From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   3 Jan 1814

Yarmouth 3^rd January 1814

I am looking, my dear Madam, most anxiously for a letter from you by every post, & this it has been which has tempted me to suffer nearly three whole days of the new year to pass away without sending to you the assurance of those wishes & prayers which I have repeatedly breathed to Heaven that it may please the almighty Disposer of all events to bless you during the course of it & for many very many succeeding ones with a degree of health and happiness, to which, for undoubtedly with tho’ at present inscrutable reasons, He has of late thought fit to doom you to be a stranger. Perhaps I should even be induced to continue yet a while longer in my silence, were not the wish too strong in me to tell you how happily I have been for the two last days engaged in the society of your relative Dr Taylor & Mr Hooker, who after having lived for a month at Halesworth in a state of absolute seclusion & examined all the genera of British mosses except Hypnum, came to me on Saturday evening to finish this last & most difficult family, & to put a few heightening touches upon the whole. They are at this moment debating upon the Hypna with squarrish leaves & have been puzzling themselves for more than half an hour for want of understanding each other’s definitions, till Dr Taylor has this moment been led to make the observation that now half this time passes in debating about words & the other half about things. I very much like your friend. He has great good temper & acuteness & is very obliging & liberal, & his zeal is absolutely bewitching. This much I can say without the least exaggeration that it is quite catching. I have felt myself for the last fortnight a new creature in point of botany since he has been in the country & Mertens & Schwägrichen have written to me to renew their correspondence. Could I but once see you well again & have your letters as I used to have, I should begin to think that old times were about to recur, & such I warmly hope will be the case, that I can scarcely hope that the addition of 12 or 15 years to my life & the load of business which these years have heaped upon my shoulders must not have made a sensible difference as well in my mental as corporeal powers. Your character is quite up among the Botanists of the continent, from some of whom I have lately had letters respecting you, & you must not be surprised if they should even venture to write to yourself, in the terms in which poor Schwägrichen concluded his first letter to me “provoking to your indulgence & waiting upon a fond answer.” This self same letter contained a variety of other specimens of equally curious English but they like to display their knowledge of our language & they are so uniformly obliging & civil that their epistles are delightful. The account which Mertens gives me of the state of the continent under Bonaparte’s government is miserable beyond that I could have conceived. The town of Bremen by some inadvertence fell under the anger of the Emperor, who in consequence of it made them for six months exconstitutional & during this time they were not only under military law but absolutely in the power of the General who commanded the forces & who had authority to quarter his troops exactly as he pleased upon the inhabitants & pay contributions as his whim or avarice thought fit to dictate. My poor friend says that though he regularly gave up 10 hours a day to teaching boys he could with difficulty procure enough to buy his family their daily bread & often feared he should be unable to do so. The trouble of getting books was so great as even to amount to a prohibition. None could be imported without being examined & duly stamped. I find since the communication with the continent was last closed that death has deprived me of three correspondents, Schreber the last & greatest favourite of Linnaeus’ pupils, the author of the Genera Plantarium, Esper who originally published on Butterflies & latterly on Fuci & Starke who lived among the mountains of [text missing] Silesia & was in the habit of sending from them a vast number of fine mosses. Though science has been encouraged & has flourished at Paris, it has been absolutely dead in Germany, but now they hoped for new times. Dr Taylor has seen & has been kind enough to notice your little name sake & Godchild, who certainly grows & improves, but not as we wish, for she continues weak & sickly. The rest are perfectly well. He will tell you how glad Mrs Turner & all of us would be to see you here, & what a quiet domestic life we lead, so that you might come & pass your time just as if you were in your own home at Ballylickey. Farewell, my dear Madam, I cannot possibly end this letter better than in the style in which I began it, by repeating my prayers for your health & happiness. Such, I assure you, is the unceasing wish of

Your affectionate friend

Dawson Turner