‘With gratitude and affection’
4th August 1814 – ‘On This Day’ 210 years ago, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner, and it was her first letter to him since March. She explained that ‘my health is miserably bad & my life little to be depended upon’ and she confirmed how much she valued Turner’s friendship and letters, signing off ‘with gratitude and affection’. Read the whole letter HERE.
We don’t have Ellen’s letter from March 1814, which is surprising as Dawson Turner was careful to keep letters and had them bound into volumes, as you can see in the photograph above. These volumes are now in the Wren Library of Trinity College Cambridge.
Family records say that Ellen’s mother died on 22nd March 1814. Ardnagashel, where Ellen wrote that she had moved to, was her second brother, Arthur’s, home, where he lived with his wife, Matilda, and a house full of young children. Ardnagashel is close to Ballylickey, and both are on the north shore of inner Bantry Bay between Bantry and Glengarriff.
Ellen noted Ardnagashel on her plant list as the place she found the seaweed, Fucus asparagoides, of which she made a number of drawings (see below). By now, in 1814, Ellen was unable to do anything and her ‘botanising’ was over. She was just 29 years old.
The photograph of the letter shows how far the oak gall ink that Ellen used in her quill pen has soaked or etched into the paper (it contained iron) with the writing from the other side of the sheet showing through so strongly.
Read the whole of the letter HERE.
The next letter in the 1814 correspondence is Dawson Turner to Ellen on 11th September and it will be posted here on 11th September 2024.
1814 in letters so far:
3rd January: Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins HERE.
18th January: Ellen Hutchins to Dawson Turner HERE.
12th February: Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins HERE.
26th April: Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins HERE.
24th July: Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins HERE.
And going back further:
1813 letters HERE.
1812 letters HERE.
Drawing of Fucus asparagoides