From J. D. Hooker 24 September 1870
Royal Gardens Kew
Sept 24/70
Dear old Darwin
I have absolutely nothing whatever to say to you, & so feel quite justified in inflicting a letter on you— If George be still with you please tell him that I hunted up & down the train for him at Willesden, but in vain, & that I therefore sent on his Pall Mall by post:1
The Brit. Assoc. meeting was a good one.— very good I suppose, though there was I think a terrible deficiency of good sectional matter—2 Huxley’s address was admirable, but a few such would do up the popularity of President’s addresses; for the general public could not follow the subject, & were profoundly ignorant of what he was driving at—3 After the “Lay Sermons”, all the Liverpudlians expected brilliant sallies, & spiced heresy—& were woefully disappointed.4 In a scientific point of view I thought it quite excellent & the proper sort of thing for the occasion. Tyndall’s was a wonderful outburst of cracking & sparkling eloquence as delivered, but I was woefully disappointed in the reading of it:5 it reads ornate, frothy & all but flashy, with a soupcon of bosh here & there— I cannot bear to think this of any thing dear old Tyndall has said or sung, & if you think better of it so will I, & to any amount— I will sell my soul for him in such a matter.
Rolleston’s opening address was a wonderful affair— full of science, classics, metaphysics, logic, the Fathers, mathematical phraseology (if not method), & what not— delivered in a somewhat jerky & sententious style.6 A local paper stigmatized it as “Rococo”— a capital hit, if I remember what Rococo is as applied to art—(a jumble of periods & styles each pronounced unmistakeably; & not over well matched)— I see that in an after-dinner speech he professed not to have understood the meaning of the term, from which I guess that he feels what he can’t understand & pretty sharply too— He made a capital President.— Old Murchison surrounded himself with fireworks: he will never die— he will go up like Elijah/Elisha? in a fiery chariot; & heaven will open to receive him;—whence he will bless the earth & especially the nobles thereof—and we will canonize him.7 I did not wait over Saturday & so I missed Lubbock’s Lecture—which read well.8 I saw many old faces, & no new ones, but Van Beneden’s, a very pleasant one.9 Lyell10 looked wondrous grim in a nascent beard, which did not suit him; in fact he looked rather disreputable in it— because of it’s shortness & raggedness, & his feebleness & failing sight; which I see with real sorrow— for I never can bear to think of losing Lyell. I do so intensely love & esteem him.— how few men have been so always the same for so many years to us!
I was delighted with the Liverpool Museum, it is a lesson for our Brit. Mus.—11 the typical series of articulate & lower orders with appended popular descriptions of the tribes were admirable in all respects.
I have polished off an immense lot of small work within the last 3 months, & am now at “Genera plantarum”,12 & hope to be thinking of some general works soon on distribution or Classification— I feel marvellously lightened, more so than since I took the Direction here.13 God knows how short such feelings of relief usually are, & I do not dare to think how soon they may end. Willy is doing nicely at Mr La Touches,—14 My wife15 is at St. Albans, where she has a nice House. I am alone here, this house being under repair, I wish your William or George16 would come & see me here, & take a run to St. Albans with me any day.
I suppose you have nearly finished your book, I am sorry that you dropped the simple title of “Origin of Man”—17 I forbear to talk of the war or the loss of the Captain— what harrowing episodes in a life-time, not to talk of a month’s time.18
Now I shall shut up— when I survey the calligraphy of this epistle I am lost in wonder & admiration—& am tempted to ask you to return it—& to enclose 1d. to make sure you do!
Ever Yrs affect | J D Hooker
Footnotes
Bibliography
Murchison, Roderick Impey. 1870. Address to the geography section. Report of the 40th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Liverpool in September 1870, Transactions of the sections, pp. 158–66.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Tyndall, John. 1870. On the scientific use of the imagination: a discourse delivered before the British Association at Liverpool, on Friday evening, 16th September 1870. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Wawro, Geoffrey. 2003. The Franco-Prussian war: the German conquest of France in 1870–1871. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Summary
Reports on the 1870 BAAS meeting at Liverpool. Huxley’s address was over the heads of the laymen.
Tyndall’s was eloquent to listen to, disappointing to read.
George Rolleston’s "Rococo" address [Nature 2 (1870): 423–7, 442–6].
Murchison.
Lyell.
Has done an immense lot of work.
Regrets CD has not kept the simple title "Origin of man" [for Descent].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7323
- From
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Kew
- Source of text
- DAR 103: 57–9
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7323,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7323.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18