Part No. 64 - Letter from William Roscoe to Dawson Turner

1 folded sheet

Transcript

Liverpool, 18th May 1817.

My Dear Sir,

You will have thought me quite inexcusable in not sooner acknowledging your obliging Letter by Mr Martin, & thanking you for the beautiful Etchings by Mrs Turner, which I assure you form a very important feature in my little collection, & from their taste, spirit, & variety, are highly admired by my friends. I may indeed most truly say that my present assemblage of books &c, is more precious to me than ever; as it almost intirely† consists of those memorials of regard & affection which serve to console me under every vexation.—You will however believe me, when I assure you that the interval that has passed since I heard from you, has been one of the most anxious & trying periods of my life. The depressed state of the times has added inconceivably to our difficulties, particularly in preventing our selling any part of our real Estates; so that a more unfortunate combination of circumstances could scarcely have occurred.—Thro’ all this we have however fought our way; & been enabled to make good our engagem[en]ts. This has been in a great degree effected by the aid of our Collieries, which are daily becoming more productive, & wou’d I believe, alone be found ultimately sufficient for the payment of all our debts. The publicity of these circumstances has restored us to a considerable degree of public confidence, & had a favourable effect on our business, which we still carry on with satisfaction & advantage. I shou’d not have ventured to have troubled you at such a length on this subject, but from your kind enquiries, & the very friendly interest which, from the first, you have taken in these concerns; which I can truly say appear to me, & I believe to others, in a much more favourable light than they did at this time last year, altho it is impossible to divest oneself of anxiety till the object is finally obtained—

I have seen Mr Burrell who has been elected Librarian of our Athenæum, which office he appears to me to be calculated to fill in a very superior manner, & I am glad to find he seems highly pleased with his new situation—We have now a much more important undertaking on hand, under the name of the Liverpool Institution, of which I hope shortly to send you a new Report which is now preparing.—You will also be glad to hear that a Botanic Garden by subscription is likely to be soon established at Glasgow, on a handsome scale. {1} I grieve at the interruptions I have had in binding Mr Coke’s MSS. which are now however once more in good train. Adieu my Dear Sir—Remember me most kindly & respectfully to Mrs Turner, & believe me ever, Your obliged & affectionate friend

W: Roscoe.

[Direction:] Dawson Turner Esq[ui]r[e] | Yarmouth

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Postmarked at Liverpool on 17 May 1817. The date of the postmark, if correct, indicates that the writer misdated the letter. Letters omitted from words abbreviated by superscript letters have been supplied in square brackets.

{1} A few words in this sentence and the next were torn away with the seal, and have been supplied by Turner.

† Sic.

Formerly pasted to a guard in O.13.13. The letter is now loose, having been torn out of the book, and has been put in a separate folder for safe-keeping.

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2022.