From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   14 Jun 1809

Your last letter, my dear Madam, arrived, as indeed, your letters almost always do, at most auspicious moment; it caught me in London, where I at all times, detest being, but where I was then completely uncomfortable, for I had just parted from my friend, Mr Hooker, who had taken a sudden resolution to sail for Iceland, & pass the summer in that most wonderful of countries. How glad should I have been to have gone with him, did not the ties of business & the still stronger ones of a wife & family necessarily keep me at home. You must excuse me, my dear Madam, from mentioning so much of my domestic concerns, as have been the cause of my not taking a much more early opportunity of thanking you for your two valuable parcels. I really wished & intended to have done so but just after your letter arrived, I was recalled hastily on account of business from London, & on my arrival at home, I found my house in a melancholy state on account of the loss of my infant child, who was carried off by an attack of cholera morbus, so rapid & so violent that there was not even time to apprise me of his danger. My poor wife, who had lost two sons before, one of them by the most distressing of accidents, had fixed her heart upon the life of this, even more than I had, & was quite overcome by a loss, which the enfeebled state of her body made her but ill able to bear up against. I have therefore had great cause for anxiety on her account, as well as for regret on my own, & until I saw her mending, it was impossible to think of anything else, which I hope that your kindness will admit, as but too good an excuse for my apparent neglect. Your two parcels, my dear Madam, reached me quite safe, and I again thank you for them: by tomorrow's post I shall send a small one in return to you, but it can contain scarcely anything, as you have not yet told me what mosses you want. I have transcribed Campbell’s two poems, allowed to be his best; for I am sorry to say you will not be able to buy them, as they never were published except in the quarto edition of his Pleasures of Hope, which has long been out of print. I have written them from memory so you must excuse any inaccuracies. Two lines in his Lochiel where the old sage accounts for the second sight of the Scotch by a similitude drawn from the lengthening shadows of the setting sun, have been by able men considered the most sublime things in our language. I recollect, in some lines of his own on painting, one stanza that always particularly pleased me

“No spectre-forms of beauty fled

Thy sweet endearing tints restore;

For thou canst give us back the dead

E’en in the loveliest looks they wore.”

You will not, however, thank me for going on about poetry; but I am full of it now, being in the middle of Dante which delights me excessively. Mr Hooker’s voyage to Iceland will, I am sorry to say, necessarily retard the publication of his Jungermanniae which he has not begun to print; but will, I hope, in return bring us a rich harvest of plants from that country, all of which you shall share with me. He hopes to be home in September, & then vows he will leave England no more till his own Jungermanniae & my Fuci are completed. I hope indeed he will not leave at all, for I shall miss his society beyond anything, as I should do now, were my mind more at ease. Mr Borrer, for whom I have a very great regard is coming to spend this summer with me. Another of my botanical correspondence, Mr Joseph Woods, a particular friend of Dillwyn’s, threatens you with a call at Ballylickey. I envy him, I own. Ill health obliges him to quit London & travel during the summer, & he has determined to visit the southern part of your island. He told me, whether in Jo or not I do not know, that he should make a point of introducing himself to you, & he asked me for a letter, which I declined giving, not considering myself authorised to take such a liberty. Should you see him, you would be pleased with him as a young man of strong sense & extensive reading: he is also of good family, being nephew to Hoare, the Banker in London. He has been often at this house and promises me another visit immediately on his return from Ireland, that we may together examine the rarities he brings home.

Mr Dickson showed me in Town a specimen of Phascum alternifolium which he likely received from Cork, from a Mr Drummond, I believe. Did you ever find it? You sometime ago mentioned having found near you Bryum conoideum, & if you have any of it to spare, I will beg a few specimens, as I am frequently asked for it. I shall be grateful too for Jung minitissima, but I will manage mention nothing else, for I am really ashamed, & your liberality supplies me so bountifully that you leave me nothing to ask for. I can only say that whatever you would else throw away, there are plenty of gaping mouths here that will be glad to swallow. Conferva mirabilis I was very glad indeed of, for I had only seen a miserable fragment of it before. Does it not come very near, almost too near, to C myochrous? I heard in town that Dillwyn‘s last Number would be out by the end of this month. I long to hear the account of the success of your expedition to the mountains, whence you should have favoured me with a letter which I should have priced more than Mrs Grant’s, but I doubt you did not write because I have myself been over late so bad a correspondent. Learning, my dear Madam, in this one respect to return good for evil, it is the only one, I am sure, in which you have occasion to learn it, & it is the one in which it concerns me most nearly for you to practice it. I hope you will oblige me by writing as soon as you can. Into the small packet I shall send by Captain Mangin I shall put the memorandum that I wished to convey to you about your parcels. As you mean to draw the Irish mosses, which I am very glad of, you must allow me to lend such species as I cannot give. My specimens are, unfortunately, all glued on paper, but I will gladly take them off for such an occasion. — Be assured, my dear Madam, of the respect & accept the esteem & regard of Yours ever sincerely

Dawson Turner

Yarmouth 14 June 1809

Nothing can be conceived more beautiful than the exhibition of water colour drawings in London this spring. One of them, by an artist of the name of Heaphy, has sold for 400 Guineas, & 500 have been offered for it to the purchaser. It is a representation of a fish market in which a most lovely young woman is buying fish, attended by her maid, into whose hand an officer’s servant is slipping a letter. Billingsgate quarrels make up the group.