[[1]]
Kew
April 19th [18]63
Dear Brian *1
We have just returned from a fortnight's trip to the Channell Islands, where we
enjoyed ourselves immensely, having taken our boys, & being joined by Thomson *2
and his wife. On my return I find your note & regret that I have missed seeing your
friends the Scotts who should have had a hearty welcome from us. Since my return
2 days ago I have had no time to pick up the news of the day, beyond what the
Athenaeum tells me, I see
[[2]] that Falconer *3 & Lyell *4 have got into a very pretty quarrell[sic] for which I am
sincerely sorry. Falconer's letter strikes me as being eminently unjust to Lyell's
reputation & deserts the latter part immensely so, & this sense of his own merits
inordinate & overwelming[sic?]
I have not seen the Edinburgh but am told that the article on Huxley *5 is by Owen, *6
who by the way has developed his own ideas of spontaneous generation in a review
of Carpenter's *7 Foraminifera in Athenaeum, & terrible twaddle it is! Really our
scientific men seem to be running mad, & the cacoethes[?]
[[3]] gain ground weekly – Have you read Huxley? If not I can send it to you by post,
it is awfully clever. I thought Short's book very poor – I am reading Fortune's *8 which
is easy at any rate, & full of information of sorts.
Of the biblical question I have heard nothing. I am not an admirer of McCaul *9 or the
B[isho]p of Manchester & as you know I distrust all theologians, there seems to me a
total want of candor[sic] & of charity amongst them in all public matters. Their minds
are those of women -- a very good type in women – a very bad one in man. I have
glanced at Stanley's *10 sermons & can detect an undercurrent
[[4]] of Colensonian *11 in them very obviously. I had thought that all educated
clergymen had long ago abandoned the verbal, literal, misinformation of the Bible eg
the worship of the letter, then genesis creation, then Flood, tower of Babel &c &c &c
plus much of the so called Mosaic narrative, -- but this is either not so, or the
educated men hold their tongues, perhaps the better in this case, for after all it is
curious to observe how few Deans, Archdeacons & other dignitaries, Professors &c
came forward to condemn Colenso, it is the Bishops & noisy theologians who usurp
the press & pulpit & fill them with denunciation. I think I told you that I staid[sic] a
couple of days with Colenso in the country & was pleased
[[5]] with his calmness, dignity & charity towards his opponents, he is a tall, grave,
very striking man, with a quiet determination of mouth & candid broad forehead &
open eyes, that together produce an impression of power & dignity. He has however
calculated without his host, & for this he has education to thank, rather than his
judgement or faults -- he might in my opinion have said 10 times as much as he has
in different languages & he would have created no sensation at all. I think Stanley
implies in many of his writings as much at least as Colenso insists upon, but puts a
firm spiritual varnish
[[6]] over it all.
I am booked now for a good bout of work & must after answering my fortnight's
accumulation of letters go into harness & deny myself to the world for a few months.
I am terribly behind hand.
With united aff[ectionat]e regards
I am dear Brian | Yours aff[ectionate]ly | J. D. Hooker [signature]
ENDNOTES
1. Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801--1894). A pioneer naturalist and ethnologist
working in India and Nepal where he was a British civil servant. Joseph Hooker
stayed at Hodgson’s house in Darjeeling periodically during his expedition to India
and the Himalayas, 1847--1851, and named one of his sons after him.
2. Thomas Thomson (1817-- 1878), surgeon with the East India Company before
becoming a botanist. Friend of Hooker whom he helped to write the first volume of
Flora Indica
3. Hugh Falconer MD, FRS (1808--1865) geologist, botanist, palaeontologist and
paleoanthropologist
4. Sir Charles Lyell, Baronet, FRS (1797--1875) was a British lawyer and geologist
5. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825--1895), zoologist and, amongst other positions,
President of the Royal Society of London, 1883--1885
6. Richard Owen (1804--1872), biologist and palaeontologist and founding Director
of the Natural History Museum, he disagreed publicly with Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection
7. William Benjamin Carpenter MD CB FRS (1813--1885),physician, invertebrate
zoologist and physiologist
8. Robert Fortune (1812--1880) Scottish botanist, plant hunter and traveller, best
known for introducing tea plants from China to India
9. Reverend Alexander McCaul (1799--1863) Irish missionary and scholar of
Judaism. He was prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral, London, and rector of the
united parish of St Magnus-the-Martyr, also in London.
10. Probably Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815--1881), an English Churchman, author of
works on church history and Dean of Westminster. Often known as Dean Stanley.
11. John William Colenso (1814--1883), first Church of England Bishop of Natal,
mathematician, theologian, Biblical scholar and social activist. His work The
Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined, questions whether these
parts of the bible should be accepted as historically and literally accurate. The first
volume appeared in 1862.
Please note that work on this transcript is ongoing. Users are advised to study
electronic image(s) of this document where possible.