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Farrer, Reginald John
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letter dated 29/05/1919 from Farrer, Hpimaw Fort, to Ernest Gye

Pleased to get letter from Ernest Gye, nickname Poison - shared letter with Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox]. Speaks of the restless desire to impress & seeks gossip of English friends. Ernest writing of going to Tangiers. Describes at length he and Jumps picking raspberries to make jam, concoction insipid. Then reverted to making better jam with wild white strawberries. Writes of Jumps as youthful, unlike him who is becoming of crabbed age. Describes how a brace of young boys, Gurkhas have joined their camp. Painting primula in a tent, through a dense fog of midges and smoke. Requests from Ernest to purchase 2 or 3 Everyman volumes of Floris's Montaigne, delights in the first one. This letter is signed your loving Poppet. Jumps cooking until the Chinese cook has recovered from his cliff fall. ps Gossipy enquiries and comments. Encouraging E. Gye when writing, to be thoroughly indiscreet and viscous. Speaks of his own return to a de-Poisoned London. [Poison = E. Gye] Describes the place abounding in the most preposterous brambles - titanic wilderness of thorns, beset with raspberries in almost every colour & degree of nastiness. Wondering if Jumps [Euan M. Cox] is like all Scotch lower (or middle) class minds, are alike in a sort of Jackdawish unassimilating appetitiveness.

Farrer, Reginald John

letter dated 29/05/1919 from Farrer, Hpimaw Fort, Upper Burma, to Celia Noble

Delighted with receiving letter from Celia and hearing her homely gossip. Goes touring and camping in the mountains. On return, describes trying to paint a primula in his tent-door, holding an umbrella with a dense fog of midges and smoke around. Saw great snowy trumpet-lilies on steep brackened hillsides when tramping the long leagues back. Describes the cook getting drunk, falling over a cliff, injuring himself & a pleasant Scotch youth with the staggers, called Jumps [Euan H.M. Cox] taking over- making astonishing concoctions with the jam of little wild white strawberries. ‘And yet it was delightful, the solemn enormous loneliness of the heights, & the silence & the invariable alpine feeling of clean peace & remoteness.’

Farrer, Reginald John

Reginald Farrer - correspondence to Ernest Gye

A collection of 13 letters purchased at auction in 2008, written by Reginald Farrer and most likely sent to the British Diplomat Ernest Frederick Gye C.M.G., though Farrer tends to refer to him as his “Poison”, “Viper” or “Venom”.
Gye's mother was the singer Dame Emma Albani and his father was Ernest Gye, the lessee of Covent Garden theatre. Gye entered the Foreign Office in 1903, became Second Secretary in 1908 and Councillor in 1924. He served for some years in Tehran in the earlier part of his career (and where he was when these letters were written) before being appointed Minister and Consul General in Tangier in 1933. Three years later he was made Minister Plenipotentiary in Venezuela, retiring in 1939.
The 13 letters were written in Upper Burma (now Myanmar), mainly from Hpimaw and Nyitadi, and date between May 1919 and September 1920, the last being written only five weeks before his death. The letters are liberally peppered with nicknames and gossip, and the identity of everyone mentioned may never be known; for example, his 1919 travelling companion, fellow plant collector Euan Cox, is often referred to by the name “Jumps”. In amongst intimate information and personal references are descriptions of the country, people met and plants collected.

Gye, Ernest Frederick

Reginald Farrer - Lakeland Horticultural Society Photographic Albums

The albums appear to be from William Purdom who travelled and collected plants with Reginald Farrer in Kansu / Gansu, northern China in 1914-1915, but one was compiled by Reginald Farrer and three relate to their collecting trip, so all 5 albums have been stored within the Reginald Farrer collection.

Farrer, Reginald John

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