16 EAELY DAYS 



inheritance. She was an accompHshed woman, who not only- 

 shared her husband's tastes, but by her well-cultivated gifts 

 was able to enter into his pursuits. Their outlook on life was 

 similar, for both had been bred in the evangelical tradition, 

 which she perhaps preserved the more rigidly. Like him, 

 she had a love for music and art, and a keen interest in the 

 sciences affected by her father, especially botany. She was 

 widely read, and wrote with a facile pen steeped in all the 

 copious rotundity of the Johnsonian school. From the Turner 

 side, no doubt, she transmitted something of the business 

 faculty that was to stand her son in good stead when he came 

 to deal with men and affairs. 



Similarity of tastes and interests had first drawn 

 together Dawson Turner and W. J. Hooker. The younger 

 man was speedily impressed by the great vigour and strong 

 character of the elder, admiring his practicality the more for 

 being himself careless of selfish interests in the enthusiasm 

 of his pursuits. For the rest of his life Dawson Turner became 

 his scientific friend, his intimate correspondent, his business 

 mentor. Dawson Turner, indeed, won well-deserved success 

 alike as banker, author, botanist, and archaeologist. His mother, 

 Elizabeth Cotman, brought him an artistic heritage. On his 

 father's side, business and scholarship had been grafted upon 

 a solid yeoman stock of Norfolk. For nearly two and a half 

 centuries since the first Turner bought his modest acres at 

 Kennington in 1570, these passed from father to son. 



At the end of the seventeenth century, a younger son, 

 Francis (1681-1719), was bred to the law, and settled in Yar- 

 mouth, where he married the daughter of the Town Clerk, 

 Thomas Godfrey, and with obvious propriety succeeded to 

 his office in 1710. 



His only son was another Francis, who took Orders, married 

 Sarah Dawson, and had four sons : (1) Francis, an eminent 

 surgeon ; (2) Joseph, who was Senior Wrangler in 1768, then 

 Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and ultimately Dean 

 of Norwich; (3) Kichard, who, through the influence of his 

 brother the Dean, became incumbent of Great Yarmouth ; and 

 (4) James, who became the resident partner in the firm of 



