From Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner   15 Sep 1812

Sep. 15

Your letter my dear Sir with the mosses did not reach me in less than for a month after it was written. The cover was not dated until 20 days after you wrote. I have much reason to feel gratified that it came safe & brought me so good an account of you all, of my little girl particularly. I am glad she has language enough to call you & her mother & that she shows indications of quickness of parts that you will one day have the happiness of cultivating. She is a happy child to have such parents & you would I hope be not less happy in having her & your other girls to bless your coming years & to bestow upon you both the best that world has to give.

I wrote to you & Mr Hooker in answer to your letter a long time since & directed to your valuable Bishop but he just at the time happened to be in Ireland, so that I fear my letter was delayed however I hope you have long since got it. I did not more than half answer yours. I did not thank you for your account of how you passed your time in London & your visit to Kew gardens & what I felt more than all your wish that I had been there with you. It would be a great transition from the mountains to a scene of such rich cultivation so full of Exotic beauty, from ranging over heath & bog, climbing mountain cliffs to overstep all the intermediate gradations of improvement & find myself in Kew gardens would quite overpower me. I might have amused you as much as any rarity there for surely I should feel myself one in such a place. Thank you too for the specimen of the new genus Mr. Browne has done me the honour to name after me. I wish I could feel that I deserved it well & that I did not get credit for very much more than I deserve. If either you or he saw me you would soon perceive how very limited my knowledge is. I am quite fretted too at Sir T. Gage’s kindness in praising me to you more than I deserve & giving you too high an opinion of me that you should think well of me. I certainly wish but that you should imagine me possessed of talents that I have not, must whenever I am so happy as to see you place me in an unfavourable point of view, & for this reason I dislike being praised. I wish you would take my own word rather than any other persons. You would then, when you saw & know how I have lived, feel that it would be impossible for me to be what you suppose & that I had given you the most accurate representation of myself. Now let me answer your last letter, as to expressing thanks that is a business I shall never have done with for I have every day new reasons. The mosses from you & the Jung. from Mr. Hooker were highly acceptable, as well as the drawing of C. caerulescens which is in a very strange state & quite unlike any Conjugata I have ever seen. But talk not of wonders until you see a sketch of the Conjugation of C. dissiliens. I will send it in my next which shall be very soon. I spent five days examining it, & then I am certain I sketched as I saw. I can’t yet believe it existed. The plant is in all states very singular & beautiful. I assure you Dillwyn’s plate is no more a representation than if it never was done for the plant. Your Orthotrichum anomatum is exactly like mine. The other is I suppose a new one very pretty & common in mountains only. Do you want more? I think your specimen of Funaria Templetoni is not different from Gymostomum fasciculare. The shape of the Calyptra when young would lead one to think it a Funaria, & if in size this specimen for a form agrees with F. Templetoni & that you did not examine it very closely so as to see that it has no teeth, you have probably mistaken. I got the same plant G. fasciculare as a vary. of F. hygrometrica from Dublin. Utricularia intermedia I cannot find in flower tho’ I have not ceased to seek for it. If a drawing of the plant such as I find would be of any use I could do it easily. Even without flowers it has striking distinctions. Surely you are very cruel to send me Swedish & German mosses desiring me to find them. Alas I cannot. I cannot even get what our mountains produce. I am as little able to go out for them. I enclose you a new importation of Jungermannia for Mr. Hooker & hope they may be some of those at least new. I would sent them to the Bishop but I am ashamed of troubling him every day. How he is admired at this side the Channel, & how well he deserves it. If I got on this subject I shall never have done, for tho’ all my friends & connexions are & have been for ages protestants we wish well to the Cause of our Roman Catholic countrymen who don’t & I believe never did deserve half the ill things said of them. We have nothing in the way of bifid shells here that I could ever find. Pray tell me about the writer on British shells that you say you subscribed for. I have shells for Miss Turner which to my shame I have never yet sent her, but I will send her every thing I can get in this way likely to interest her. I have a few rare ones, one that Mr. Leach said was new & another that he had never heard of in any other than a fossil state & which is very pretty. We have an Echinus very plenty which he said was new. It loves holes in rocks & the pools on the shore are studded with this, of a fine bright deep purple colour & with larger spines than the common species or rather than the described one, for with us it is most rare. I am preparing for a visit to a mountain tomorrow & am to set out at day break. It is the only time for more than 2 months past that I could leave my Mother even for one day to go so early or spend the whole day out. She asks for you all, & desires her regards oftener than I say so you & Mrs. Turner are always sure of the kindest wishes of your faithful friend E. Hutchins

September 15th. 1812

I found J. Calyptrifolia on a rock the other day for the first time

Pray let me have this letter with your opinion of the contents as soon as you can.