‘The drawing is excellent’
On This Day – perhaps, or a few days before or after 7th May, 215 years ago, in 1810, Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen Hutchins after a gap of over three months since his last letter. Read the full May 1810 letter HERE.
‘For the last three months’
The date on the letter is illegible. Dawson Turner’s last letter to Ellen was on 28th January, so the assumption is that this letter was written at the very end of April or beginning of May. He wrote that he had received two letters from Ellen. In fact, she had written three – on 20th February, 7th April and 18th April.
Sir Thomas Gage
Sir Thomas Gage (1781-1820) 7th Baronet, was a botanist and an amateur artist with a particular interest in architectural drawings. He had a wide range of other interests. He and his family were Catholics and they lived at Hengrave Hall in Suffolk, sixty miles from Dawson Turner in Yarmouth. In January 1809 he married Mary Anne Browne, daughter of Lord Kenmare. Within botany, he studied lichens and bryophytes (mosses and liverworts). See below for his watercolour drawing of Lord Kenmare’s house at Killarney.
Lord Kenmare and the Kenmare Manuscripts
Lord Kenmare, Valentine Browne (1754-1812), with his home, Kenmare House at Killarney, was a landowner with estates in counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick. He owned Ballylickey and other lands that Ellen’s family leased from him. He was a Catholic landowner in Ireland at a time when almost all landowners were Protestant.
The Kenmare Manuscripts refers to documents including a private notebook made by Valentine Browne’s father Thomas (1726-1795) in which he recorded his observations on estate management and “remarks” on the tenants of his estates. It is one useful source of information about Ellen’s family.
Under a County Cork entry, made in 1758 or 1759, for the townlands of Ahillbeg and Maghanasilly, Lord Kenmare wrote ‘The Tenant I took such a liking to when in that country that I renewed his more valuable lease at Ballylicky at a moderate advance, and sold my woods on the Bantry Estate to him and Isaac Doe for £600 sterling.’ On the entry for Ballylickey he wrote ‘This farm is some of the best land in that country and has the additional convenience of a very fine bog communicating with the harbour of Bantry where ships of a hundred ton burthern can lie in the greatest safety and load and unload with great ease. The tenant carries on a great fishing trade along the coast of Berehaven and takes every year great quantities of herring, cod, ling, etc. In the same bay in a good oyster bed. His father ran much into smuggling but he at my persuasions promised to desist as it ever ends in the ruin of those who attempt it besides preventing their attention to husbandry and better industry. He and all my tenants have the advantage of a most excellent manure in corylll sand, which they rise in several parts of Bantry harbour, especially at Glengarrif, by “drudging” in about eight to ten fathom and when turned out enriches the land for twenty year after. He has an excellent house on the premises equal to a man of five hundred a year and, as he has a considerable interest in his holdings, if he pursues the same industrious turn as he set out with will well deserve the protection and encouragement of my family.
‘Chateaux en Espagne’
Castles in Spain was an expression similar to ‘castles in the air’ – a pipe dream – a fantasy or promise with no ground in reality. Elsewhere is the letter, Dawson Turner wrote ‘Forse un di fia’, quoting Tasso and translating as ‘Maybe one day’.
‘The drawing of Fucus aculeatus is excellent’
Ellen’s drawing was engraved and used as a plate (see featured image above) in Dawson Turner’s book, Historia Fucorum. It appears as Plate 187 on page 122 in Volume III. It can be seen in the Biodiversity Heritage Library HERE.
The text describing the species is on the pages before and after the plate. Dawson Turner wrote: ‘Long and generally as this Fucus has been known, I believe that no botanist ever suspected until lately how different are the appearances it puts on at different periods of its existence; or if any one ever saw a specimen fringed with the tufts of fibres, he either passed it by unnoticed, supposing the plant to be merely infested with some parasitic Conferva, or he treasured it in his Herbarium as a new species, for which I have more than once received it. For the removing of our error upon this subject, and enabling us to understand one of the most curious of its tribe, we are principally indebted to Mrs Griffiths and Miss Hutchins, to the latter of whom I am still farther to express my obligations for the drawing represented in the plate before us, made by herself from specimens found in Bantry Bay.’
‘Mr Leach at Halesworth’
William Leach (1791-1836) had visited Ellen at Ballylickey the year before, in 1809, with botanists Lewis Dillwyn and Jospeh Woods. Leach was just 18 years old at the time, and a student of medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. He abandoned medicine and made a career as a zoologist and marine biologist, appointed in 1813 to the role of Assistant Librarian (a role later and more appropriately called Assistant Keeper) of the zoological collection in the Natural History department of the British Museum.
For an account of the visit of the three botanists to see Ellen at Ballylickey, see HERE.
Halesworth in Suffolk, about 25 miles from Great Yarmouth, was William Jackson Hooker’s home and was his base until he moved to Glasgow University in 1820 as Professor of Botany.
Read the full letter written by Dawson Tuner in early May 1810 HERE.
The next letter in the Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner correspondence from 1810 was written by Dawson Turner on 25th May and there will be a blog post here with it on 25th May 2025.
Madeline Hutchins
Researcher on Ellen Hutchins and her great-great-grandniece
7th May 2025
