just visited, and which I suppose certainly
I shall never visit again.—Ever and ever yours,
King Charles I of England (1600-1649)
The son of James VI and I; as king of England (1625-1649) he contended with Parliament;
he was revered as a martyr after his execution.
Sir John Stoddart (1773-1856)
Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he befriended Coleridge and Wordsworth and after
abandoning his early republican principles became a writer for the
Times, and afterwards editor of the Tory newspaper
New
Times in 1817 and a judge in Malta (1826-40). His sister married William Hazlitt
in 1808.
