From Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner   30 Jan 1812

At length my dear Sir I am able to begin a long letter. Indeed I know not how to thank you sufficiently for all the letters I have recently had from you. The friendship that produced them I hope I feel as I ought though I have been for some time past unable to make you any answer to letters that were almost the only pleasures I have had, certainly the most unmixed with pain. I felt their value at all times great to me, but peculiarly so at a time when I had nothing but sickness & suffering about me. Now thank God we are all better. My mother’s health which is the most material to my happiness of anything in this world is rather better than I could have expected. She is at all times weak & nervous but when she recovers from a severe attack & seems so revived as to enjoy what passes around I feel as if she was growing young again & may yet live many years with us. Hope I believe sometimes carries me beyond what it is reasonable to expect. All my family lived to great ages and were young people at 60 or 70. I am better than I have been though I have bile & headache from confinement. The weather is now delightfully soft, the birds sing, the sun shines & I feel as if summer was come. As soon as I get rid of a cough that torments me I shall go out a little every day. I am now particularly anxious to collect Lichens for you. My last short letter was quite as little satisfactory to you as to me but it was all I could do at the time, & I felt that you would be uneasy at not hearing that I was alive. I have at length sent a large parcel for you to Mr Mackay. He will I hope forward it without delay. It will be a great pleasure to me that you receive it soon. Tell me pray if you want more of anything it contains. The drawing of Fucus fruticulosus will I hope meet your ideas of the nature of the beautiful original which abounds here. The colour is olive brown which in drying changes to reddish brown & in winter it is also reddish. Young plants have the ends of the filaments remarkably curled inwards as you will observe in the young one I have done. The filaments appear to the naked eye jointed which appearance is caused by the reticulations on the surface being regularly larger & smaller at certain distances. The fruit agrees with that of the confervae with veined joints except that in the latter the single seeds are in the ends of the filaments instead of being in clustered lateral pods, but I suppose you will nevertheless unite them. They approach in so many ways that I am puzzled to think how they may be separated. Are they not a most beautiful family? The drawing of Conferva elongata is nearly done but I wait for a month to get a quite ripe capsule to do the seeds. I will if possible attend closely to everything connected with the fructification of the marine plants and draw every appearance for you. I hope you will be able to ascertain Conferva No. 80. It is a great beauty and abounds with us. I find C. Urceolata the capsules of which are very remarkable and quite different from No. 81 which I now hope may be a distinct species. I am quite vexed to find that I omitted putting into the parcel a specimen on glass of No. 85. For the present you must trust to the drawing, but the specimen shall go with the next parcel. I have sent the list of all the plants I have found, and when you consider how small an extent of country I am able to examine I hope you will think it no contemptible one, yet I am sure it is very defective. I expect to find more in Lichens, I have done little as yet, not having had any book to assist me when I could have found [ ] for collecting. I have put Nos. to the new or doubtful species which will be I fear some trouble to you. I have sent specimens of some of the new plants with the list that you may have as little trouble as possible. The Rivulariae particularly were in confusion. I cannot at all understand the fruit of some of the species, in many of them I have seen capsules, but in others I cannot find any and what I have seen is very puzzling. In my next I will put a sketch more magnified than the former one of Fucus capillaris which appears to me of this family. F. flagelliformis certainly is & I hope F. Wigghii. I am so passionately fond of this family that I would draw as many beauties into it as I could. A lawyer would say I was a partial witness in this cause, you are the Judge. I have not yet been able to do more than look over your Mus. Hib. Tomorrow if my head will allow I will begin to copy & proceed as fast as I can. Every difference that strikes me between your leaves & mine I will observe for you. I might have been of some use to you by making observations on the times of fruiting of our mosses, it might have interested you to see the difference that our milder climate makes. I hope you got the specimens of Jungermanniae I sent in my last letter & that you were delighted as I have been with J. calyptrifolia. I am very glad to hear Mr Hooker’s work proceeds with spirit. When I reflect on all you have to do I only wonder how you find time to write to or think of such a person as me. I was just wishing to know what your opinion of Sir G. Mackenzie’s travels in Iceland was, I heard he had published. I am quite charmed with your interesting account of the French work on Egypt. How I should enjoy the sight & how I do enjoy your kindness in wishing me to be so gratified. It must be a very fine thing, & I suppose very expensive but to one who like you knows how to enjoy the pleasure a fine work affords the money it costs is but a little consideration. Money never gave me pleasure in any other way where my own gratification alone was concerned then as it contributed to inform or amuse my mind. I am pleased to think how you enjoy Acharius, I hope you will have it of your own before long but even if you have not you will have the best of his observations in your mind. I hope you now will have leisure to proceed with your own work. I am very selfish in this hope but I trust it is an excusable species of selfishness to enjoy your clear & accurate descriptions & too long to have more of them. Your remarks on each genus is very useful, at least they appear so to me. I must look close for more species of Spiloma which I suppose we must have, I do not yet know any but gregarium. My parcel will I hope reach you nearly as soon as this letter. I feel very impatient that you should have it after the length of time it was delayed. The little drawer where I keep specimens for you will I hope soon begin to fill again. If I could but get to the mountains I should be sure it would. Pray tell me how you all are. I fear little Ellen is delicate, tell me if she grows strong & if she is now quite recovered. I beg my kind regards to Mrs T & all your family. Believe me truly & affectionately

Yours

E Hutchins

Jan 30^th 1812