76 — To Elizabeth Bridget Pigot
Gordon's Hotel, July 13, 1807.
You write most excellent epistles — a fig for other correspondents, with their nonsensical apologies for "
knowing nought about it
" — you send me a delightful budget. I am here in a perpetual vortex of dissipation (very pleasant for all that), and, strange to tell, I get thinner, being now below eleven stone considerably. Stay in town a
month
, perhaps six weeks, trip into Essex, and then, as a favour,
irradiate
Southwell for three days with the light of my countenance; but nothing shall ever make me
reside
there again. I positively return to Cambridge in October; we are to be uncommonly gay, or in truth I should
cut
the University. An extraordinary circumstance occurred to me at Cambridge; a girl so very like — — made her appearance, that nothing but the most
minute inspection
could have undeceived me. I wish I had asked if
she
had ever been at H — —
What
the devil would Ridge have? is not fifty in a fortnight, before the advertisements, a sufficient sale
? I hear many of the London booksellers have them, and Crosby
has sent copies to the principal watering places. Are they liked or not in Southwell?
...
I wish Boatswain had
swallowed
Damon! How is Bran? by the immortal gods, Bran ought to be a
Count
of the
Holy Roman Empire
.
The intelligence of London cannot be interesting to you, who have rusticated all your life — the annals of routs riots, balls and boxing-matches, cards and crim. cons., parliamentary discussion, political details, masquerades, mechanics, Argyle Street Institution and aquatic races, love and lotteries, Brookes's and Buonaparte, opera-singers and oratorios, wine, women, wax-work, and weathercocks, can't accord with your
insulated
ideas of decorum and other
silly expressions
not inserted in
our vocabulary
.
Oh! Southwell, Southwell, how I rejoice to have left thee, and how I curse the heavy hours I dragged along, for so many months, among the Mohawks who inhabit your kraals! — However, one thing I do not regret, which is having
pared off
a sufficient quantity of flesh to enable me to slip into "an eel-skin," and vie with the
slim
beaux of modern times; though I am sorry to say, it seems to be the mode amongst
gentlemen
to grow
fat
, and I am told I am at least fourteen pound below the fashion. However, I
decrease
instead of enlarging, which is extraordinary, as
violent
exercise in London is impracticable; but I attribute the
phenomenon
to our
evening squeezes
at public and private parties. I heard from Ridge this morning (the 14th, my letter was begun yesterday): he says the poems go on as well as can be wished; the seventy-five sent to town are circulated, and a demand for fifty more complied with, the day he dated his epistle, though the advertisements are not yet half published. Adieu.
P.S
. — Lord Carlisle, on receiving my poems, sent, before he opened the book, a tolerably handsome letter
:— I have not heard from him since. His opinions I neither know nor care about: if he is the least insolent, I shall enrol him with
Butler
and the other worthies. He is in Yorkshire, poor man! and very ill! He said he had not had time to read the contents, but thought it necessary to acknowledge the receipt of the volume immediately. Perhaps the Earl "
bears no brother near the throne" — if so
, I will make his
sceptre
totter
in his hands
. — Adieu!
Footnote 1:
: This is probably the third collection of early verse,
Hours of Idleness
, the first collection published with Byron's name (see page 104,
1).
Footnote 2:
B. Crosby & Co., of Stationers' Court, were the London agents of Ridge, the Newark bookseller. Crosby was also the publisher of a magazine called
Monthly Literary Recreations
, in which (July, 1807) appeared a highly laudatory notice of
Hours of Idleness
, and Byron's review of Wordsworth's
Poems
(2 vols. 1807. See
), and his "Stanzas to Jessy" (see
Poems
, vol. i. pp. 234-236). These lines were enclosed with the following letter, addressed to "Mr. Crosby, Stationers' Court:" —
"July 21, 1807. Sir, — I have sent according to my promise some Stanzas for Literary Recreations. The insertion I leave to the option of the Editors. They have never appeared before. I should wish to know whether they are admitted or not, and when the work will appear, as I am desirous of a copy.
Etc., etc.,
Byron.
P.S. — Send your answer when convenient."
cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 78
Footnote 3:
"My Dear Lord, — Your letter of yesterday found me an invalid, and unable to do justice to your poems by a dilligent [sic] perusal of them. In the meantime I take the first occasion to thank you for sending them to me, and to express a sincere satisfaction in finding you employ your leisure in such occupations. Be not disconcerted if the reception of your works should not be that you may have a right to look for from the public. Persevere, whatever that reception may be, and tho' the Public maybe found very fastidious, ... you will stand better with the world than others who only pursue their studies in Bond St. or at Tatershall's.
Believe me to be, yours most sincerely,
Carlisle.
July 8th, 1807."
