Item 12 - Letter from G F L Marshall to Brian Houghton Hodgson

1 letter

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