
          Recd. [Received] Sept. 20th

Royal Botanic Gardens
Kew, August 18, 1841.

My very dear friend

I think I must have informed you 
of the illness & most happy death of our beloved 
child, Mary Harriett. The latter took 
place on 19th of June & we were all with 
her except my aged parent, of whom I had 
taken, as I had thought, a long leave on my 
coming to Kew, for he was then & had been for 
more than a year so lamentably ill, that though 
he arranged I should go & fetch him as soon as 
the weather became warmer, neither I nor his 
medical attendants nor his friends believed 
the thing possible: yet our recent accounts 
of him are so good that we quite expect him 
here before the end of this month. Our Elizabeth 
I rejoice to say has improved in health, 
but the trying time for her, winter, has yet to 
come. With my locality at Kew I have 
reason to be well pleased: not that in point 
of income it is equal to what I had received in 
Glasgow, yet the residence & employment is 
far more agreeable to me. I have indeed been 
much harrassed [harassed] with my late interruptions, 
my frequent calls to Jersey during poor Mary's 
life-time, the impossibility of my lecturing for the 
        