Item C26 - Letter from William Benjamin Carpenter, Bristol, to John Hutton Balfour

1 letter, 1 sheet, 4 pages

Letter from William Benjamin Carpenter, 22 Park Street, Bristol, to Dr. John Hutton Balfour, Dundas Street, Edinburgh, dated 20 December 1837.
W.B. Carpenter writes: I am very obliged by the trouble you have taken regarding the Cryptogamic Flora which arrived safely, the copy is for our purposes as good as new; in fact better being so neatly bound. I received the money some days since and I am sorry through forgetfulness allowed it to lie on my desk without taking the necessary steps to transmit it to you. We have been disappointed respecting a copy of the Wernerian Transactions which we expected to get from a London shop but it had been sold. If you should meet with a cheap copy [say 2 1/2 or 3 guineas] I might trouble you to send it to the Institution or if you should fall in with the volume containing Greville’s & Arnott’s account of the “fructifications of mosses” I would like it for myself. In the latter case send it to London. I have just finished a long and wearying article for the April number of Forbes and am now intending to take up the Fluirative[?] system of plants. There will be a paper in an early issue of the Philosophical Magazine translated from the German which will delight Martin Barry; the author founds his views of analogy and therefore his morphological doctrines entirely upon development which he has very minutely studied and his results are very interesting. His account of the early formation of the embryo confirms my speculation of the correspondence in their first stages, up to the formation of the cotyledons, of the germination of the Peria[?] And the full development within the ovule of the flowering plant. Reid’s paper reached me safely and has interested me both regarding the subject itself and the candid and philosophical mode in which he has treated it. Will you tell him that Forbes seems desirous of engaging his assistance for his Review and will write to him soon.
I sent my programme to Dr. Tweedie last week and mentions you along with Simpson and Maclagan as very able coadjutors. I am rather surprised that the Thorntons should not have mentioned Lindon/Simson[?] As Dr. W.P. and his father are to concoct the Article Inflammation, and were consulted as to the plan of the work. Christison also is to do a good deal for it [He is Tweedie’s brother–in-law] but I believe principally in the development of Practical Medicine. As my plan will probably occupy him some time in digesting, I do not expect to hear very soon from him.
I was much amused in some of the bits in Mafa[?]. Pray put by a series for me to send when you have an opportunity. W.P.’s Phiz is as well hit off as if Phiz himself had done it. Martin Barry is not quite so well sketched but the idea is good. It is very easy to trace Long Forbes’s style in many of the articles especially his typical subtypical and aberrant which reminded me of a disquisition of his on the components of whisky toddy. I am not sorry that Hopper has been so well cut up. Why did not the writer [Percy I believe] bring in his 300 and odd cholera cases and his going to sleep on the body. His story of his French blanchisseuse would not have been amiss? Pray give my kind regards to Percy and tell him it will give me great pleasure if he can find time to write to me, especially if he will give me some good critique on my botanical article in Forbes. I had an application from the mistress of a large and fashionable girls' school at Clifton to repeat my lectures to her pupils for a handsome fee but I declined it as rather infra dig now that I am established as a professional man.
Believe me to be most sincerely yours, William B. Carpenter.

Permission required from RBGE.

The letter is bound into an album of correspondence that requires to be supported when in use.

The Hutton Balfour bound correspondence has been summarised / transcribed by volunteer Simon Muirhead.