Dear Old Darwin

I am charmed with Huxley’s noble-minded letter.¹ We had a walk & talk together yesterday, but no allusion passed.— but he said he had determined on a long holiday & was very doubtful about whether to give up his summer Lectures to schoolmasters or no.— He described himself as slightly better, certainly not worse. He asked if I would go with him in July to Auvergne & Germany, I promised that I would if I did not go to America, of which I have heard nothing more.

Lady Lyell’s death is a complete upset.² I called today & had a long talk with poor Mrs Lyell³ & saw (at her wish) for the last time that most loveable face shrouded in flowers in the coffin— looking so calm & beautiful. Amid a flood of later memories my mind rushed back to long years ago, when quite a boy, I felt rather than thought it to be so beautiful, that I never could look at it without emotion— I used to dream of it as a child.

I have no morbid or other liking for seeing the faces of the dead, but am glad I have seen this; it was so beautiful— & I should not have liked my last thoughts of her to have been coupled with a face worn by sickness.

She seems never to have suffered any pain whatever of the smallest consequence, no uneasyness even, but to have sunk from the first going to Ludlow,⁴ gradually, taking abundant food all along & enjoying it.

Poor Lyell I did not see— Mrs. L. thought better not, & rightly. I am sure— he spends his time alternately in piteous sorrow, & in working at his antiquity of man with Miss Buckley.⁵ They have asked Mr Simmonds to bury her at Woking, beside Mrs. Horner.⁶ Lyell will live with Mrs Lyell I suppose they will take another Home.⁷ He is much better & has lost the tremor of the mouth— so Mrs Lyell says— I shall see him when it is all over.

From Mrs Lyell’s account I suspect the fever was typhoid; toward the end there was a slight pain over a spot in the side of the Abdomen, which probably indicated that disorganization of the intestine had set in, (of which I forget the name).⁸

I hope I have not bored you with all this.

Frances is much the better of her stay at Down & so am I in every way—⁹ I could eat nothing till I went there. & I did eat & enjoy Down as much as ever—& you know what that covers.

Ever yours affec | J D Hooker