From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   8 Jun 1811

Yarmouth 8^th June 1811

I was in London, my dear Madam, attending the Linnean Anniversary, when the first of the two letters that you have lately been so kind as to favour me with reached Yarmouth, & followed me to the great city, where I fully intended to have answered it, but the bustle in which the fortnight I spent there was passed prevented my executing this, as well as several other good intentions. The fructifications of Lichen pustulatus are figured in English Botany, & are there said to have been found in Scotland by Mr Menzies, but I have reason to believe that this is a mistake, & that his specimens, one of which I have, severally gathered at the Cape. If this be the case, it was you who first added them to our Flora, & such was universally believed among the London Botanists, who would have taken from me all the specimens you sent, had they been seventy times as numerous as they are. My time in Town was very much occupied in a large circle of acquaintances, whose kindness, at the same time as it is most gratifying, prevents my doing what I intend to do & ought to do, & seeing different exhibitions of paintings, in which I take extreme delight. How I wish I could have had you with me! This is a wish I shall never cease to entertain till I have worried you to Dublin, where some of my family & myself will meet you any day you appoint, to escort you to Yarmouth. The arts flourish prodigiously in England; particularly the art of drawing in water colours. There was a small picture of this kind in the exhibition by my namesake J. M. W. Turner, who is unquestionably the first English artist of the day! The most striking I ever saw. The subject was Chryses imploring the vengeance of Apollo on the Greeks; the composition very simple; merely the old Priest kneeling in the foreground on the beach, a small woody promontory with the ruins of a temple upon it to the right of the picture, the sea, & the sun rising; but the whole so exquisitely conceived, the beach so beautifully transparent, & the sun so super divinely bright, (as if propitious to the prayers of his priest, more bright indeed than I ever saw it in any painting of Claude’s) that the whole was magic. I could go on scribbling sheet upon sheet to you about these subjects, as I have already done to my children, till I had really produced upon you that affect by my letters, which you are so kind as to fear (though more unreasonably) that yours may have with me. Did you ever hear the following ?Enigma on a Portrait? If not I am sure you will pardon my inserting it for its beauty

Enfant de l’art, enfant de la nature,

Sans prolonge la vie j’empeche de mourir;

Plus je suis vrai, plus je fair l’imposture,

Et je deviens tros jeune a force de vieiller. —

See, my dear Madam, in what manner I fill up my paper, but you pardon me, & are pleased with my letters, & I therefore write all the ?bavardings that first come to my mind. One evening I spent in Town, when I am sure you would have liked to have been with me: it was when I went to the Theatre with a savage just bought over from New Holland. His observations were few, & his astonishment by no means so much excited by the magnificence of the most magnificent spectacle ever produced, in which 10 horses are at once on the stage, and by the number of people, who he said, were enough to fill all Sydney. The face of a man peeping through the curtain surprised him more than anything. The fear of being kept all night took me away his pleasure; but he said it was “grand, very grand”.

The Hypnum contained in the first of your letters certainly H.stramineum, as you supposed. The Jungermannia is not minutifolisma but curvifolia. I am quite at a loss to imagine how Mr Hooker & I have called it the other. The fruit of Jung. tomentilla has never been found in England. Linnaeus had it, I think, from Lapland, & Mr Menzies lately gathered it in New Zealand. You will assuredly find it in Ireland. Upon the Jungermanniae in your last letter I don’t say a word. They go by this post to Mr Hooker in London, & as soon as I hear his opinion upon them I will write you. You must send me the whole of your Bantry species & varieties for my own Herbarium, & those not perfectly common you must supply me with that liberality, which is exclusively your own; for when Hooker goes to Ceylon people will look to me for specimens of a family that his book cannot but bring into notice. I had almost forgotten to mention, & to thank you for the Pinguicula; the Bishop tho’ now I believe at Norwich was in London when it reached Norfolk, so it had a double journey to make, & suffered accordingly, but still it got here not quite decayed. Send me small things occasionally thro’ Lady Aylesford, whom you will certainly find a permanent correspondent, & as she can be useful in no other respect, we may as well make her so in this. You may also continue occasionally to use the Bishop. I have been very much pleased since I began this letter to find from Mr MacKay that my parcel was safe on its road to Cork. The Life of Tasso, I am sure, will amuse you. My wife, I am sorry to say, continues much as she was: in a state that requires continual care, & prevents exertion; but at the same time, with nothing to alarm us, & nothing that we may not confidently hope to see removed by her approaching confinement. In September, when she oversees, I look for a long visit from Borrer and his wife & child, to go on ever more with our eternal Lichenographia. Do, tell me how Mrs Hutchins & all your family are. If they be but well, I cannot pity your solitude at Ballylickey. It must be very endurable, where everything around you is equally solitary; but the feeling of solitude in London is beyond anything shocking, & this I experienced pretty fully when last there; for that I had abundance of acquaintance & some for whom I have great regard with me yet I wanted somebody by my side that ?intercoluted my pleasure from all…[cross hatched over page 1, last three or more lines that are too faded to read].

Xxxxxxx from all xxxxx

Xxxxx & get out of my

Xxxxxx for your list & what