Letter from Anna Seward to George Hardinge, Esq., 1 October 1787

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

328–330

text excerpt

When I was at Ludlow in June last, a party of eight conducted me, one bright summer’s day, into the recesses of Mr Knight’s romantic, his, in my eyes, matchless valley.

[…]

A little more about this same party of ours to Downton. One of the nymphs that formed it, contributed, by an happy frolic, to make us fancy ourselves in one of the beautiful wilds of the southern latitudes.

[…]

In another seclusion, romantic as that of the mill, and more absolute, since it contained no trace of human habitation, or even footstep, the valley again widening into a circular glen, we sat down, beneath one of the surrounding rocks, to shelter ourselves from the noon-beams. 

Whether the idea struck our little nymph of making the scene more perfectly Otaheitean I know not, but she ran to the river-brink, threw off her riding-hat, and, parting her long coarse black hair down the sides of her face, danced to her own purposely dissonant singing, in all sort of antic postures, and became the very figure we had seen represented in Cook’s Voyages. We were all seized with the same idea, and exclaimed to each other “what a complete little savage—we are certainly in Otaheite.”

excerpt from 'Letter from Anna Seward to George Hardinge, Esq., 1 October 1787' pp. 328–330 (214 words)

1535639222258:

1535639222258