[[1]]
Royal Gardens Kew
Dec[ember] 24/[18]84
My Dear Brian *1
"May there come greeting" you with all the best wishes of your loving friend to yourself & to Susie * 2 . I was vastly pleased to get your letter last week & to find the hand writing as firm & clear as it was in Sikkim 32 years ago!
This is a joyful Christmas for Mr & Mrs Symonds, who have just received their see *3 , home on 6 months leave from Tonga, to see his father before his last end & to find him so much better than it was possible to have expected. F.
Symonds is Assistant Commissioner at Tonga, under the High Com[ission]er of the Pacific Islands,
[[2]] and conducts the double duties of political agent & Vice Consul, the former under the F[oreign]. O[ffice]. & the latter under the C[olonial]. O[ffice].
He is a very intelligent & able young fellow, very striking looking & 6 ft 4 inches in his stockings! His account of its islands & peoples are most interesting but what is most curious is the rapid inroads of Europeans. In that little out of the way island there are two hundred Europeans including wealthy
Australians who have houses as summer resorts! The old king is 90 & when he dies I suppose the island will pass over to us. The climate appears to be perfect. He will have only 3 weeks in this country, as he is badly wanted there for should the
[[3]] King die there will be probable confusion.
Yes you may congratulate me on the prospect of my Hyacinth *4 having children -- for I have long felt & with increasing force, the fact, that if Ivy * 5 were to go her desolation would be without a consolation & after the loss of my own little Minnie *6 , the brightest & best of the flock, I further have felt the truth of the old adage that "who the God's love they take early" & I never feel safe; for Ivy is an exceptionally gifted child with loveable & loving qualities of both head & heart: Of course there are heavy draw -- backs, backs & of these by far the heaviest is the certainty that at my age I shall have to leave the care
& culture of the
[[4]] youngest to its mother. Her loving kindness to my young children their devotion to her & her uniform [?] long suffering kindness to the two elder, convince me I would could not leave a child in better hands, -- She says this is the way "the die is cast" & the issue is no longer mine to rate. If my children have not been all I could have wished I should not complain; -- for none have

disgraced my name, or been causes of life--long sorrow, & I do verily believe that those who have no children to leave, have full compensation & satisfaction in their consideration of the narrow escape they have had for leaving terrors or at least unsatisfactory issues behind them.
So much for moralzing -- Ever my dear old friend Your affectionate | 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, Brian Houghton Hodgson had two Indian mistresses and fathered two half
Indian children. He was appalled by the racism in India and educated them in
Holland. The two children died. Hodgson married a second time after his first wife died and it is his second wife Susan who is mentioned in the letter. At the time he received this letter he was living with his second wife in England with no children.
3. An episcopal 'see' is another term for a Diocese
4.
Lady Hyacinth Hooker, née Symonds then Jardine (1842--1921). Joseph
Hooker's second wife, they married in 1876.
5. Ivy seems to be a maid or friend.
6. Maria Elizabeth Hooker (1857--1863). Known as Minnie. Joseph Hooker's daughter with his first wife Francis Hooker née Henslow. Minnie was just six years old when she died.
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