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Notes
I wish to thank the Chairman and Trustees of the Dove Cottage Library for permission to use this manuscript.
The text otherwise is that found in "Sarah's Poets" (see the Oxford Words-worth I,228, and, second edition, II, Appendix II, p. 541) with the exception of some minor variants: "Ann" is spelt without an "e"; there are some punctuation changes; line 14 has "&" where other texts have "or"; there is a spelling variant in line 21 — "Daisies must be daizies still".
In one or two other ways I am able to add some information to what we have been told about the notebook, "Sarah's Poets". First, a minor point: Mr. Whalley (p. 4, footnote) states that the manuscript has no watermark. Miss Joanna Hutchinson has kindly allowed me to examine it and I find that six leaves are marked "J. What-man / 1794". Second (again a footnote on page 4), Mr. Whalley is unable to identify the initials "P. M. J." which appear after the one poem in the notebook not by Wordsworth or Coleridge. This poem is in the Wordsworth end of the book; it is preceded by "A Farewell" (in the text revised by June 14, 1802) and followed by "Praised be the Art" (known to be written not long before August 28, 1811). It is "The Otaheitan Mourner", and it appeared, presumably for the first time, in the Monthly Magazine for December, 1808. It is signed "P. M. J.", has the address, Birmingham, and the following introductory note which Sara also copies into her notebook: "Peggy Stuart was the daughter of an Otaheitan chief, and Married to one of the Mutineers of the Bounty. On Stuart's being seized & carried away in the Pandora Frigate, Peggy fell into a rapid decay, and in two months died of a broken heart leaving an infant daughter, who is still surviving." Perhaps Robert Southey had something to do with Sara's interest in the poem. In the Quarterly Review for August, 1809, Southey reviewed the Transactions of the South Sea Missionary Society (1804-), which contained the original account of the story of Peggy Stuart. In a footnote he quotes the third and fourth stanzas of "P.M.J.'s" poem and adds: "The whole poem (though not free from faults) is so beautiful that we should gladly have transcribed it had our limits permitted its insertion." On October 23 of the same year, 1809, he comments to Grosvenor Bedford: "Is not that a sad story of Stewart & the Taheitan Girl? — the verses are by a young Banker of Birmingham by name James, who sent me some of his first attempts for the intended third vol. of the Anthology. By that circumstance I discovered them to be his, & as I really admired them very much, inserted them in the Quarterly partly for the sake of giving him & his friends a very unexpected pleasure, for which they do not know to whom they are obliged." (Quoted from an unpublished letter in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, by kind permission of the Keeper of Manuscripts.) The Quaker records show (Mr. Edward H. Milligan has generously helped me with them) that Paul Moon James was indeed a "Banker of Birmingham" by 1808. Like Southey, he came from Bristol. He was born on January 16, 1780, the son of William, described as a Grocer in 1783, and Priscilla. He moved to Birmingham early in 1805, and on August 3, 1808, described as a banker, he married Olivia Lloyd, sister of Charles Lloyd, the poet. In 1836 he moved to Manchester to become the first managing director of the Manchester and Salford bank, and he died there in 1854. James' connexion with Bristol and with the Lloyd family would account for Southey's wish to give "him & his friends a very unexpected pleasure."
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