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Alderley Grange

Feb[ruary] 2 1870

My dear Marshall

I have your note of yesterday. Why, you are a whole week ahead of the time you [?] when here. I am glad your brother likes the sample of my [work?] which you showed him but you don't say whether he and you are disposed to tackle the huge [residue?]. Let me know but please first see Grote who seems scared for you or himself at the undertaking of [?] it will require lots of room to lay out the contents of the 4 portfolios so as to make a [just?] inspection by the preliminary operation of bringing together from the 4 receptacles wherein they are now scattered pell mell all that related to each species and group. Have you room and leisure for the opperation and for taking the results more or less perfunctorily. Your brother is soon to return and you have only till October with a deal of work already in hand. Perhaps however Grote and you may manage the storage between you - you alone who are a glutton for work may be equal to the [?] of the material and thence to decide the further question of the expediency of advising Hume to [turn?] the whole over to India with a view to incorporation in his work on the General Ornithology of India. Pending the settlement of which point it would seem that the portfolios should rest in London. All I can say is that I am ready to send up the whole as soon as I hear from you and Grote, and to trust you out and out for the fit care and utilisation of my treasures. Never mind about the [lamp?]. Thanks for your thoughtful attention to that trifle. Mrs. H joins me in Kindest Regards

Ever Yours
B.H. Hodgson

Alderley Grange
Wotton under edge

Feb. 11 [18]70

My dear Marshall

I have your letter and its enclosure from Hume to you, and as you tell me you are satisfied of Hume's [power] and will to go through with his projected work on the general ornithology of India I have resolved to act, on your suggestion that your brother should take out with him to India the whole of my material to be turned to use in Hume's work. This I may say will save time when time is precious seeing that the work is rapidly progressing, and that there will be no difficulty arising out of your temporary absence in regard to the reading of the Hindi problem of the memorandum. Wherefore I mean the day after tomorrow to send to you in a big deal box the four portfolios of drawings together with my own m.s list of birds so far as the Nepal collection goes (2) my native painter's Hindi list of the whole including the Sikim collection (3) Red bound vol of Manners of Birds done in Nepal by my writer from, viva voce statements of my Shikaris (4) Eight volumes unbound of Ditto Ditto done at Darjeeling (5) Sundry m.s Mems. by myself done in Tarai in 1846 (6) two copies of my printed catalogue from Zool. Miscellany 1844 (7) Six copies of reprint of 6 at Calcutta in 1846 (8) Sundry printed papers/original to Marshall (copy) 15th Feby to be signed. See Grote and let me hear of safe arrival of the box.
and believe me always Sir
Yrs. B H Hodgson

X I return this herein

To G. F.L. Marshall

MEMORANDUM
IN 4 PORTFOLIOS
received from B.H. Hodgson the loan of his Ornithological Drawings and Notes consisting of
1st Eleven hundred and four sheets of Drawings
2nd Mr. H's own Ms. List of his Birds so far as the Nepal collection goes
3rd His native painter's Hindi list of the whole collection including the Sikim portion
4th one red bound volume of the Manners of the Birds done in Nepal by his writer from viva voce statements of his Shikaris
5th Sundry Ms. Memos done by himself in the Sikim Tarai in 1846
6th Two copies of his own catalogue as printed in London
7th Six copies of reprint of 6 in Calcutta in 1846
8th Sundry printed papers being author's copies

Signed
G. Marshall
London Feb 1870

33 Upper Berkeley Street
Portman Square

8 Feb[ruaru]y 1870

My dear Mr. Hodgson

I had a talk with Mr. Grote yesterday about y[ou]r portfolios. What I want to do myself is to send the whole of them as they are to Mr. Hume, as agreed in my brother's care, he sails next months and there they could be sorted, translated and arranged with the greatest convenience and incorporated at once with Humes work; Mr. Grote does not believe in Hume and I was unable to convince him that the book would certainly be published, and in that case he proposed and I assented to, keeping them in abeyance for a short time and having them up one by one to sort and catalogue; but on returning home and again reading over Humes letters (parts of which I enclose) I thought three was sufficient guarantee for the publishing of the work, and that the sending of your portfolios out direct would be a saving of both tie and labour. I have written to Mr. Grote to this effect. I have been hard at work lately and so these has been a little delay in answering you. I feel a little delicacy in proposing the wholesale sending out of your treasures to India but I am convinced of their safety and that it is the greatest opportunity of utilizing them likely to occur, and you have been so kind about them already of course. Everything would appear in your name.
With my Kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Hodgson
Y[our]s very truly

G.F.L. Marshall

To Brian Houghton Hodgson

118 Cambridge Street
Warwick Square
S.W

12th April 1870

My dear Mr. Hodgson

The pamphlet that Hume published has arrived and I send you a copy of it by book-post this day. It contains a great deal of useful information and it is a thorough field ornithologist's handbook, but it requires revision and systematizing and that I hope it will get when published in its complete form. We have had no answers as yet to our letters to him and are anxiously awaiting them. If we are able to induce him to come home for a year so as to combine his immense store of notes from all sources with that already on record in libraries and revise the synonymy it may be made into a most complete work. Mr Grote tells me that you wish to subscribe to our monograph and also to Hume's book. It is very good of you indeed to back us up after you had for so long relinquishes the pursuit and got out of the habit of interesting yourself in birds. I was going through the Journal of Asiatic Society the other day and I was quite overwhelmed with the immense number of your contributions to it on every subject. Are you coming to town this season, I hope so. I should much like my eldest sister to meet you she should thoroughly appreciate so staunch a liberal and especially one from India and she is a great friend of your friends the Colvilles.
Please give my kindest regards to Mrs. Hodgson and believe me

Y[ou]rs very truly

G.F.L. Marshall

18 Cambridge Street
Warwick Square

20th May 1870

My dear Mr Hodgson

I have been a very long time about answering your kind letter of the 26th April and owe you an apology for it but it has been a particularly busy month with as it is one of the few times that I am able to live with my brother and we have naturally lots to do together. About your manuscripts I have had my faith rudely shaken in Hume's illustrated work and if he continues in the present strain I despair of it altogether; that printed letter was like a plunge into cold water. I do not understand it, he has the money and the materials and won't go on and most of all I am disappointed for the loss of the opportunity of utilizing your notes in a form worthy of them I feel that I have disappointed you though not so much as he has disappointed me! You very kindly say that I may make them public in any other way and this I mean to do if you think fit in the following way by publishing the notes in a series of papers in the 'Ibis' a family at a time and with one or two of the most valuable figures [stigle canopus?] and the general anatomical part either in a separate pamphlet6 or in the P.Z.S. and they I think will give me engravings of all the structural plates. This seems to me to the best plan at present and the way in which they will prove of the most value to science as the Ibis has a very wide circulation, but it is a very different thing to what I had hoped when I was with you and to the visions I had in mind of Hume's almost perfect work on ornithology! This of course would be a work of [time?] and even in England I could not get half the leisure I want to do it thoroughly and in India my moments for ornitholo0gy are few and far between and I should like to have Mr. Grote's opinion to whether I should be justified i taking to India the parts not worked out before I left England. If you approve of this I will set to work at it will a will and if Hume wants to bring out his 'great work' at any future time he can quote those from the Ibis as he already quotes largely. I hope when I get at hi in London to bring him to the point but at present I confess I am utterly disheartened with him. Please let me know what you think of this. I think Mr. Grote is with you now. I heard from [Lincolnshire?] that Mr and Mrs Colville are staying with you if so please remember me kindly to them. I leave town on the [first?] of June I am going to the north of Ireland. Please give my kindest regards to Mrs Hodgson and believe me Ever Yours Very Sincerely
G.F.L. Marshall

P.S. We have received your cheque for the [?]. I sent a receipt, it was very kind of you to pay up in advance, we are getting on fast and suspect the whole nine numbers to be out next Spring. Your notes are the only ones of real value in the book

To Brian Houghton Hodgson

118 Cambridge St
Warwick Square
S.W.

27th April 1870

My dear Mr Hodgson

I enclose a printed letter of Hume's and his last to me about the book from which you may be able to judge of his intentions. He writes in a depressed tone about the overwork and really it does seem a hopeless business and as far as I can judge the illustrated work will now remain in abeyance for a time, I do not think Jerdon will take it up and Hume will probably take furlough soon and then the requisite leisure will be found. I do not know what to do about your portfolios in the mean time; I can during the Summer arrange and systematize The Notes but I do not see how to utilize the figures except for identification by myself of the species and it seems such a pity that they should be hid. I fear it will be no use sending them to Hume till he is more at leisure, but having the notes arranged will be the chief point. and they can then be incorporated at [pleasure?]. Joseph Hume was this man's father, not uncle. What you say about our plates is quite true, they are harsh, but Wolf will not draw and I know of no better artist than than we have got who will undertake such work.

With Kindest Regards to Mrs Hodgson
believe me
Ever Yrs Sincerely
G.F.L. Marshall