From: Biological Stn. Pearl Beach
Via Woy Woy
NSW

To: Miss M. C. Sadler
"White Lodge"
101 Northcourt Rd.
Abingdon, Berkshire
England

July 20, 1955

My dearest Margaret,

It was such a pleasure to have your letter today after a very long silence. I am so relieved to know you are feeling better after treatment. I know it is a long time since I wrote, and I am all behind with my private letters and the work I wish to do. However, I have been so fully occupied with my schemes and my work here, a general tiredness develops which often drives me to rest when I long to be doing other things.

For the moment I will keep off the subject of my conservation schemes and just write about other things. It is so good to know you have that warm cardigan and like it. I am having one made for myself - much the same colour which I find cheerful in the exceptionally cold winter we are having. Here we have lovely wood fires but when I go down to Sydney I find people all using other heating. I have been down two or three times this year - all working trips and to see my two sisters who are far from well. My sister Nell has just lost her husband after a painful operation from which he did not recover. He passed away on 5th July, the day after I returned home. Her only child, Alison, is in Canada and her stepdaughter is in Scotland. Illness is a very expensive business these days. A large sum of money went into operations, medical and hospital fees.

Miniature of Thomas L. Crommelin, age 35,
painted by Frederick Cruickshank

I sent a copy of grandfather's miniature to the Victoria and Albert Museum. They have confirmed the portrait as a Frederick Cruickshank. Grandfather was 35 when it was painted. Cruickshank was a well known painter at that time and there are books about his work.

I am so very pleased to hear about the broadcast of Woburn Abbey. [See also: ] Could you send send me a copy of the script please? Here we can obtain them from the A.B.C. for a pittance and they are so nice to have. Also, I wonder if you could find out if the Duke ever received my letter and the nice photographs which went by registered mail. I put very special out-of-date stamps on the envelope. I cannot decipher the name of the person in the Solicitor's Office who wrote to say they had opened the letter and packet and that they had re-directed the contents to Africa. Of course it is possible that someone in the office purloined the whole lot, but being a registered letter, it must have been signed for because it was marked 'Confidential'. I think it should have been forwarded unopened! It was addressed to Woburn - the address given to me, perhaps by you. It was then sent on to the Solicitor in London. I am glad they have been able to save the deer. I forget the name of the species for the moment but they are very rare and the Duke has the last of them, I believe.

I hope you remembered to tell Audrey Russell that the Cambridge History Of India Vol V. p249 says: "Raghunath Rao made overtures to Crommelin, then Governor at Bombay... The incident is important because it deliberately introduced the English as arbiters in Maratha affairs...a deciding factor in the consolidation of the British power in India." (That was in 1761.)

In the "Indian Monumental Inscriptions Vol.1 Bengal-Index IV": "Charles Crommelin. Old English cemetery, Kalkapur Serial No. 688 P.No 180. - To the memory of Charles Crommelin who died on December 25th 1788, aged 81 years." That was a great age for a man to live in India at that time. It is through Sir John Russell and Frances Cromwell, or rather through his second wife Joanna Revett that the British Prime Minister has Chequers which became celebrated for the Cromwell relics.

If you could see (or secure) a history of the Russell family which has been "carefully traced in the 2nd vol. of D.C.R. Wilson's "Early Annals of the English in Bengal" Vol.11-part 1, it might be a great help. I have asked booksellers here but they have not done anything about it.

I am writing a letter to use one of our new airmail stamps with the old coaching days design. I like it better than any we have had for years, but it seems such a pity the ordinary 3 1/2 pence stamp is almost the same colour as well as the same design. I will enclose one for your brother. How is he and what does he do at Oxford? Is he at the university or just in the city? I think a town becomes a city when it has a cathedral, is that so? I am somewhat hazy about these important distinctions and in this scattered new country we have few cities, or cathedrals.

Just now our prayers and thoughts are being given to the "big four" meeting. How we all long for peace! The horrors of this mechanised age are so numerous and so terrible. The mania for speed, for noise, for so many things which do not seem to have added anything to the culture or contentment of man, or to have improved the beauty of the world for his true enjoyment. Speed shocks me. How stupid it is. Have we gained anything? Very little perhaps, but what a lot we have lost!

Acacia pycnantha, Golden Wattle tree

Our beautiful wattle is in bloom and the trees covered with the golden fluffy balls brighten the garden which would be rather drab just now, although we also have some geraldton wax flowers out. They are from West Australia and are very pretty and so long-lasting both on the bushes and in the house. That makes them a very great blessing because they keep flowering for many months. They are a hot climate flower so you are not likely to see them there. Much love, dear Margaret, and do look after yourself. Thank you for writing. Your loving Minard

Chamelaucium uncinatum, Geraldton wax flower