From H. N. Moseley 9 December 1881
14 St Giles | Oxford
Dec 9. 81
Dear Darwin
Many thanks for your letter which strangely fell in with my thoughts at the moment of receiving it.1 I was just contemplating the possibility of getting a foreigner elected here to the Botany post. I am an elector so you must treat anything I saw as confidential. I should like extremely to see such a man as you mention here but firstly would he come for £500?2 secondly would the University contemplate the arrival of a foreigner with content, thirdly could the President of Magdalen the Pres of the College of Physicians your Botany Professor at Cambridge & the Bishop of Winchester and Sir John Lubbock be induced to vote for such a man?3 The matter lies with them primarily.
I am very much annoyed because Dyer apparently intends to use Kew influence to run old Williamson who would put a final end to the subject if he came here.4
I will speak to some of the authorities here and write to you again. I do not expect the vacancy to be filled till March at least.5
Yours truly | H N Moseley
Please give my best compliments to Mrs Darwin.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Historical register of the University of Oxford: The historical register of the University of Oxford: being a supplement to the Oxford University calendar with an alphabetical record of University honours and distinctions completed to the end of Trinity term, 1900. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1900.
Summary
He would support a foreigner for professorship of botany as CD suggests. W. T. Thiselton-Dyer is proposing W. C. Williamson, whom HNM considers a disaster.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13535
- From
- Henry Nottidge Moseley
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Oxford
- Source of text
- DAR 171: 263
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13535,” accessed on 11 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13535.xml