“My sister was talking to a small market gardener in a flower garden she was painting near Penzance, and Miss Ormerod’s name happened to be mentioned. The old gardener was beside himself with delight to meet some one who knew Miss Ormerod. He said she had saved him from utter ruin. His flowers had become infected with some injurious insect which bade fair to devastate the whole garden. In despair, hearing of Miss Ormerod, he wrote to her and not only received a kind letter of advice, but also a copy of her work on ‘Injurious Insects’ with the page turned down and the paragraphs specially applicable to the case marked. No wonder the poor old chap with tears in his eyes said he loved his unknown benefactress.”
Miss Ormerod was appointed Consulting Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1882, and for ten years retained that honourable position to the advantage of the Members and the British public generally.
The need of a Consulting Entomologist was forcibly brought home to the Society, then under the presidency of Mr. J. Dent-Dent, by the disastrous attack in 1881 of the Turnip fly, or more correctly flea beetle, which resulted in an estimated loss of over half a million sterling to farmers in England and Scotland. Leading agriculturists all over the country, but more from the East than the West, supplied information for a report, and special assistance was given by some members of the Royal Agricultural Society, including Mr. J. H. Arkwright of Hampton Court, Herefordshire. The results were embodied in the Annual Report for 1881, published in 1882.
A short time after this event a request was made to Miss Ormerod to indicate whether she would accept the post of Consulting Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society. Urged by Mr. Charles Whitehead, Chairman of the “Seeds and Plant Diseases Committee,” and by her intimate personal friend Professor Herbert Little, another member of the Council, she accepted, but with hesitation and with considerable reluctance, engendered by the opposition of her sister Georgiana, who believed her strength was not equal to the strain of additional work. The meeting with members of the Council at the Society’s offices, 12, Hanover Square, London, at which details were discussed, was unusually trying, in spite of the kindly courtesy of the Secretary (Mr. H. M. Jenkins) for whom Miss Ormerod entertained the deepest regard. She says, writing in 1900, “I was nearly frightened out of my wits in going through the requested ordeal, and the recollections of the experiences remain as uniquely unpleasant. On arriving, I gave my card to the attendant, who led me upstairs, where I expected to meet but two or three people, and I was ushered into a room full of gentlemen standing waiting my arrival, not one of whom except Professor Little was known to me even by sight. I advanced about two feet, my sole thought being of the awkward fix in which I had so suddenly been landed, and how I should get out of it. Scarcely a word was spoken when I was led down again to the Secretary’s room, where a discussion took place with Professor Little, Mr. Whitehead, the Secretary, and the President of the Society,—the others remained absent. In the discussion the President attempted a slight examination of my qualifications, but it amounted to little more than eliciting the length of time during which attention had been devoted to Entomology. My reply was “about thirty years,” to which he had nothing further to say. There was a slight departure from the serious nature of the interview when a parcel of Daddy longlegs grubs which had been placed on the table, gave way, and the creatures crawled all over the place. The final result was, that I agreed to take the post of Consulting Entomologist, but I returned home very uneasy in mind and wrote the same evening that I did not wish to accept office. I was, however, pressed into acceptance at the first business meeting and the first work I undertook was the making of drawings to form originals for six diagrams illustrating some common injurious insects with life histories and methods of prevention.[[36]] This would be the first Tuesday of June, 1882, and I inaugurated my position on the way home by meeting with a severe accident at Waterloo Station, from the results of which I have never recovered. While doubtless rather preoccupied, crossing the road, a rapid incline from Waterloo Road to the station, I did not notice a carriage coming down the slope till the horses’ heads were over mine. With no time to run or turn, I sprang and landed on the pavement, but a sharp pain set in, in the muscle above one knee. Whether it originated from a strain or a blow I never knew, but a little flask I carried on the injured side was beaten in as if by a horse’s foot or the point of a carriage pole. The injury was not properly attended to and the affected part gradually increasing and spreading gave rise to the lameness accompanied with severe and frequently intermittent pain which necessitated exceeding quiet and bodily inactivity—a state of matters which was in marked contrast to the extremely active life I had led in my early years rambling in the country, and latterly by indulging in the mechanical in addition to the usual æsthetical pleasures of gardening.”
She explains in a letter to Dr. Fletcher, dated August 22, 1892 (p. [212]) that she was driven by failing health to resign her honorary official work and to concentrate her energies upon her private work, which steadily increased in volume, and especially on the work of her Annual Report.
A conception of the interesting methods adopted by Miss Ormerod in carrying out her work may be gleaned from her own words addressed to us in the course of a long and intimate correspondence.
“I will now try and think of something you may care to insert about languages. So far as I can avoid it, I try not to write in any language but my own, but I can read serviceably French, Italian, and Spanish, and also Latin for what I need; likewise, of course, German; Russian I could read once but not so readily now; and with the dictionary I can make something of Dutch and Norwegian.”
“Of my very special colleagues who are now gone from us, were Professor Westwood, Life President of the Entomological Society, and Dr. C. V. Riley, Entomologist of the Board of Agriculture of the U.S.A.; and Professor Huxley, in days when I sat on the Council of Education Committee of Economic Entomology, was a valued friend. It was marvellous to see how Huxley with his towering personality led a committee. On one occasion he asked if any one present would express an opinion on the subject under consideration, and he rather suddenly directed his attention to a certain member of committee, who was so startled he nearly got frightened out of his life.”[[37]]