To Thomas Martin 10 February 1857

My dear Sir,

It is very kind of you to offer me your aid – but I must decline it – I am rather over-societed already, & my pocket is not unfathomable as regards expense, or my time sufficiently charged with leisure to allow of my running up to town for a lecture at Soc. of Arts – I was at Dr Royle’s lecture on E.I. fibres hoping to learn, rather than presuming to teach on such a subject, & I saw a new machine for extracting fibre from the leaf of Plantains & other Monocotyledons – Altho’ I exhibited a large assortment of fibres &c for a Country town – my stock would have seemed comparatively insignificant besides by the side of Dr Royle’s – If I lived in or near London I should belong to all such societies but I have always resisted invitations to join the Athenaeum, & pay for an F.R.S. to my name – & content myself with Geological & Linnean, as far as the Metropolis is concerned; & with the Phil. Soc. in Cambridge – This allows me to concentrate a little more cash & energy to our local institutions – & especially to the Museum at Ipswich of which I am president & consequently bound to do all I can in supporting its interests. What with two journeys to visit paper mills, one in Surrey & the other in Herts & procuring & preparing specimens & diagrams of my last lecture cost me in money & time rather more than I like to think of – I can assure you it is from no desire to shun work that I decline your proposal – but I am already taxed as far as prudence allows in respect of health, if nothing else – I have to lecture at Bury on 10th March, & to examine at Cambridge during that month – so I have enough to think about at present

We are sadly afflicted in the parish with a low typhus – & I have just returned from burying a stout hale man of 40 who died on Sunday, leaving a widow & 2 children dangerously ill – I hardly think that one, a lad of 14, will recover, but the other, a nice little girl of about 10, seems to have turned the corner after 3 or 4 weeks illness, & is smiling again – The widow was an old servant of ours, & lost 2 children last winter from Measles & Whooping Cough – Luckily her eldest daughter is in Cambridge with her Grandfather, or she also would now probably have taken the fever – It has been brought this year into the parish from Stowmarket, as it was (without any doubt) last year from Monk’s Eleigh – It is strange how completely it prostrates a family & lingers among them when it once gets hold of them

Believe me

very truly yours

J. S. Henslow