[[1]]
Boston
Wednesday July 10/[18]77
Dear Hyacinth *1
I wrote to you ten days ago from Prof[essor] Asa Gray's, directing to Boulogne, from
whence I presume that you have ere this returned, & I hope that this may find you at
Pevelock[?]. I have had very hard work seeing sights & people & am fairly tired out,
so that I shall be glad to be tomorrow afternoon at rest in a steamer, bound to New York, on my
way to the far West. The weather has not been roasting but broiling, steamy &
muggy, most relaxing & one gets covered with perspiration by sitting still! So you
may guess the state I have been in when running about from morning till night. I left
the Grays yesterday & came here to the Sargents', a beautiful property about 4 miles
from Boston & am in a most beautiful comfortable & elegantly furnished house with hospitable
host & hostess. Mr S[argent]. & his wife were often at Kew, 3 ½ years ago, & spent
[[2]] some days with me. He has charge of the Bot[anical]. Garden at Harvard
University & of a magnificent Park, above the "Arnold Arboretum" here, which is not
yet laid out, but is is the Kew of Boston. Mr S[argent]. himself is a hear heir to a large
property upon which he lives in good style & he gives up his days to take us about.
The Stracheys are at a Hotel in Boston. & as we are invited to breakfast, lunch dinner
& tea at the same places more or less we are much together. I find Mrs S. a most
kind & very considerate person, & everyone here is charmed with her, her manner
notwithstanding. All which does not prevent you being most awfully missed, & I am
sure that but for the fatigue & heat you would have enjoyed Boston much, -- it is a
very pretty place indeed & the scenery round about most lovely. The streets of dwelling
houses are broad, lined with trees in the town & in the outskirts & the dwelling houses very
large comfortable & handsome. In the suburbs the roads are wider, the houses
[[3]] chiefly of wood very pretty, much varied in form & construction, alter often very
large & in excellent taste, more French than English & stand in open plots of garden
ground. There are neither walls nor hedges to the road but low light wooden fences
& the roads being excellent & lined with trees the drives are most attractive. The
contour of the ground is in swelling hills of glacial drift, well wooded & very lovely,
with intervening well watered meadows; & many streams There are no evergreens
but conifers; but shrubs & flowers of various kinds abound & of trees the variety is
very great; Hickorys[sic], American Ash Elms Elms & Maples of 2 kinds prevail with 4
Oaks. Also here & there English Elms, Horse Chestnuts, Limes & Poplars -- there is
[1 word illeg, crossed out?] a broad walk of grass on either side the foot paths which
are always clean & well kept. Indeed the thorough good keep of the roads & Houses,
shops, pack carriages & conveyances of all kinds, & the cleanness & comfort
[[4]] of the laboring classes is a most striking & satisfactory feature. Mechanics &
Railway guards look & speak like gentleman[.] In the market the butcher is as clean
as the grocer, betraying no disagreeable features of his trade in apron, hand or
head! The horses & other public vehicles are like private carriages & the latter are
infinitely more varied in kind & more comfortable than ours! Everyone can read & is
well educated; the people are handsome on the average though sharp featured &
never high complexioned. The shops are quite like our own, & the people very civil
Everything is very dear indeed as much for us in London, except fruit, which is
plentiful. Banana are imported in enormous quantities from W[est]. Indies but are not near
so good as Kew ones. -- Wild & cult[ivated] raspberries & bramble & blue berries all
of several kinds are sold in the markets. The nasal twang is very decided but not so
unpleasant as in other parts of America, & we are worried that we shall not find other
parts of the States so pleasant in any
[[5]] way as Massachusetts, which has been settled since 1620. Hitherto we have
had no plagues of mosquitos or flies but then we are told that the season is quite
exceptional for prevalence of rain & absence of sun heat. I should however prefer a
roasting sun to this damp muggy relaxing heat. Monday was spent chiefly in the
University buildings etc which consist of blocks of buildings, some excellent, others
old--fashioned, scattered over 70 acres of wooded lawns. I should mention that the
lawns are as green as in England & as often mowed, but that they ? are generally
burnt up at this season. Most families are at the sea--side or at their country villas in
the beautifully planted suburbs. Their public park is beautifully planted & kept, public
statues abound -- to Washington & the people who fell in the late war. Every county
of the state has a tall flag--staff on the common or where cross roads meet & a
monument to the heroes who of the county who fell
[[6]] in the late war; often in poor taste but I have seen no revolting ones, or so
barbarous as the Wallace monument at Stirling.
Yesterday we went to Belvedere, a district near on the sea coast some 20 miles
N[orth]. of Boston where Mr Gray[']s relations have large[?] property. The coast there
is rocky (granite), facing the cool S[outh]. E[ast]. wind -- always cool over the Atlantic
& the scenery is most lovely overlooking the bay Boston Harbour. The vegetation quite
Scotch, the ground covered with Cypripedia, Vaccinia, Pyrolas, Orchis & heaps of
such plants. The copses full of roses brambles raspberries & flowering shrubs & the trees a
mixture of Pines, Hemlock, Juniper Spruces & deciduous trees. Ferns & mosses abound,
& you might fancy yourself, but for the absence of Heather, in Scotland or Wales[.]
Returning we stopped at Salem (Read Hawthorn House with 7 gables, any book-stall has it) to see a Museum & Nat[ural]. History Institute endowed by Peabody. We
found the Professor teaching a mixed class of males & females zoology, the pupils
were school teachers (& a few
[[7]] amateurs) who came from various states during their vacation for 2 months to
learn at their own expense -- They have an hour lecture at 10--11 am & spend the
day till 4 in the class room, dissecting & making drawings & notes under the eyes of
the teacher & an assistant -- one was dissecting a glacier[?] fish another a frog & a
third a Scolopendra. I was introduced to 5 of the young (& old) women, -- all knew of
Kew & of some of my own & father’s works. Many had a similar course of Botany at
Harvard the previous year. I saw this Botany class the day before working under the
eye of Dr Grays assistant & examined some of the girls’ papers, taking there
pronunciation from before their Black board was hung up all round with aphorisms
sentences in English, French & Latin from Linnaeus, Currier etc etc -- which they are
called upon to translate & illustrate. This state is most wonderful, & the State Schools
are allowed on all hands to be admirable. Thus this thorough method of teaching &
the subordinating the
[[8]] lecturing to practical work on the subject lectured in, that alone will ever make
good teachers.
Today I spent the forenoon at Mr Sargent’s grounds, the Arnold Arboretum & Forest
hill cemetry[sic]. Mr Sargents dairy is quite unique. The milk pans pans etc, are
arranged on two tier of shelves, or rather of horizontally laid pipes as thick as your
wrist -- These pipes of which 4 go to in a row form a shelf -- run round the dairy, they are
silvered & kept very bright. On the top row is a shallow square pan about a yard long &
as deep broad stood[?] on the row of pipes, in which pan were two magnificent square
blocks of ice. Openings in the base of the pan connected[?] with the pipes of the top
row & these with those of the row below, & the ice cold water flowing through the
pipes keeps the dairy cool in the summer. In winter, hot water from a boiler in an
adjoining apartment is let into the same pipes & thus a tolerably uniform temperature
of about 60o is kept up summer & winter. The plan is Mr Sargent’s own -- I wonder if
Mr Smith knows of any such.
[[9]] Forest Hills cemetry[sic] is a wonder & a speci<men?> of the town cemetries[sic]
of the U[nited]. S[tates]. They belong to the chartered corporations which expend the
proceeds of sale of burial plots on the beautifying of the grounds. It is as large as
Kendal Green occupies a hilly slope of turf & grass, with projecting rocks of granite &
other rocks. It is intersected by broad well kept roads, & the whole is a most lovely
garden to which our parks are a mere joke. The burial plots are all bounded by
gravel kerbs & the tombs & monuments of which marble throughout. The lawns are
more perfectly kept than Kew, & there are every where masses of flowers &
flowering shrubs most beautiful to behold. The rocks are covered with creepers of all
kind, masses of sedum, Pinks, Pansies & Lysimachiae, with here & there Scarlet
Begonias, Arums tree ferns Dracaenas & subtropical plants, not clumsily lumped or
tastelessly scattered as at our Parks, but arranged in perfect taste & order. Here &
there at corners are pattern beds/carpet beds incomparably better than ours, & the
white--gates, roads, kerbs, tombs so clean that you
[[10]] may literally eat your dinner off them. The prevalence of white marble tombs,
shrines, tablet, grave stone, & specially statues (life size) is the great defect,
these should be in granite[,] serpentine or colored stones. -- The sums of money
expended by the friend of the deceased on their statues etc must be enormous, of
course many are in poor taste, but I saw none of th so horrid as in our English
cemeteries[sic]. I never saw natural features so happily made use of as in this
chapels
cemetery[sic]. Then we went to a Mr Hunnewells *2, about 5 mile off at a place called
Wellesley[.] He is very wealthy & has a magnificent property bordering a
considerable lake with grass & wooded hills all about & undulated "drift" ground
Scottish in character. In 20 years he has made a most beautiful garden of many
acres, the House too is beautiful one, overlooks the Lake some 60 ft below, & the
descent is by a series of terraces with rows of clipped mazes[?] and of Hemlock
Spruce & other plants down to a water balustraded with
[[11]] vases & paths bordered with mixed beds of flower & shrubs, all kept as
beautifully as the best English garden, with infinitely more taste care & variety than
any English garden I know of. Indeed nothing strikes me more forcibly than the variety
completeness & finish of the best class of gentlemens['] garden here. All the best
varigated[sic] shrubs & conifers of the English Nurseries are planted in profusion not
by twos & threes here & there, but in hundreds & in masses, & all raised by strikings
& cuttings by their own gardeners. Of it Of course there are not many such gardens
as the Hunnewell’s.
On the opposite banks of the Lake is as magnificent a property also of many hundred
acres given to the state by a Mr Durant for a school to educate female school teachers
at about £50 a year for board & instruction. Mr D[urant]. has built on it a stupendous
red brick College, which occupies a beautiful swelling mound of drift[?].-- This
building holds 400 pupils, & is a really handsome pile. He has filled it up with class
rooms for all Literary teaching & laboratories for all scientific researches & for all branches of
[[12]] physical &biological researches; he has furnished it throughout & provided a
staff of Professors & a most beautiful Library, where I saw Bot[anical]. Magazines & at least
20 of my father[‘]s & my works. The whole cannot costless than half a million Stirling,
& no one supposes it can ever be self--supporting. I send you a copy of the
prospectus.-- Education is the rage here; wealthy people do not know what to do
with their money.
My journal is more than I can manage for besides all the above I have already a
mountain of Botanical notes & memos for Smith, Dyer, Oliver etc etc.
Poor Strachey has just got a telegraph from L[or]d Salisbury to say he must go to
India this cold weather to settle some difficulty but please say nothing of this -- it mars his
pleasure.
We take train tomorrow to Newport, thence steamer to New York, & straight on
without stopping to Cincinnati where we spend Sunday. Thence on to some place in
Colorado south of Colorado Springs, which latter is a large town, the capital of the
State. Please thank Willy[William Henslow Hooker] for his kind letter & let him & all at
Kew that care to Bentham included see this letter. With love to all Ever y[ou]r
aff[ectionate] husband
JD Hooker [signature]
ENDNOTES
1. Lady Hyacinth Hooker, née Symonds then Jardine (1842--1921). Joseph Hooker's
second wife, they married in 1876.
2. Horation Hollis Hunnewell (1810--1902). A railroad financier, philanthropist,
amateur botanist, and one of the most prominent horticulturists in America in the
nineteenth century. Practiced horticulture on his estate in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Hunnewell made a donation in 1873 that helped Asa Gray revise and complete his
Flora of North America. He also funded the conifer collection at Arnold Arboretum,
Boston.
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