From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   11 Dec 1813

Must I then, my dear Madam, be at last compelled to believe & to own that the genius who accompanied & superintended my natal star laid a spell upon me at the aera of my birth that I should never by any accident write to you at the time I intend so to do, & consequently never without beginning my letter with expression of vexation, which, tho’ most sincere, cannot but lose their effect by being so frequently repeated: I really bitterly lament this, but in the present instance turn from it to a far more serious subject for vexation, in the tone of your last letter & the information relative to your health which it conveyed to me. I fear too, from your subsequent silence, that you are even now not much advanced on the way to recovery, & yet I hope & my hopes almost force me to believe that the contrary in the case. The late happy news from the continent has diffused a general joy over this part of England, & this town, in particular, is looking forward to the re-establishment of its old commercial communications with Holland & is quite gay with Dutchmen in Orange cockaded & quite noisy with the clatter of their wooden shoes. I too, like the rest, find in this change of affairs great matter for rejoicing; but it is principally in the prospect of renewing with the Botanists of the continent my old correspondence & of obtaining a supply of new books & pictures. I may thus once again be able to send you letters of a little more interest than it has been in my power to do of late; but I fear that as time clears off the mist of the prospect I shall find things sadly changed by the storm that is passing away. Schreber & Esper, I hear, are numbered among the dead, & Roth is from various causes under the influence of a distress which stops his pen. From Schroeder I have yet had no tidings. Martens is happily safe & well, which is to me a source of great rejoicing, for he is next to yourself the correspondent whose intercourse has afforded me the most sincere pleasure & in whose welfare my heart has taken the deepest interest. Mr Hooker had been staying with me two or three weeks & was amusing himself very quietly & much to his satisfaction last Saturday in my Library, when he was astonished in the extreme by a letter announcing that Dr Taylor was actually at Halesworth. I have since heard from him that they are as happy as possible together, working at my mosses, the whole of which he took away with him, & I hope soon to be able to communicate to you a portion of the result of their labours. I am at present by a variety of causes tied to Yarmouth, but I shall take the very first opportunity of getting over to Halesworth, to see your relative & hear from his own mouth a variety of particulars respecting yourself. He will of course come & stay with me before he leaves this part of England. I exceedingly wish it had been by any means practicable for you to have born him company. It will give you pleasure to hear that Dr Leach, who was with Mr Dillwyn at Ballylickey, has just received an appointment that most probably fixes him for life in the situation most acceptable to him, & gives him a competency if not affluence. He is appointed to the place of Librarian of the British Museum, lately occupied by Dr Shaw who published on General Zoology as well as the Naturalists Miscellany, both which works I trust will be taken up by Leach, who has rooms in the Museum & all its stores at his command & has more mind & more energy than his predecessor. Of Dillwyn I have not heard a syllable for an age. Uncertainty as to his health makes me fret that I do not more frequently receive tidings of him, but, otherwise, he is so far from me & so abstracted from all branches of Natural History except shells of which I know nothing, that I should scarcely regret it. His friend, Wood, always talks as often as I see him of publishing his Irish Tour, but always puts it off & will in this respect add another to the thousand illustrations of Horace’s countryman, waiting till the river should run down. Lord Byron has just published a new poem, The Bride of Abydos. I ordered it from Town the moment I saw it advertised & yet the copy which I last night received is of the 2^nd edition. I have read it but once, & that hastily; but it appears to me far inferior to the Giaour, which it resembles in bulk & somewhat in story. There are some of those generalising passages which are always the things that catch hold of the mind, but a vast profusion of description: the versification too is affected, & lying far too often on the penultimate which is always dangerous, & there is a great deal of obvious imitation of Walter Scott, at will in thought as in situation. I might almost say that it amounts to imitation. Yet with all its faults, it has great beauties, & I recommend it to you, in the full certainty that you will find much pleasure in the perusal. —

Together with this new poem, I received from London a fresh edition, the 5^th, of the Giaour, which is altered from about 600 lines, as I first knew it, to above 1200, & has gained, I think, but little by the alteration, except the insertion of the finest similes I ever saw, comparing the present state of Greece, to a corpse newly dead. You desire me to tell you about Ellen & my babe. They are both quite well. The boy has got 2 teeth & promises an excellent disposition, at least in point of temper, in which he resembles his dear mother. Ellen, unfortunately, in this respect threatens to take more after her father, but she is an engaging & a quick child & very affectionate. She is still exceedingly backward with her tongue. I have in this letter purposely refrained from mentioning your health, which, you know, is always uppermost in my mind while writing to you. Take care of it I beseech you for your own sake, & that of all your friends, amongst whom I trust you never fail to reckon D.T.

11 December 1813