[[1]]
Fe[bruar]y 15/[18]85
Dear Gray
I posted a copy as soon as I could procure it, of "Genera" to Bessey Nebraska. The charges are Copy
£6.15. 4
Postage & registration - 4. 4 ½
6.19. 8 ½
I shall be very glad of orders for more as I have a heavy bill for binding & reprinting! I cannot at all understand what [George] Bentham or the printers were about. The number of imperfect copies is staggering.
Bentham's affairs are not settled yet & I do not know what we shall get. The R[oyal]
S[ociety] & L[innean] S[ociety] are cut down one half ( £500 each!). I have told
Madam [?] W. that it wil
[[2]] will remain with her to carry out her husband's uncle[']s intentions! -- If she will not take the hint I am determined to make it hot for her, not for Kew however -- our hands are full enough of unpaid work to care for more, & keeping up the Icones without Bentham's head & pen will be no such lazy task, worked as we all are; for we must both dissect & describe as well as select materials.
I never saw any caster prior to the inkstand. No doubt it belonged to the father (Sir
Samuel) usually a taper occupied such a space, in a square box for wafers.
I hope you got my postcard in time converting the blunder of Portsmouth for
Plymouth.
Yes I do wish that I could be with you -- but I do not believe that my wife could have stood it at all. If we are to visit you it will be a quick one to Boston which I should dearly enjoy & still look forward to but until I retire I see no chance of
[[3]] it. I have not had a holiday since we were in Italy for a single week but the 10 days in Paris last Easter. Everything here seems tied round my neck. Dyer does a great deal with extraordinary ease, but he does not know what my continuous labour is, nor could he much help it if he did -- but I wish he would let me do certain things -- eg the Reports, that for 1883 is not even in hand. i.e. his parts (he has mine) --
Bot[anical] Mag[azine] is a drag too -- it becomes yearly more difficult to work up the nomenclature & synomy [sic] of isolated garden plants. The McGilvray affair is a lengthening chain; the business correspondence of last year is a huge pile & is not done yet. My poor sister Maria [McGilvray nee Hooker] is now in a very sad state, & quite unmanageable at times. [Henry Ashburton] Newman has gone to California to set up a school for teaching agriculture!!! -- & Margaret [Greene Newman nee
McGilvray] *1 is to follow him -- we hope that Bessy will go too for which I suppose I shall have to pay her passage -- Willy [William Henslow Hooker] has again failed to

pass for Surgeon -- & young Grace is in confinement. Tom [Thomas F. McGIlvray] *2 is in Canada
[[4]] where he is doing nothing & wants money to go to California too! My poor sister
Bessy [Elizabeth Evans Lombe nee Hooker] has been 7 weeks in bed & Lombe is in despair about her -- he has been most generous & helpful in this McG[ilvray] affair -- giving her £250 in aid.
Symonds is in "status quo", we have left him & Mrs S[ymonds] in the "Camp" as care--taker & returned to Kew with the new child, christened Richard -- my wife's choice, I don't approve ten to one he won't be "judicious" at all -- all the more his cranium is just like mine, i.e. like a Chenooks [sic] *3 tremendously long from chin to occiput. fac simile [a hand--drawn illustration of a Chinook with a flattened head appears here]
I wish when you go north you, or Mrs Gray, would get made for me a Chenook [sic] flattener to work the other (back) way & I will ask Hyacinth to clip it on for a year or two
& see if I can't make him judicious. Otherwise it is a fine healthy child & H[yacinth] nurses it well. Joey[Joseph Symonds Hooker] is enchanted with it & follows it like a puppy dog.
[Everard Ferdinand] Im Thurn has got up Roraima. Johnstone's [sic] *4
Kilmanjaro [sic] *5 collections are very small I am sorry to say, he lost his collectors who ran away & could not do much
[[5]] himself -- but he will write an interesting book.
Yours of Fe[bruar]y 2 just received.
I can't understand you not having heard from me of the birth of the child. Letter must be lost. I hope I wrote!
I am delighted to hear of the good portrait of you, will it photograph?
I have had Indian Polygona on the table for 7 months & not done a dozen species.
Meissner's work is not bad if he had only reduced the bad species, but I shall simplify it -- Amblygonon is my Persicaria ] .
I am greatly troubled about Bentham's British Flora, he has left me with the copy-right & duty of bringing out a new edition which Reeve is calling out for. I must not alter the character of the work, but how to do it justice without introducing a good ded deal of new matter is the question. It has been a very useful work, introducing enticing many to take up Botany who otherwise would not have done so.
Now good--bye -- I wonder where this will overtake you -- I hope you may meet
Morris at N[ew] Orleans.
My uncle Dawson Turner died a fortnight ago. He fell down in a fit on the Strand &

[[6]] was taken to Charing X hospital where he died of Erysipela after a few days.
Mrs Turner was in town but no one was allowed to see him because of fear of excitement; till the very end approached when they were sent for. For the last few years he lived in London devoting his whole time to Hospital work at C[haring]
C[ross] & Westminster Hospitals. He was a most liberal kind friend to the poor & needy, but most eccentric -- Aunt Ellen is the only remaining one of the family -- she lives on at Chester.
With Hyacinth's best love to you both & mine too.
Ever dear old Gray | Y[ou]r aff[ecionat]e ] | J. D. Hooker [signature]
Harriet is nearly better I think - but very weak & not up to much.
ENDNOTES
1. Margaret Greene Newman (nee McGilvray): JDH's niece, the daughter of his sister Maria McGIlvray. Henry Ashburton Newman was Margaret's husband.
2. Thomas F. McGilvray: JDH's nephew, the son of his sister Maria McGilvray. JDH sometimes refers to Thomas as 'young hopeless', but Thomas was a qualified engineer, he emigrated to North America and worked as a surveyor and later a city planner, notably on many civil engineering works in Duluth, Minnesota.
3. Chenooks, or Chinooks, refers to several groups of Native Americans in the
Pacific Northwest of the United States. Some groups of Chinook would flatten the heads of children from about 3 months of age by binding them between boards.
4. Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston (1858 - 1927), British explorer and botanist.
5. Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
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