[[1]]
April 3 rd [18]89.
THE CAMP,
SUNNINGDALE.
Dearest H[yacinth] *1
Herkomer *2 finished me yesterday & the picture goes to his London Studios for show before Exhibition.
I dined at Athenaeum [Club], & found H. Spencer *3 there looking very ill & altered. I got home in rain at 9. 15. -- -- This morning it has been sleeting fast. All are well here & the House cleaned.
I shall not go down on Saturday, as I should have to leave on Monday when I must support Yorke if he can attend the Council, or do his duty if he cannot,
[[2]] which is to propose that in future all Presidents be painted at the Society's expense.
If I do come it would be on Monday night but it must depend inter alia, upon the weather.
An invite to the "Athletics" at the International on Saturday 13 th has come. I should like that we should go, that you might see the place -- for I cannot but think that whatever you may do with Joe, that school is the very place for Hugh if it is conducted as of yore.
I enclose a note from Mr. Berkeley *4 , which you will be glad to see. I have just heard that the Brit[ish] Mus[eum] will give me £30
[[3]] for my slides of fossils, which is quite their value. Dyer *5 arranged it for me. & the Garden will give me £30 for Gay's drawings of Croci *6
I must now try to get rid of the Birds, which will be a pang, but their room would be valuable.
I do hope that the weather will improve -- so that we might get a day on the canal with the children. -- With love to all
Ever dearest | Your affectionate | J D Hooker [signature]
When does Grace [Ellen Hooker] come back -- I forgot to ask.

ENDNOTES
1. Lady Hyacinth Hooker, neé Symonds then Jardine (1843 -- 1921). Joseph
Hooker's second wife, they married in 1876.
2. Sir Hubert von Herkomer CVO, RA (1849 -- 1914), was a British painter of
German descent. He was a very successful portraitist, especially of men, and also a pioneering film director and composer.
3. Herbert Spencer (1820 -- 1903), an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, & prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. He coined the expression "survival of the fittest."
4. Reverend Miles Joseph Berkeley (1803--1889), an English cryptogamist and clergyman, and one of the founders of the science of plant pathology.
5. Sir William Thiselton--Dyer, KCMG FRS FLS (1843 -- 1928), a leading British botanist, and the third director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He was married to Harriet Anne Hooker, the daughter of Joseph Hooker.
6
. Jaques Étienne Gay (1786 -- 1864), a Swiss--French botanist, civil servant, collector and taxonomist. He had a series of between eighty and ninety drawings of
30 Crocus species, by several French artists. They came into the possession of
Joseph Hooker.
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