Description
Farrer (Reginald John, 1880-1920). A group of thirteen autograph letters written by Farrer on his last plant hunting expedition to Upper Burma, mainly Hpimaw and Nyitadi, 29th May 1919 to 11th September 1920, a total of fifty pages written in a neat hand and mostly to rectos only, the addressee unidentified but nicknamed 'my poison', venom, viper, etc. and chiefly signed "poppet" or similar, giving a florid account of his personal life and feelings, descriptions of plants discovered on trips to different parts of the region, accounts of the terrain and conditions, mentions of Ingleborough (his family home in Yorkshire) and mutual friends, frequent mention of his companion Jumps [Euan Hillhouse Methven Cox, 1893-1977], and other local people, the last letter written a month before his death from diptheria on 17 October 1920, most leaves with paper album guards to left margins, all 4to (except one four-page 8vo letter written on Upper Burma Club, Mandalay, letterhead) A tremendous archive giving a vivid picture of Farrer's personality, sexuality and his day-to-day life while plant hunting in Upper Burma in the last year of his life. A letter of the 25th June 1919 identifies the author as Farrer, 'The RGS has given me (God knows why) the Gill Award of £36 and the Eaves has brought me royalties of £24 more!': Farrer won the Gill Award in 1920. Hpimaw Fort, 29th May 1919: '... the camp suggests an Abbey of Theleme with me in the midst, seated at my tent door with a paintbrush in one hand and an open umbrella in the other, attempting to portray a Primula (this soul-less empty country is too uninspiring for landscape (through a dense fog of midges and of stinging blue smoke designed, quite vainly, to keep them off ...'. Hpimaw Fort, 26th July 1919: '... our frayed nerves have been enjoying a 10 days rest here after the unspeakable trials for a ten day's trek down country after a hypothetical Rhoda during all which time it rained with passionate persistence ... just now we were enduring the pains of hospitality in the extremist form, with a little captain whose official residence this is has for the last 10 days been claiming our entertainment while he is up here on a visit desperately trying to track seven missing halfpence through the labyrinths of the regimental accounts ... Jumps, however, like Jim, is Scottish enough really to enjoy hour long prattles about disconnected facts of no interest ... tomorrow on route for a month of camping up in the high Alpine Valley ... Oh my child, the beauty among others of Nomecharis Pardanthina, like a blend of pink lily with a spotted Odentoglessum ...'. Hpimaw Fort, 4th September 1919: '... we have been back here for now nearly a fortnight after a month of really wonderful camp life, up in a high alpine valley ... it was a glorious place & brought up the bag of Rhodes to 45: we go back there in October for the seeds ... next year did I tell you, I have the Beautiful Boy to look forward to. Not the Irish Edward, but the Scottish Derick ... & now is coming out to join him in the winter ... I remember his father and sister [Lady Linlithgow] ...'. Hpimaw Fort, 24th September 1919: '... we have also been entertaining one [Frank] Kingdon Ward, a rural botanist from an adjacent trek, who turned out a queer little wild eyed bird with a face like a haggard nut ... I hope to be off back to the Chimili with the seeds of my various treasures. Of these I have already told you the gorgeous tale & besides for the dispenditure of sixpence you can follow their fuller account in the Gardener's Chronicle ... but I enclose ... a little sample for you to raise ... Nomecharis Pardanthina ... clearly travel must be more my metier, what with the Watson's family in possession & Ingleborough probably untenable in these evil days, even if they weren't ...'. Hpimaw Fort, 12th November 1919: '... thanks to the skill, energy & contrivance of the master (of course!) not a single treasure have we failed to capture ... I am hardly tired at all except for sleepless nights with anxiety about seeds ... which will be down at Nyitkina in another fortnight ... down out of the alpine cold ...'. Mandalay, 19th December 1919: '... I am dimly beginning to realise that the time for harlotries is over & that my position henceforth is on the shelf. This is almost my last week of Jumps & wish I knew whether we shall part with mutual relief or no ... between 25 & 40 there cannot be real intimacy ... the Chinese & Aborigines have been kicking up hell on the Border ...'. Mandalay, 23rd December 1919: '... I share your certainty, however, that catshit were not suited to germination; so that you need never fear being burdened with its beauties, which are, as a matter of fact, quite singular, being those of a little pink Lily that has had an affair with a naughty spotted Odntoglessum, & produced a child that bears several shamefaced flat pendant flowers of softest pink, which have an eye of deep chocolate, surrounded by a ring of yellow in three crested fringes, while three of the segments are very broadly oval, fringed, & spotted with deep purple ... I told you that the beautiful boy has slain a sister to avoid my company, but I got off with a soldier-man this morning who seems like coming with me & like being a pleasure if he does ... I have actually taken two months, a minute bungalow up at Maymyo called The Oaks ...'. Nyitadi, 6th May 1920: '... I am now established at a distance quite incredible from all communications. Monthly I hope to send down slaves, nine days journey to an outpost ... my lovely legs are like bloody punctured bolsters ...'. Nyitadi, 25th July 1920: '... up here all heats of hell wouldn't fry a sole, the paintbox is always 12 hostile rainbows united in combulsions ... I am here now in Capua for 6 days, having arrived down on 21st being due to sally forth again, up on to the Moku-Ji Pass for a fortnight on 28th ... the E. Heuse is at its last chapter. I have gone on cutting out so much masses of wit & wisdom that now I sometimes wonder if I've cut the balls from the body or the body from the balls ...'. Nyitadi, 10th August 1920: '... your account of Ingleborough rather harrowed me though, especially as it means a letter to the fussed Jasons explaining that of course my various day-dreams are not be taken as instructions but merely as visions & counsels of perfection ...'. The last letter, Nyitadi, 11th September 1920: '... really, it sits ill on you, to complain of my silence: when night by night I lie awake in a tether about Teheran & never a word of reassurance or confirmation arrives!'. It seems most likely that these letters were sent to Ernest Frederick Gye, C.M.G. (1879-1955). His mother was Dame Emma Albani, the singer, and his father Ernest Gye, the lessee of Covent Garden theatre. Gye entered the Foreign Office in 1903, became Second Secretary in 1908 and Councillor in 1924. He served for some years in Tehran in the earlier part of his career (and where he was when these letters were written) before being appointed Minister and Consul General in Tangier in 1933. Three years later he was made Minister Plenipotentiary in Venezuela. The Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, holds correspondence of Reginald Farrer in its archives. (13)
