As soon as I am able…
On This Day 210 years ago, 6th February 1813, Ellen Hutchins wrote a short letter to Dawson Turner. Her first to him since 16th December, even though in that one she had said that she would write in a few days. And this letter is much shorter than usual. Ellen had been ill and hopes that she will soon be better and able to do things.
Today, 6th February 2023, is the first Irish national holiday to mark St Brigid’s Day (1st February). The holiday was campaigned for by Herstory, championing the case for bringing women’s stories out of the shadows and into the light. There is a real resonance here with the work the Ellen Hutchins Festival has done since 2015 in rediscovering and sharing Ellen’s story.
Choose whether to read the letter, listen to the letter, or go through the notes below first. Here is the full text of the 6th February letter for you to read. And a special treat on this series of posts for On This Day, which we are delighted to release on the new national holiday linked to St Brigid and Herstory is that you can listen to the letter being read by Karen Minihan. Karen is a writer, performer and theatre director based in West Cork and for the last two years has created two performances / talks given in the Ellen Hutchins Festivals based on Ellen’s correspondence with Dawson Turner, titled Seaweed & Sealing Wax.
Last year’s piece has been made into a podcast due to be released on Thursday 9th February, the Ellen Hutchins Anniversary. See Current / Upcoming Events
Here is the recording of the letter of 6th February 1813.
“Reached me safely”
Ellen wrote “your letters and engravings reached me safely”. These letters have not survived. We are confident that we have every letter that Ellen wrote (and was delivered) to Dawson Turner but know that we are missing very many that he sent her. Fifteen letters survive from their correspondence in 1813, eleven from Ellen and four from Dawson Turner.
The engravings could have been more portraits engraved by Dawson’s wife, Mary Turner. Equally, they could have been engravings of liverworts for William Jackson Hooker’s British Jungermanniae. See the notes on the letter of 16thDecember. Here
“I sent yesterday to the mountain”
Ellen wrote “I sent yesterday to the mountain” for a liverwort with “perfect fructification”. Ellen’s botanising was very much a solitary activity, but in letters in earlier years she wrote about a young girl who helped her carrying her basket or box, collecting seaweeds and in her workroom. She praised the girl’s ability to identify seaweeds. I suspect that the same young girl was now using her skills on liverworts. However, it could have been Ellen’s cousin, Thomas Taylor, also a botanist and who was in the Bantry area regularly visiting his family at Inchiclough.
Fructification refers to the liverworts’ sexual reproductive process of producing spores. (The term is not now used by bryologists.) Ellen also wrote about “gemmae” and these are the asexual reproductive structure of some liverworts, mosses and club mosses. For a brief description of liverworts, including their reproduction see https://www.britannica.com/plant/liverwort
“Some things through Mr Gurney”
Ellen wrote about sending “some things through Mr Gurney”. He was Dawson Turner’s partner in the bank in Yarmouth, Norfolk and had been given access to the franking system – free mail for members of both Houses of Parliament and government officials. A system that was very much abused. We don’t have the details of how or why Mr Gurney was given it, but know that he did not keep the privilege for long.
Poets’ Corner
“The author of Childe Harold” is Lord Byron. “Rokeby has not reached us yet” refers to the newly published narrative poem, Rokeby, by Walter Scott. This, his fourth romance in verse, is set in 1643 during the English Civil War, and features Barnard Castle and nearby Rokeby Park as well as young lovers, a lost son found, and family rifts caused by the Civil War.
Wikipedia tells us that Walter Scott finished writing it on 31st December 1812, and it was published in Edinburgh on 11th January 1813 and in London on 13th January. 30,000 copies were printed but only 10,000 were sold in the first month. Bryon was anxious to get a copy sent to him quickly in Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokeby_(poem)
Ellen wrote in July 1810 of one of Scott’s earlier works (in which the heroine is Ellen):
“I am much, very much obliged by your wish to send me Lady of the Lake, which I was vey fortunate as to get in Dublin when there was hardly a copy left. I read it with more pleasure than I can describe. ….Having little leisure during the day for reading I sat up the night after the book came & never perceived how the time glided away until daylight appeared.”
Moving back to 1813, Ellen’s next letter to Dawson Turner was on 22nd March.
Here is the full text of the 6th February letter for you to read.
Here you can listen to the letter being read by Karen Minihan.
Madeline Hutchins
Researcher on Ellen and her great great grandniece