[[1]]
Kew
March 22 [18]67
Dear Asa Gray,
Many thanks for your letter and the capital article on D.C *1 & the Euphorbiaceae I
am sorry to say that A.D.C does not behave well about this matter. Bentham first
remonstrated & D.C wrote back, (B has the letter) saying that it was done on his
advice & responsibility; & defended it stoutly -- but have still kept at him, & now he
writes to Bentham forgetting his former letter throwing the whole blame on Mueller *2,
who he says "covers himself with disgrace" by it; & adds that he A.D.C takes no
responsibility for the Prodromus at all! This is too bad, over & over again he has
boasted of his care of & supervision of the Prodromus, it has been his "card" -- & he
puts his uncle as
[[2]] Editor of the whole. Bentham is I see a good deal disgusted; & I must say that I
was not prepared for this it is so shabby & unfair to Mueller. When When he thought it
was creditable, he took all the credit, when he gets nothing but blame, he throws it all
on his poor subordinate. I do not know why, but I always did distrust A.D.C; not as a
dishonest man, but as a weak & vain one. Of late he has wholly mistaken his
priorities in the botanical world, & has I suspect only just found it out that he has so.
I have just done Corneae a pretty little order, as badly defined as any. Decartia is
identified with Griselinia! of N.Z & I have a Himalaya Nyssa, which no one has found
but myself (both in Sikkim & Khasia) it, embraces specifically both Agathisanthes &
Ceratostachys of Blume *3 !!! Benthamia we knock on the head! Garrya we include
Bursinopetalum = Mastixia, BL Torricellia comes into the order, which only differs
from Caprifol by polypetaliae & from Araliaceae not at all but by habit! & not always
that. Leranthaceae we shall relegate to Santalaceae neighbourhood.
Cucurbitaceae are printing[,] a child of serious labor & no little mistrust. Bentham has
done Umbeliff[era]s from 160 genera only after all. Momentous reductions of course.
He is now at Araliaceae. *4
I am stuck for the pres[idency] of Brit[ish]. Ass[ociation]. in Norwich in 1868. I held
out against the appeal for 2 months and hoped I had fought off but the botanists
have protested & so I must accept the nomination for election -- you know how
[[3]] revolting all such distinctions are to me, having taken it I will fight it out & try &
make the association less trifling & a better exposition of past scientific work, my
great fear is that it will stop my American trip, on which I had set my heart -- this will
depend on the time it takes place, which will not be settled till Dundee meeting this
Sept:-- when my election will be proposed by the committee. I go to Paris next week
as Juror on the Exhibin*5. -- with Thomson. No time for politics this letter.
I was amused with the Boston Advertiser pitching into the Pall Mall as representing
'the Governing Class.' I suppose the fashionable name misleads them with regard to
the point at issue. The P. M. is logically right and B. A.
[[4]] clearly wrong. The error is in the B.A assuming that we are a "free nation." We
are nothing of the sort, and the masses do not wish to be so -- they are engaged in
the struggle for existence & care nought for freedom or politics so we have bribery &
corruption in all our elections even down amongst the lower educated classes -rampant. Take away bribery:-- & other extraneous motives for voting & scarce any
would vote but the middle & upper middle classes. The more I compare our papers,
the more I see, that you have no representation of the lower middle & lowest
classes, except perhaps in n[ew]. York of the masses in short, any more than you have
representation of our Aristocracy. You represent our middle &
[[5]] upper middle classes, who wield all the power with us as it is -- we are in no way
comparable as a people; our political virtues & vices are quite different. Upon the whole
you are the gainers: but it will not last:-- you will one day have a poverty stricken
residence that will greatly increase in the same ratio as wealth at the other end -- a
class who can't be educated, & who will vote for equal distribution of property & of all
god's gifts, for no "men & betters" but for "god for us all,' & that god their bellies.
Power & wealth will lapse into the hands of the strong with you, & laws will keep it
[[6]] there.
I also notice the Nation pitching into the Londoners for the state of London during the
snow, & citing it as a proof of the lamentable inability of the English to improve it. &
on same day in the New York paper were frightful letters on the state of the river &
ferries of New York, where people were kept all day & could not cross. So we see in
every day; it is the Beam & the mote, & so it will be to the end of the chapter.
The Herb[a]r[ium] affair is now settled, & I expect the money next week, not before it
is wanted for my wants & position here, which I must
[[7]] have abandoned, were it not settled. I could not live on here without a complete
alteration of all my household affairs, but on my present income, besides which I
must have given up all my functions as head of my own & Henslow's family, &
receiver of Botanists.
y[ou]rs | affe[ctionatel]y | Jos D Hooker [signature]
Darwin is working hard at big book. Keep your eye on that young man who wrote the
article on Agassiz & advise me of his doings -- he is no ordinary man. I never saw
him. I should not have forgotten his pretty wife!
ENDNOTES
1. The De Candolle family were authors of the botanical work Prodromus Systematis
Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. This refers to Alphonse De Candolle (28 October 1806 - 4 April 1893) This letter lends itself to the wider conflict in botanical nomenclature in
the 19th Century, with Bentham & Hooker central to this debate. In 1883, their
Genera Plantarum contributes to the 'Kew Rule' consensus.
2. Possibly refers to Ferdinand Mueller, the Government Botanist of Victoria from
1853, who loaned his collection to Kew, enabling Bentham to compare the
specimens with those in British and European herbaria.
3. Karl Ludwig Von Blume (1796--1862). German--Dutch botanist.
4. Referring to the progress of their Genera Plantarum.
5.Hooker was going to Paris to attend the International Horticultural Exhibition as a
juror.
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