skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. D. Hooker   [28 May 1847]1

7. Park St.

Friday

My dear Hooker

I just send one line to say that I have heard here in town that you return tomorrow (Saturday) & therefore that I have missed my lark to Kew.— I trust to your being at Oxford & then we must have some talks. Dropmore must, I suppose pause a bit, for you will hardly be ready to start immediately, & I cannot come all next week—so that I shd. think we must defer it I suppose—but I hope it will not die away— What say you on our return from Oxford to leave early on morning & get to London to evening.— Blenheim would make also a fine expedition2 But the party is your’s & you must organise it—but this plan of mine seems worth thinking of.— When at leisure, let me hear some news of you.—

By the way, as submarine coal made you so wrath, I thought I wd. experimentise on Falconer & Bunbury3 together & it made him even more savage “such infernal nonsense ought to be thrashed out of me”— Bunbury was more polite & contemptuous— So I now know how to stir up & show off any Botanist. I wonder whether zoologists & Geologists have got their tender points; I wish I could find out.

Ever yours | C. D.

I sadly regret my loss of my Kew day— I am very glad to hear a better account of Sir William

Footnotes

See letter to J. D. Hooker, [22 May 1847], n. 1, for the basis of this date.
Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
CD attended a council meeting of the Geological Society on 26 May during his trip to London (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I). Charles James Fox Bunbury and Hugh Falconer were also members of the council.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Summary

Has heard JDH does not return until tomorrow, so will not be able to see him at Kew but hopes to do so at Oxford meeting of BAAS.

Bunbury and Falconer strongly against idea of coal being submarine.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-1092
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sent from
London, Park St, 7
Source of text
DAR 114: 90
Physical description
ALS 4pp & C

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1092,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1092.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 4

letter