Telling the world
Dawson Turner’s letter to Ellen written on 12th February, 210 years ago, in 1814, is HERE.
In it he wrote “It was but 4 nights ago that I had the gratification of telling the world what I thought of you & what I owed to you, while describing Fucus fruticulosus, of which you yourself furnished me with the drawing.”
Ellen Hutchins drawing of Fucus fructiculosus
This refers to his writing up of the seaweed for his work Historia Fucorum which was issued in parts or numbers. See HERE for what he writes about Ellen, in the most enormously long sentence – 152 words long! The text is also featured in the image above (courtesy of that wonderful resource, the Biodiversity Heritage Library which provides free access to botany books from the past). See HERE for the text in the context of Dawson Turner’s Historia Fucorum.
George Don had been Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh from 1802 to 1807 and ran a nursery in Forfar. I think that Dawson Turner is exaggerating George Don’s lack of learning, as there is correspondence between Don and other botanists. I have seen some held in the Herbarium at Trinity College Dublin and most notably there is a long correspondence between Don and Sir James Edward Smith of the Linnean Society.
For more about George Don see a fascinating article at:
https://thegardenstrust.blog/2017/10/21/on-don-and-don-and-don-and-don/
The next letter in the 1814 correspondence between Ellen and Dawson Turner is a letter from Dawson to Ellen on 26thApril.