How very long, my dear Madam, indeed how very unusually so, is the time that you have suffered to pass since last I had the pleasure of receiving a letter from you. Your kindness to me on this subject has produced upon me precisely the same effect that similar kindness in a different way would have with the youngest of my children.— I am grown as fractious & as impatient as can be, whenever the very post that I had calculated does not produce me a letter; & though my own self love and vanity, of which, God knows, I have a sufficient share, will not allow me to suppose I am altogether forgotten; yet I feel a thousand anxieties respecting the health of yourself & your family, & thus endeavour to
screen under the mark of regard towards a friend what is in reality a mere selfish impatience. Yet still, selfish as I am, I am really anxious to know that you & the rest of the family at Ballylickey are in the enjoyment of good health; & I promise you, if you will but write to say this much, I will be satisfied that you should in silent for as many weeks longer as you think proper to appoint. The season with us is delightful, & vegetation thriving, & the earth beautiful beyond what the oldest man ever remembers, & I am enjoying it prodigiously, from the inclination my two eldest girls have recently expressed to become botanists, in consequence of which I have been teaching them their botanical A.B.C. & been examining with them the most common flowers, which has been going over again the employment of 19 years ago, & verifying in a manner the prospect of future happiness held out by the newly married husband in his wife at the end of the old song that
‘you shall be courted in your girls,
And I’ll go a wooing in my boys.’
The removal of Hooker to London has taken away from me the only literary companion that was serviceable to me in this part of the country &, what is worst, now he is there he is courted by society, on account of his extreme good nature & the unaffected manner in which he bears his rare acquirements, that it is impossible even to get a letter from him, & I begin to fear he will not publish his Jungermanniae, though he has already put himself to the expense of the engravings. I long very much to know what you think of his Journal, the safe arrival of which in Ireland Mr Mackay communicated to me about a month ago. Its reception among his friends in London has been even more flattering than I could have wished; for being done with materials so scanty, it has raised such an idea of what may be expected from his voyage to Ceylon, as no human power can be sufficient to gratify. I wish most heartily he would be wise enough to be contented & stay at home. Did I tell you that the last vol. of the Linnean Transactions contains a figure & description of a new genus of] mosses, called after me, Dawsonia I mention it, not from any vanity, but because the plant is so thoroughly new & extraordinary. The habit of Polytrichum commune & a Peristomium consisting of numberless long capillary white threads; issuing with no apparent order from the mouth of the capsules. It is a plant from New Holland; — at present I cannot get a specimen for myself; but if I can procure a duplicate of the paper or even of the plate alone, I will forward it to you. About a fortnight ago, I had a letter from Sir Thomas Gage, telling me he was on his road to Suffolk. As soon as he arrives I shall make a point of going see his collections. He offers me drawings of the scenery of Killarney, which I shall be very glad of. At present I cannot ask him here, Mrs Turner being ordered wholly to keep her bed till her confinement for which we look in a month or 5 weeks. Yet, thank God, in other respects her health is good, & I trust there is in her situation nothing to give cause for anxiety. She joins in every good & kind wish to you & yours with, my dear Madam, your much obliged friend. Dawson Turner.
Yarmouth 4th July 1811
Please cite as “EHT068,” in Ɛpsilon: Ellen Hutchins Collection accessed on