#robert southey

[periodinteriors]

Caroline Bowles, South Window of the Study of Greta Hall, 1841, watercolor.

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Eugene Delacroix, “The Vampire” (1825)

“Prior to the Romantic movement (say before the 1780s), the vampire had been either subject of ecclesiastical study or a minor concern in folklore - it had no artistic currency. Then quite suddently in Germany (Heinrich August Ossenfelder, “Der Vampir” (1748); Gottfried August Bürger, “Lenore” (1773); Goethe “The Bride of Corinth” (1797); Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann “Vampirismus” (1821), in France (Charles Nodier, “Lord Ruthven the Vampire” (1820), “Smarra” or “Démons de la Nuit, conte fantastique” (1821); Prosper Mérimée, “La Guzla” (1827); Charles Baudelaire, “The Vampire” (c. 1857-68), “The Metamorphoses of a Vampire” (1857), and especially in England (Robert Southey, “Thalaba the Destroyer” (1801); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel” (c. 1797-1800), Lord Byron, “The Giaour” (1813), “Fragment of Novel” (1819); John William Polidori, “The Vampyre” (1819), John Keats “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (1819)) the vampire had become an eidolon of Romantic consciousness, an apt mythologem for a new view of human interactions.

For the Romantic artist, acutely self-conscious, found in this myth an analogy to explain how energy (life, imagination, creativity) was exchanged between the various characters and activities he encountered. Without the vocabulary of transactional analysis, this myth provided a working text, so to speak, to describe human exchanges. […] Other writers, such as Henry James, Oscar Wilde or D. H. Lawrence used the analogy of the vampire to describe the inner and outer lives of their characters.”

— James Twitchell; “The Vampire Myth” (1980)

[aquatic-indie-gal]

Here's My Own Take on Goldilocks with Another Spazz of the Classic Xilam Style (Space Goofs, Oggy, Ratz, & Zig & Sharko) which Fits Perfectly Well Given the Majority of The Theme in Goldilocks of a Little Girl Finding a Strange House that's Already Owned by a Family as Well as Given Each of the Bears Different Furs of Brown.

Was Little Hard on What Outfits Should I Give for My Version of the Bears Until I Figured It Out How it Did Worked So Well with Each Design. I'm Deeply Unaware if My Version of Baby Bear is Already Designed to Look like That from Some Other Adaptation I'm Deeply Unaware Out There.

Goldilocks & The Three Bears (or "The Story of the Three Bears") (c) Robert Southey

[litcest]

Byron vs. Southey: Romantic Diss Tracks

While I worked on my Byron essay, I encountered in MacCarthy's work a small passage in which she mentions that Byron met the Lake Poets. It immediately caught my attention because, not only did it tie back to a topic I delved into a few months ago, but those meetings served as a prelude to a feud that would escalate for years, resulting in the enduring claim that Byron, alongside his friend Percy Shelley, was part of a "Satanic School" and a "League of Incest".

This is the story of the bitter animosity between Lord Byron and Robert Southey, a rivalry that ultimately drew in their respective friends, Percy Shelley and William Wordsworth, and defined an era of English literature, with it's repercussions lasting to this day.

But before we get into it, I wanna thank @windytalishar for being the best research assistant and cheerleader that I could ask for. Without them, I would never have gotten the juicy letters.

The year 1812 proved fruitful for Byron. With the publication of his celebrated narrative poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, he became a literary superstar and was soon being invited into London's most influential literary circles, where he crossed paths with established figures like William Wordsworth and Robert Southey.

The first time Byron was mentioned by either of those gentlemen is found in the diaries of Henry Crabb Robinson, who was a lawyer. In an entry from 24 May 1812, Robinson describes going on a walk with his friend, Wordsworth, where, among other topics, they talked about Byron's works. 

"Wordsworth allowed him power, but denied his style to be English. Of his moral qualities we think the same. He adds that there is insanity in Byron’s family, and that he believes Lord Byron to be somewhat cracked." (Batho 58)

Wordsworth's critique of Byron's "moral qualities" is particularly ironic, given that Wordsworth himself would later be the subject of speculation regarding an incestuous relationship with his own sister. At this point, however, the rumors surrounding Byron were more focused on his rumored homosexual relationships and general debauchery. 

Furthermore, this comment was made to Robinson before Wordsworth and Byron had ever met face to face, as their first meeting would happen in 1815, after which, Byron expressed to his wife that he felt "reverence" towards his fellow poet (Batho 55).

Wordsworth's opinion, however, did not soften after their meeting. On 18 April 1816, during the height of Byron's public scandal over his separation and the incest allegations, Wordsworth wrote a letter to John Scott, in which he reiterates his belief that Byron is mad, he does so with a tone of pity. One must consider that, at this point, the incest accusations were well known. Was Wordsworth, perhaps, seeing a dark reflection of his own intense relationship with his sister in the Byron-Leigh scandal?

"Let me only say one word upon Lord B. The man is insane; and will probably end his career in a mad-house. I never thought him anything else since his first appearance in public. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less indignation than pity." (Wordsworth 734)

However, despite Byron professed "reverence" to Wordsworth, he had previously mocked Wordsworth's and Southey's poetic skills in his 1809 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (WLB 234-237):

"'God help thee,' Southey, and thy readers too. Next comes the dull disciple of thy school, That mild apostate from poetic rule, The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay"

He would later continue this mockery in private, famously referring to Wordsworth as "Turdsworth" in private correspondence (Byron, BLJ, VII, 158, 168 and 253), further showcasing contempt towards the older poet.

Byron physically met Southey on 26 September 1813, as indicated by a letter he wrote to his friend Thomas Moore on the following day. We also have Southey's account from the meeting in a letter he wrote to his wife. Byron's takeaway from the meeting was that Southey was "the best-looking bard I have seen for some time" (Byron, WLBLJ 335), while Southey's letter focused on Byron's apology for his 1809 publication, an act which left him with a favourable impression of Byron's character. 

Their feud seems to die down for the the next few years, before Byron further reiterates his criticism of his contemporaries in his Don Juan (1819), where in the Dedication, he once more attacks Southney and Wordsworth, and later, in Canto I, stanza CCV, he wittily demands to readers that:

"Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope; Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey"

Their quarrel was largely political. Wordsworth and Southey were hardened conservative Tories, while Byron and Shelley were fervent Whig liberals. To the younger poets, Wordsworth and Southey were symbols of political desertion, as they had voiced support for the French Revolution in their youth only to abandon the cause for comfort and state-sanctioned honour. This was perfectly exemplified by Southey accepting the role of Poet Laureate in 1813, a position requiring him to be a voice for the monarchy. As Byron puts it in Don Juan's Dedication:

"Bob Southey! You 're a poet—Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race; Although 't is true that you turned out a Tory at Last,—yours has lately been a common case"

The reason for the return of their rivalry can be found in a letter to his friend Hobhouse dated from 11 November 1818, in which Byron wrote that:

"The Son of a Bitch on his return from Switzerland two years ago – said that Shelley and I 'had formed a League of Incest and practiced our precepts with &c.' – he lied like a rascal." (Byron, BLJ 303)

Whether Southey actually started these rumors is unknown, but Byron firmly believed he did, which reignited his hatred for the Poet Laureate and provoked the critiques in Don Juan. Byron goes on to defend himself, saying that while he had "carnal knowledge" of Claire Clairmont, he had no involvement with Mary Shelley, and even if he had, it wouldn't be incest, as they were stepsisters, not blood relatives. In a moment of pure pettiness, Byron added the false claim that Southey had been a lover of Mary Wollstonecraft, who was Mary Shelley's mother, suggesting Southey’s motive was resentment over an old heartbreak (Byron, BLJ, V, 303).

Byron doubles down on this defence in a letter to his publisher, John Murray, on 15 May 1819, again stressing that Mary and Claire were not blood-related. Such emphasis on a technicality makes me think that Byron did sleep with both women (and perhaps with Shelley too), and was trying to downplay it. 

"The story of the agreement to write the Ghost-books is true—but the ladies are not Sisters—one is Godwin's daughter by Mary Wolstonecraft—and the other the present Mrs. Godwin's daughter by a former husband. So much for Scoundrel Southey's Story of 'incest'—neither was there any promiscuous intercourse whatever—both are an invention of the execrable villain Southey—whom I will term so as publicly as he deserves." (Byron, BLJ, V, 317)

True to his word, Byron publicly shamed Southey in the preface to Don Juan. Southey would not let the defamation stand and prepared his response in the preface to his own work, A Vision of Judgement (1821), a narrative poem that portrayed King George III ascension to Heaven. Though he never used a name, it was clear to all that he addressed Byron and Shelley:

"Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society. [...]  The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent."

With this, the "Satanic School" was born. Byron fired back in a note to his play The Two Foscari (1821), accusing Southey of spreading "calumnies".

"I, 'in my degree,' have done more good in any one given year, since I was twenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his shifting and turncoat existence … I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on a different occasion, knowing them to be such, which he scattered abroad on his return to Switzerland against me and others: they have done him no good in this world; and, if his creed be the right one, they will do him less in the next." (Byron, CPW 223-225)

Southey felt the need to reply to that note and did so through a journal called The Courier on 11 January 1822. In his response, he makes "a direct and positive denial" regarding the charges of having spread the rumours of incest and clarifies the only instances in which he did speak of Byron in connection with Switzerland: He admits to finding, transcribing, and speaking about an entry in a guest album where Byron, both Shelleys and Clairmont, had written a vow of atheism. Southey argues this is not slander, as he was merely reporting something they had publicly recorded themselves.

Southey finished the letter by claiming that he is morally superior to Byron, as, unlike Byron, he has "never published libels upon my friends", "never abused the power [...] to wound the character of a man, or the heart of a woman", "never sent into the world a book to which I did not dare affix my name; or which I feared to claim in a Court of Justice" and "never manufactured furniture for the brothel". (Southey, Life and Correspondence 349–354)

In a direct response to the 1821 attack, and further infuriated by the letter, Byron wrote The Vision of Judgment, a poem which dramatized St. Peter's court in Heaven, parodying Southey's self-aggrandizing royalism and the fact the Southey switched to whichever political ideology that past suited him: "Had turn'd his coat – and would have turn'd his skin" (Byron, Vision Canto XCVII).

Southey, uncharacteristically so, wasn't much affected by Byron's crude jabs and, in a letter to his brother, Henry Herbert Southey, he wrote: "there is no necessity for striking a blow against someone who has so completely damned himself" (Southey, Life and Correspondence 124–126). 

His final word came after Byron's death on 19 April 1824. Southey wrote one last letter to The Courier, which was published on 13 December 1824. His main concern was clarifying the "Satanic School" debacle, using Byron's own recorded words as final proof of the late poet's questionable character, as the topic that had once again risen to the public conscience, following the publication of Thomas Medwin's Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron.

Ultimately, the feud between Byron and Southey was more than a game of egos: it pitted Romantic idealism against establishment conservatism, radical politics against Tory loyalty, and a new, scandalous form of celebrity against traditional moral authority. While Byron undoubtedly won the war of wit with his satirical verse, Southey succeeded in branding his rival for eternity. The labels he created, the "Satanic School" and "Incest League", would forever alter the public's perception of Byron and Shelley, ensuring that their legacy would always be tarnished with  infamy.

References:

Batho, Edith Clara. The Later Wordsworth. 1933.

Byron, George Gordon. Byron’s Letters and Journals. Ed. Leslie A. Marchand, vol. 5. London: John Murray, 1973.

Byron, George Gordon. Byron’s Letters and Journals. Ed. Leslie A. Marchand, vol. 7. London: John Murray, 1978.

Byron, George Gordon. Complete Poetical Works. Ed. Jerome J. McGann, vol 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Byron, George Gordon. English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire. 1809.

Byron, George Gordon. The Vision of Judgment. 1822.

Byron, George Gordon. The Works of Lord Byron. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, vol. 6, London: John Murray, 1903.

Byron, George Gordon. The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. 2, 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9921/9921-h/9921-h.htm

MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

McGann, Jerome. "Byron and Wordsworth." Byron and Romanticism. Ed. James Soderholm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 173–202.

Lansdown, Richard. Byron’s Letters and Journals: A New Selection. OUP Oxford, 2015.

Southey, Robert. A Vision of Judgement. 1821.

Southey, Robert. Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey. Ed. Charles Cuthbert Southey, vol. 5. London, 1850.

Wordsworth, William, and Dorothy Wordsworth. The Letters Of William And Dorothy Wordsworth. Ed. Selincourt De Ernsst, vol. 2, 1937.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Charlotte Brontë

The letter arrived in 1837, sealed with the authority of England's highest literary office.

Charlotte Brontë, twenty years old and burning with ambition, had dared to send her poetry to Robert Southey, Poet Laureate himself.

His response was surgical in its dismissal. Literature, he explained, could never be the business of a woman's life. She should focus on her domestic duties and abandon such inappropriate dreams.

Charlotte folded the letter carefully. She kept it. And then she kept writing.

She had already survived more than most people twice her age. At eight, she watched two of her sisters die from tuberculosis contracted at a brutal boarding school where children froze in unheated dormitories and disease spread like wildfire through classrooms.

The place was called Cowan Bridge and Charlotte would later immortalize its cruelty in Jane Eyre so accurately that headmaster threatened legal action.

Her childhood was Yorkshire moorland and relentless wind, a stone parsonage where books were only luxury and imagination only escape.

She and her siblings invented entire fictional worlds, writing obsessively, creating kingdoms on paper because reality offered them almost nothing.

Her father, a clergyman with more intellect than income, encouraged them to read everything and question everything. It was a radical gift in an age that expected girls to prepare for marriage and nothing more.

But every conventional path failed her. Teaching was soul-crushing. Working as a governess meant enduring employers whose children threw Bibles at her head.

A plan to open a school with Emily collapsed. Writing wasn't a choice. It was what remained when everything else proved impossible.

In 1847, she published Jane Eyre under the pseudonym Currer Bell. The book exploded.

A poor, plain, passionate heroine who refused to believe her worth was defined by her social position. Victorian England found it scandalous and irresistible. Some called it immoral. It sold anyway.

Then 1848 shattered her. Her brother Branwell died in September, destroyed by addiction.

Emily followed three months later, tuberculosis taking her at thirty. Anne died the next May at 29.

Three siblings gone in eight months, all in the same house, while Charlotte survived and wondered why.

She kept writing through the grief. She married quietly in 1854, choosing companionship over passion, admitting she felt esteem but not love.

She became pregnant. Her fragile health collapsed entirely. She died in March 1855, weeks before her thirty-ninth birthday, her child dying with her.

Four novels. Thousands of letters. A completely new kind of fiction where women's inner lives weren't decoration but the entire architecture.

Jane Eyre has never been out of print. The girl the Poet Laureate told to put down her pen outlasted all her doubters by two centuries. She just kept writing. That was enough.

Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre in pencil while caring for her father after cataract surgery in a Manchester lodging house in 1846.

She worked in tiny, cramped handwriting, chapter by chapter, creating one of literature's most enduring heroines while sitting in a rented room far from home.

The novel's famous opening line, "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day," came from those weeks of confinement.

The Brontë sisters published their first book, a poetry collection, under the gender-ambiguous names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

It sold exactly two copies. Rather than give up, all three immediately began writing novels.

Within two years, they had produced Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, three of the most influential books in English literature.

Interestingly, Charlotte was only 4 feet 9 inches tall and extremely nearsighted.

Contemporary accounts describe her as shy and physically unremarkable, which makes her creation of the "poor, obscure, plain and little" Jane Eyre even more poignant.

She wrote what she knew, and it resonated across centuries.

—

Charlotte Nicholls (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855), commonly known by her maiden name Charlotte Brontë, was an English novelist and poet, and was the elder sister of Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontë.

She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which was first published on 19 October 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

Jane Eyre was a great success on publication and has since been acknowledged as a classic of English literature.

—

[foodandfolklore]

Goldilocks and the Three Bears -1917 Knock Off

I found a really bizarre book of Classic fairytales that have been rewritten or reinterpreted. Now, this isn't exactly unusual; authors have been doing this since the printing press was made accessible. But I couldn't help but chuckle some at this version of Goldilocks and the three bears. Not only has young Goldie been replaced with an unnamed old woman. But Papa, Mama, and Baby bear are now referred to as Huge Bear, Middle sized bear, and Wee bear. So if you would like a version of this story where the family is not gendered; maybe you are a same sex couple with a child (or a dog who likes to be read to, no judgment) this kind of thing might be what you're looking for. Either way, I found it interesting.

There were once three bears who lived together in a little house in the middle of a wood. One of them was a Little, Small, Wee Bear; one was a Middle-Sized Bear; and the other was a Great, Huge Bear.

And they each had a pot to eat their porridge from: a little pot for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; a middle-sized pot for the Middle-Sized Bear; and a great big pot for the Great, Huge Bear.

And they each had a chair to sit on: a little chair for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; a middle-sized chair for the Middle-Sized Bear; and a great big chair for the Great, Huge Bear.

And they each had a bed to sleep in: a little bed for the Little, Small, Wee Bear; a middle-sized bed for the Middle-Sized Bear; and a great big bed for the Great, Huge Bear.

One day they made the porridge for their breakfast, and poured it into their porridge-pots, and then went out in the wood for a walk while the porridge for their breakfast was cooling. And while they were out walking, a little Old Woman came to the house in the wood and peeped inside.

First she peeped through the keyhole; then she peeped through the window. Then she lifted the latch and peeped through the doorway; and, seeing nobody in the house, she walked in. And when she saw the porridge cooling on the table she was very pleased, for she had walked a long way, and was getting hungry.

So first she tasted the porridge of the Great, Huge Bear, but that was too hot. Then she tasted the porridge of the Middle-Sized Bear, but that was too cold. And then she tasted the porridge of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and that was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right. And she liked it so much that she ate it all up!

Then the little Old Woman sat down in the chair of the Great, Huge Bear, but that was too hard. Then she sat down in the chair of the Middle-Sized Bear, but that was too soft. Then she sat down in the chair of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and that was neither too hard nor too soft, but just right. And she liked it so much that she sat in it until suddenly the bottom came out, and she fell down plump upon the ground.

Then the little Old Woman went upstairs into the bedroom, where the three Bears slept. And first she lay down on the bed of the Great, Huge Bear, but that was too high at the head for her. Then she lay down on the bed of the Middle-Sized Bear, but that was too high at the foot for her. So then she lay down on the bed of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and that was neither too high at the head nor too high at the foot, but just right. And she liked it so much that she covered herself up and lay there till she fell fast asleep!

By and by the three Bears came home to breakfast. Now, the little Old Woman had left the spoon of the Great, Huge Bear standing in his porridge pot.

Somebody has been at my porridge!"

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And when the Middle-Sized Bear looked, she saw that the spoon was standing in her porridge-pot too.

Somebody has been at my porridge!"

said the Middle-Sized Bear in her middle-sized voice.

Then the Little, Small, Wee Bear looked, and there was the spoon in his porridge-pot; but the porridge was all gone.

Somebody has been at my porridge and has eaten it all up!"

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

Then the three Bears began to look about them. Now, the little Old Woman had not put the hard cushion straight after she had sat in the chair of the Great, Huge Bear.

"Somebody has been sitting in my chair!"

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little Old Woman had squashed the soft cushion of the Middle-Sized Bear.

"Somebody has been sitting in my chair!"

said the Middle-Sized Bear, in her middle-sized voice.

And you know what the little Old Woman had done to the third chair.

"Somebody has been sitting in my chair and has sat the bottom out!"

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

Then the three Bears went upstairs into their bedroom. Now, the little Old Woman had pulled the pillow of the Great, Huge Bear out of its place.

"Somebody has been lying in my bed!"

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little Old Woman had pulled the bolster of the Middle-Sized Bear out of its place.

"Somebody has been lying in my bed!"

said the Middle-Sized Bear, in her middle-sized voice.

And when the Little, Small, Wee Bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place, and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the little Old Woman's head, which was not in its place, for she had no business there at all.

"Somebody has been lying in my bed—and here she is!"

cried the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

The little Old Woman had heard in her sleep the great, rough, gruff voice of the Great, Huge Bear, but she was so fast asleep that it seemed to her no more than the roaring of the wind, or the rumbling of thunder. And she had heard the middle-sized voice of the Middle-Sized Bear, but it was only as if she had heard some one speaking in a dream. But when she heard the little, small, wee voice of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, it was so sharp and shrill that it woke her up at once. Up she started, and when she saw the three Bears, on one side of the bed, she tumbled out at the other, jumped out of the window and ran away through the wood to her own home. And the three Bears never saw anything more of her.

[murakamijeva-muza]

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are throughout persuaded of each other's worth” ― Robert Southey

[dead-as-i-tread]

I don't belong.

...and my darling

neither do you.