The next class of wind instruments dealt with by the author is that of which the oboe and bassoon are typical. Mr Galpin refers to a reed-pipe with which I am very familiar; it is made from a dandelion stalk pinched flat at one end. Its principle is that of the oboe. I well remember admiring its tone as a child, and lamenting its very brief life, for it soon got spoiled. The reed of serious musical instruments is made of two pieces of cane which are flat at the free or upper end and terminate below in a tube which fits on to the instrument. This is an ancient type of instrument, for the Romantibiais believed to have been played with the “double reed,”i.e.of oboe-type. I may here be allowed to quote from myRustic Sounds, p. 5: “The most truly rustic instrument (and here I mean an instrument of polite life—an orchestral instrument) is undoubtedly the oboe. The bassoon runs it hard, but has a touch of comedy and a strong flavour of necromancy,while the oboe is quite good and simple in nature and is excessively in earnest; it seems to have in it the ghost of a sun-burnt boy playing to himself under a tree, in a ragged shirt unbuttoned at the throat.” A figure is given (Galpin, p. 159) of a goat playing on a shawm[88]from a carving of the twelfth century at Canterbury. The name is believed to be derived fromcalamaula, a reed-pipe, which was corrupted tochalem-elleand then toshawm. Shawms were made of various sizes, from the small treble instrument, one foot long, to the huge affair, six feet in length. The name Howe-boie,i.e.probably Haut-bois, was applied to the treble instrument as early as the reign of Elizabeth; while the deeper-toned instruments retained the name shawm. The bassoon is only a bass oboe rendered less cumbrous by the tube being bent sharply on itself. A tenor bassoon, known as the oboe da caccia, or teneroon, also existed, and if my memory serves me right, Mr Stone rescued one of these instruments from the band of a London boys’ school. A teneroon of Mr Galpin’s is shown at p. 168 of his book, where it appears to be about seven-tenths of the size of the ordinary bassoon.
Plate VII. Pibcorn or Horn-pipe
The next class of wind-instrument is that of which the clarinet is the modern representative. It has a rich but somewhat cloying tone, and, to my thinking, none of the mysterious charm of the oboe. It is characterised by a single vibrating plate or reed, and the current of air from the performer’s mouthpasses between it and an immovable surface of wood. In our country this type of reed was found in a most interesting instrument, the horn-pipe[89a]or pibcorn, which is said to have existed in Wales as late as the nineteenth century. One of these curious instruments is in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and is shown in Plate VII. It was given to the Society by Daines Barrington, who describes it in the Society’sArchæologiafor 1779. In a Saxon vocabulary of the eighth century the wordSambucus(i.e.elder-tree) is translatedswegelhorn. Now the wordswegelwas applied to thetibiaor leg-bone; it is therefore of remarkable interest to find that, according to an old Welsh peasant, the tibia of a deer should be the best tube for the pibcorn.[89b]This name, which means pipe-horn, is very appropriate, since the tube of the instrument bears at either end a cow’s horn. To the upper one the performer applied his mouth. He had no means of regulating the reed as a clarinet or oboe-player has; the reed was left to its own sweet will, as is also the case with the reeds in another ancient instrument—the bagpipe, to which a few words must be given.
Mr Henry Balfour believes that both these instruments came to us with the Keltic migration from the East. Or, as Mr Galpin suggests, we may owe the bagpipe to Roman soldiers, “for thetibia utriculariswas used in the Imperial army.” It is quite a mistake to suppose that the bagpipe is inany special way connected with Scotland. Illuminated missals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries show how common the bagpipe was in England. But the Scots must at least have a share of the credit of preserving the bagpipe from extinction; and the same may be said of another Keltic race, the Breton, in whose land I have heard the bagpipe accompanied by a rough kind of oboe.
Mr Galpin tells me a pleasant story of a bagpipe hunt in Paris. He discovered, in a shop, an old French musette (bagpipe), the chanter or melody-pipe of which was missing. He did not buy it until in a two days’ hunt all over Paris he discovered the lost chanter, when he returned to the first shop, triumphantly carried off the musette, and thus became the owner of this rare and beautiful instrument.
The drone, which forms a continuous bass to the “chanter,” was not an original character of the bagpipe, but appeared soon after the year 1300. A second drone “was added about the year 1400, for it is seen in the ancient bagpipe belonging to Messrs Glen of Edinburgh,” which bears the date 1409.
The horn takes its name from the cow’s horn, out of which the instrument was made. The resemblance includes the tapering bore of this instrument, and also the fact that it is curved.[90]In the metalinstruments, made in imitation of the natural horn, we find a curvature of about a semi-circle, as in the seventeenth century hunting horn (Galpin, p. 188). While in the horn of the early seventeenth century shown on the same plate, the tube is curved into many circular coils.
PLATE VIII. I, 2, 3, 4, 5. Cornetts. 6. Serpent. 7. Bass Horn. 8. Ophicleide. 9. Keyed Bugle
The cornett,[91]which was blown like a horn or trumpet, seems to have been successful in mediæval times, because a workable scale was so much more easily attainable with it than in the ordinary trumpet. In Norway a goat’s horn pierced with four or five holes stopped by the fingers is still in use as a rustic instrument. This is in fact a cornett which, as early as the twelfth century, was made of wood or ivory, and had a characteristic six-sided form. It seems to have been popular, and Henry VIII. died possessed of many cornetts. We hear, too, of twoCornettersattached to Canterbury Cathedral; and the translators of the Bible gave it a place in Nebuchadnezzar’s band. But the cornett was doomed to destruction in the struggle for life. In 1662 Evelyn speaks of the disappearance of the cornett “which gave life to the organ.” Lord Keeper North wrote, “Nothing comes so near, or rather imitates so much, an excellent voice as a cornett pipe; but the labour of the lips is too great and is seldom well-sounded.” The cornett was given a place in the chorales of Bach and the operas of Gluck after it had become extinct in England.
The bass cornett was known as the serpent from itscurved form, and this character was in fact necessary in order that the performer’s hands might be nearer together. Mr Galpin writes:—“If not overblown it yields a peculiarly softwoodytone which no longer has its counterpart in the orchestra.” He quotes from Thomas Hardy’sUnder the Greenwood Tree, where the village shoemaker remarks, “There’s worse things than serpents.” Dr Stone (Dictionary of Music, 1883) wrote:—“There were till a few years ago two serpents in the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, played by Mr Standen and Mr Pimlett.” The serpent[92]was driven out of the orchestra by the Ophicleide, which again has been extinguished by the valved Tubas of Adolphe Sax.
“The story of the trumpet is the story of panoply and pomp,” says Mr Galpin, and goes on to explain how the trumpeters with drummers formed an exclusive guild. Trumpets served as war-like instruments, but also for domestic pomp. Thus twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums sounded while Queen Elizabeth’s dinner was being brought in. That monarch had certainly no excuse for being late for her meals.
The trumpet was originally a long straightcylindrical tube, but as early as 1300 the tube was bent into a loop, thus combining length with handiness. This form of the instrument was known as a clarion, a word which has degenerated in our day into a picturesque word for a trumpet. It was for the clarion that Bach and Handel wrote trumpet parts which, I gather, are almost unplayable on the modern instrument. The clarion seems to have been soon beaten in the struggle for life by the clarinet, “which, as its name implies, was considered an effective substitute for the high clarion notes.”
The sackbut,i.e.trombone, is an important offshoot from the trumpet. The essential feature of this splendid instrument is that the length of the tube can be altered at will. Thus the performer is not—like the trumpeter—confined to one series of harmonics, but can take advantage of a whole series of these accessory notes.
This is one of the most ancient of instruments. Thus in the second century before our era Ctesibius of Alexandria had a simple type of organ, in which the wind from the bellows was admitted at will into whistle-like tube by keys which the performer depressed with his fingers. It is a remarkable fact that keys should afterwards have been replaced by cumbersomesliderswhich had to be pushed in and out to produce the desired note. But so it was, and the keyboard had to be rediscovered in the twelfth century. The keys were firstapplied to the little portatives,[94a]one of which is figured by Galpin, p. 221, where the organist works the wind supply with one hand and manipulates the keys with the other. In Galpin, p. 222, a monk is shown playing a simple organ of apparently two octave compass, while another tonsured person is blowing a pair of bellows, one with the left and the other with the right hand. Another artist is shown by Galpin, p. 226, from a thirteenth century Psalter, who is accompanying a player of the symphony (hurdy-gurdy). The bellows are blown by the feet of an assistant.
The regal, figured by Galpin at p. 230, was a simple form of organ in which the pipes were not of the whistle-type, but consisted principally of reed-pipes.
In my essay on war music[94b]I wrote of the band of a French regiment at the beginning of the war: “When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour—a romantic dash of the hunting-song, and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. . . . As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drumleading the living to victory or death.” I have ventured to quote the above passage in illustration of Mr Galpin’s striking remark that the drum has probably entered more largely than any other instrument into the destinies of the human race.
The historian of musical instruments in the far north has an easy task, since it appears that the Eskimoes confine themselves to the drum, which they sound on all possible occasions, from prosperous huntings to the death of a comrade.
The instruments of the class here dealt with are divided into three types:—
(i.) The timbrel or tambourine, which is characterised by having only one membrane stretched on a shallow wooden frame.
(ii.) The drum with two membranes, one at each end of a barrel-shaped frame.
(iii.) The naker or kettle-drum, with a single membrane stretched over the opening of a hemispherical frame. The tambourine is an extremely ancient instrument since it was known in Assyria and Egypt as well as in Greece and Rome, and it is especially interesting to learn that the Roman tambourine had the metal discs which make so exciting a jingle in the modern instrument. The mediæval tambourine also had what, in the case of the drum, is called thesnare, which is a cord tightly stretched across the membrane, and gives a certain sting to instruments of this class, but now only exists in the drum proper.
An ancient Egyptian drum was discovered at Thebes. It was a true drum having a membrane at each end of the hollow cylinder which made the frame, and, what is more remarkable, it had the braces or system of cords by which we still tighten the drum-membranes.
The drum “suspended at the side of the player and beaten on one head only” became, with the accompaniment of the fife, the earliest type of military music.[96a]Mr Galpin concludes[96b]by quoting what Virdung (1511) had to say of drums: “I verily believe that the devil must have had the devising and making of them, for there is no pleasure nor anything good about them. If the noise of the drum-stick be music, then the coopers who make barrels must be musicians.”
Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable:[96d]I have often admiredthe drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key. One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper.
The earliest record of kettle-drums in this country is in the list of Edward I.’s musicians, among whom was Janino le Nakerer. Henry VIII. is said to have sent to Vienna for kettle-drums[97]that could be played on horseback in the Hungarian manner. In England, Handel was the first to use the kettle-drum in the concert-room, and he used to borrow from the Tower the drums taken from the French at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709.
The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient Assyrian monuments, and “in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities.” They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.) vigorously clashing his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears of the Janizary bands.
Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on theConsort,i.e.Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.
I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall not be offensively learned.
The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures. Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances.Of course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due.
In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life. But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.
In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower[100a]because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,—“three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . . . to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of God on the crops.”[100b]Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and used them “in those solemn processions.” As far as dates are concerned the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April,i.e.10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield,[100c]from eightyears’ observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is associated with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.
In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the namemilk-worthave survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means “much milk,” and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle.
There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut (Bunium) is called St Anthony’s nut, because, as quoted by Prior, “The wretched Antonius” was “forced to mind the filthy herds of swine.” The buttercup (R. bulbosus) was called St Anthony’s turnip from its tubers being said to be eaten by pigs.
St Catherine’s flower (Nigella) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine’s wheel. I do notmean the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint died. St James’ wort is the yellow daisy-like flowerSenecio Jacobæa, known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.
In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter’s wort from the resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys—no doubt the keys of heaven, of which Peter is custodian.
A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were doubtless known as Our Lady’s flowers, but their names have been corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the pronoun.
Lady’s fingers (Anthyllis vulneraria) is a common enough plant bearing a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower head.
Butcher’s broom is known in Wales as Mary’s holly, the latter half of the name referring to its red berries and prickly leaves. It was used to clean butcher’s blocks.
Lady’s slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have often mourned.
Lady’s tresses (the orchidSpiranthes) is so named from the curious twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.
Lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis) bears a name immortalised in Shakespeare’s song:—
“When daisies pied and violets blue,And lady’s smocks all silver white,And cuckow-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight.”
“When daisies pied and violets blue,And lady’s smocks all silver white,And cuckow-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight.”
I suspect that the poet called themsilver whiteto rhyme withdelight, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they especially smock-like—many other flowers suggest a woman’s skirt equally well—but this is a carping criticism.
Lady’s bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of one or more kinds of Galium.
Lady’s bower isClematis vitalba, now known as traveller’s joy. Anyone exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds, will travel in continuous joy, for the lady’s bower converts many hundred yards of hedge into continuous beauty.
Pulmonariahas been called the Virgin Mary’s tears, from the pale circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same eyes disfigured with weeping.
Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species ofScabiosacalled devil’s bit, because that eminent personage bit the root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to possess.
We now pass on to plants flowering on certaindates, such as Saints’ days or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.
The name St John’s wort, which we habitually apply to several species ofHypericum, is correctly used only forH. perforatum. Its English name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John’s Day, 24th June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield’s average of eight annual observations is 4th July.
I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John’s wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland’sDictionary of English Plant Names, 1886, I found thatH. perforatumwas called Balm of Warrior’s Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant isHypericum androsæmum, known as Tutsan, said to meantoute saine, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One’s leaves.
The common yellow wayside plantGeum urbanumis known as Herb Benet, because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of poison.
The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St William’s Day, 25th June. But Blomefield’s date is 17th June, which wouldbe 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that William is a corruption of the French nameœillet, a word derived from the Latinocellus, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:—Ocellus—œillet—Willy—William.
Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.
Some plant-names take us back to historical personages. The Carline thistle is named after Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne. There was a pestilence in his army, and in answer to his prayer an angel appeared and shot, from a crossbow, a bolt, which fell on the Carline thistle with which the Emperor proceeded to conquer the pestilence.
Another magical arrow-shot is described in well-known lines inA Midsummer Night’s Dream(Act ii., scene I). Oberon speaks of Cupid loosing his “love shaft smartly from the bow” at “a fair vestal throned in the west.” Cupid missed his mark, and the poet continues:—
“Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:It fell upon a little western flower,Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.”
“Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:It fell upon a little western flower,Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.”
The name Love-in-idleness should be Love-in-idle if the metre could have allowed it. This means love-in-vain: witness the Anglo-Saxon bible, where occursthe phrase to take God’s name “in idle.” The flower referred to by Shakespeare is doubtless the pansy.
Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild chamomile was known in the Eastern counties asMawther; and this, as all lovers of Dickens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the Suffolk dialect.
The elder used to be known as thebour-tree. I fear that the name is extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar with it in his youth. I love this name because it is associated in my mind with the words of Meg Merrilees[106]inGuy Mannering, the first English classic in which I took pleasure.
“Aye, on this very spot the man fell from his horse—I was behind the bour-tree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never kenn’d the word!”
The actual origin of the name is, however, not romantic; it is said to meanbore, and to refer to the fact that tubes were made from it by boring out the pith. It seems possible that such tubes were, in primitive times, used to blow the fire, and this would explain the name elder, which seems to meankindler.
The dwarf elder, a distinct species, though not connected with an individual, commemorates a race,being known as Dane’s blood. It grows on the Bartlow Hills, near Cambridge, where tradition says that Danes were killed in battle.
I add a few names as being picturesque, though without any literary associations.
There is an old name for the shepherd’s purse, viz., clapperde-pouch, which is said to allude to the leper who stood at the cross-ways announcing his presence with a bell and clapper, and begged for pennies to put in his pouch, which is typified by the seed capsule. Another name for the plant is mother’s heart,[107]and is no doubt referable to the shape of the seed pod. Children in England, also in Germany and Switzerland, used to play at the simple game of asking a companion to gather a pod, and then jeering at him for having plucked out his mother’s heart.
The name columbine comes from the flower’s obvious resemblance to a group of doves, and its Latin nameaquilegia, meaning a collection of eagles, is a nobler form of the same idea.
Dead-man’s fingers is a fine uncanny name for the innocentOrchis maculata, and refers to its branching white tuber.
Garlick is a very ancient name, being derived from the Anglo-Saxongar, a spear, andleac, a plant; in the name house-leek the word still bears its original meaning of a plant.
Tragopogon, the goat’s beard, which closes its flowers about mid-day, was once known as go-to-bed-at-noon.
The pansy has been called Herb trinity from the triple colouring of its petals. In Welsh, and also in German, the pansy is called stepmother. The lower petal is the most decorative, and this is the stepmother herself. On examining the back of the flower it will be seen that she is supported by two green leaflets, known as thesepals. These are called her two chairs. Then come her two daughters, less smart, and having only a chair apiece. Lastly, the two step-daughters, still more plainly dressed and with but one chair between them.
Polemonium, from its numerous leaflets arranged in pairs, has received the picturesque name of Jacob’s ladder. I remember the pleasure with which I first saw it growing wild in the hayfields of the Engadine.
Polygonatum,i.e.Solomon’s seal, has been christenedScala cœli, the ladder to heaven, on the same principle. The name Solomon’s seal is not obviously appropriate till we dig up the plant, when the underground stem is found marked with curious scars, which, however, should be pentagonal if they are to represent Solomon’s pentacle.
Herb twopence (Lysimchia nummularia) is so named after the round leaflets arranged in pairs along its creeping stalk. I do not know whyInula conyzais called ploughman’s spikenard, but it is a picturesque name.
Everyone knows the garden plant touch-me-not, so called from the curious irritability of its pods, which writhe in an uncanny way when we gather them. This quality is expressed twice over in the Latin nameImpatiens noli-me-tangere. But there is aforgotten old English name which pleases me more, viz., quick-in-the-hand, that is to say alive-in-the-hand. This use of the word survives in the familiar phrase “the quick and the dead.”
The English name ofEchium vulgareis viper’s bugloss—this I had always imagined referred to the forked tongue (the style) which projects from the flower. But it is said to be so named from the seeds resembling a viper’s head. This is certainly the case, and what can be the function of the little knobs on the seed, which represent eyes, I cannot imagine. The name bugloss is derived from the Greek and means ox-tongue—no doubt in reference to the plant’s rough leaves.
Corruptions.—Another and greater class of names comprises those which are corruptions of classical names or of those unfamiliar in other ways.
A well-known example is daffodil, which was originally affodyl, a corruption of asphodel, a name of unknown meaning, originally given to the iris, and transferred to narcissus. A very obvious corruption is aaron, which has been applied to Lords and Ladies, whose scientific name is Arum. An incomprehensibly foolish instance is bullrush for pool-rush,i.e.water rush. This name has at least the merit of supplying material for that riddle of our childhood in which occur the words “when the bull rushes out.”
Carraway is another obvious corruption of its Latin nameCarum carui. In the ancientSchola Salernitana, as I learn from Sir Norman Moore, is a punning Latin line, “Dum carui carwey non sinefebre fui” (“When I was out of carraway I was never free from fever”).
Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) was originally dagwood, so called because it was used to makedagsor skewers: doubtless the same word as dagger. According to a Welsh tradition dogwood was the tree on which the devil hung his mother. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting this fact, although it does not bear on anything in particular.
Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability derived from the Latinaculentus, prickly, which became in Frenchaiglent. Hence came the French names of the planteglantierand oureglantine.
Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to come from the FlemishKroes, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grows wild in England, and seems by some botanists to be considered indigenous, should have a Flemish name. Prior, our chief authority, asserts that the early herbalists constantly took names from continental writers, and I think his judgment may be trusted. The problem of the derivation of the word gooseberry may at least serve to illustrate the difficulty of the subject.
The nameHemlock, which nowadays has a wicked poisonous sound, has in truth a very innocent origin. It is compounded ofhem,i.e.haulm, a stalk, andlock, or leac, a plant, thus signifying merely a plant with a stem. Jack of the Buttery, a name applied toSedum acre, is said to be a corruption frombot,i.e.an internal parasite, andtheriac, by which was meant a cure for that evil. The last-named word has turned into “Jack,” andbothas grown into “buttery.”
Lamb’s tongue is said to be a name forPlantago media; but this must, I think, be a corruption of land tongue, which is highly appropriate to the tongue-like leaves lying so closely appressed to the soil that no blade of grass grows under them, as though they were determined to spite any one who should root them up by disfiguring his lawn with naked patches. But still better evidence is forthcoming in the fact that my old Cambridgeshire gardener always called them land tongues. Why the Anglo-Saxons used the nameway breadfor the plantain I do not see: the fact is vouched for by Cockayne in his book entitledLeechdoms.
In Gloucestershire the plantain is called thefire-leaf, a name which records the belief that plantains are a danger in the way of heating hay-stacks.
The word madder,i.e.the name of the plant which supplies the red dye for the trousers of our French allies, has a curious history. Madder is derived frommad, a worm, and should therefore be applied to cochineal, the red colouring matter produced by the minute creature called a coccus. But still more confusion meets us: the word vermilion which is now used for a red colour of mineral origin, is derived fromvermis, a worm, and should therefore also be applied to cochineal. The word pink, one of the most familiar of plant-names, has a curious origin, being simply the GermanPfingst, a corruption of Pentecost,i.e.the fiftieth day after Easter.
The tendency to make some kind of sense, or at least something familiar, from the unfamiliar, comes out in name service-tree (Pyrus torminalis). It has nothing to do withservice, being simply a corruption ofcerevisia, a fermented liquor. The fruit was used for brewing what Evelyn in hisSylva, chap. xv., declares it to be, an incomparable drink. Prior says that the French name of the tree,cormier, is derived from an ancient Gaulish wordcourmi, which seems to suggest the modern Welshcwrw, beer.
Tansy (Tanacetum) is believed to be simply a corruption ofathansia, immortality. I gather that we got the name through the Frenchathanasie, in which, of course, thethis sounded as at. In all probability it was originally applied to some plant more deserving of being credited with immortality.
A few miscellaneous names may here be given.Thorough waxis a name forChlora perfoliata, also known asyellow wort. Its leaves are perfoliate,i.e.opposite and united by their bases so that the stem seems to have grown through a single leaf.
Kemps,i.e.warriors, was a name of the common plantain, with which children used to fight one against the other. I remember this as being an unsatisfactory game because one so constantly killed one’s own kemp instead of the enemy.
Herb Parisis simply the plant with a pair of leaves; it should, however, have been described as having four leaves. Thus the name has nothing todo with Paris, the capital of France. But some plants have names of geographical origin; the currants or minute grapes used for making cakes are so called because they come from Corinth. So that we are quite wrong in applying this same name to the familiar companion of the gooseberry in our gardens. In the same way damsons are so called because they are said to have come originally from Damascus.
The name Canterbury bell has a very interesting origin, namely, that bells were the recognised badge of pilgrims to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury. One of these bells was found in the bed of the Thames when old London Bridge was pulled down. It is said to be “about the size of an ordinary handbell, with a flat top, on which is an open handle, through which a strap could easily be passed to attach it to a horse’s collar.” This bell is known to have been associated with Canterbury by the inscriptionCampana Thomeon the outer edge. The pilgrims seem to have journeyed cheerfully. It is written that some “pilgrims will have with them bag-pipes; so that in everie towne they come through, what with the noise of their piping, and the jangling of theirCanterburie bells, etc., they make more noise than if the king came there away.”
Dutch mice is a name forLathyrus tuberosus. Gerard says that the plant is so named from the “similitude or likeness of Domesticall Mise, which the blacke, rounde, and long nuts, with a peece of the slender string hanging out behind do represent.” From this description one would expect to seemouse-like pods, but it is the tubers which give the name to the plant. This is clearly visible in Bentham’s illustration;[114]I hope the artist was unaware of the name when he made the drawing—but I have my doubts. The specimen from Cambridgeshire (which I owe to the kindness of Mr Shrubbs of the University Herbarium) are not especially mouse-like.
The names shepherd’s needle and Venus’ comb have been given to an umbelliferous plant,Scandix Pecten. The teeth of the comb are represented by what are practically seeds. These are elongated stick-like objects covered with minute prickles all pointing upwards. I do not know how the seeds germinate under ordinary conditions, but I learn from Mr Shrubbs that they are dragged into the holes of earthworms, as my father describes in the case of sticks and leaf-stalks. Unfortunately for the worms, the prickles on Venus’ needles do not allow the creatures to free themselves, and they actually die in considerable numbers with the needles fixed in their gullets.
“Few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did.”—Bower.
“Few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did.”
—Bower.
Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in 1817 and died in 1911; and of these ninety-four years eighty-one included botanical work, for at thirteen “Joseph” was “becoming a zealous botanist”; and Mr L. Huxley records (ii., 480) that he kept at work till a little before his death on 10th December 1911, and that although his physical strength began to fail in August, yet “till the end he was keenly interested in current topics and the latest contribution to natural science.” So far as actual research is concerned, it is remarkable that he should have continued to work at the Balsams—a very difficult class of plants—at least till 1910. Mr Huxley has wisely determined to make his book of a reasonable size, and the task of compressing his gigantic mass of material into two volumes must have been a difficult one. He has been thoroughly successful,[115b]and no aspect of SirJoseph’s life is neglected, the whole being admirably arranged and annotated, and treated throughout with conspicuous judgment and skill.
In an “autobiographical fragment” (i., p. 3) Sir Joseph records that he was born at Halesworth in Suffolk, “being the second child of William Jackson Hooker and Maria Turner.” He was not only the son of an eminent botanist, but fate went so far as to give him a botanical godfather in the person of Rev. J. Dalton, “a student of carices and mosses and discoverer ofScheuchzeriain England.” It was after Mr Dalton that Hooker was named, his first name, Joseph, commemorating his grandfather Hooker. In 1821 the family moved to Glasgow, where Sir William Hooker was appointed Professor of Botany. It was here that Sir Joseph, at the age of five or six, showed his innate love of plants, for he records[116]:—
“When I was still in petticoats, I was found grubbing in a wall in the dirty suburbs of the dirty city of Glasgow, and . . . when asked what I was about, I cried out that I had foundBryum argenteum(which it was not), a very pretty little moss which I had seen in my father’s collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy.”
While still a child his father used to take him on excursions in the Highlands, and on one occasion, on returning home, Joseph built up a heap of stones to represent a mountain and “stuck upon it specimens of the mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany.”
Sir Joseph records that his father gave him a scrap of a moss gathered by Mungo Park when almost at the point of death. It excited in him a desire of entering Africa by Morocco, and crossing the greater Atlas. That childish dream, he says, “I never lost; I nursed it till, half a century afterwards, . . . I did (with my friend Mr Ball, who is here by me, and another friend Mr G. Maw) ascend to the summit of the previously unconquered Atlas.”
In 1820 William Hooker was appointed to the newly founded Professorship of Botany at Glasgow. Of this his son Joseph writes, “It was a bold venture for my father to undertake so responsible an office, for he had never lectured, or even attended a course of lectures.” With wonderful energy he “published in time for use in his second course, theFlora Scoticain two volumes.” Sir Joseph’s mother was Maria, daughter of Dawson Turner, banker, botanist and archæologist, so that science was provided on both sides of the pedigree.
It would seem that Sir Joseph’s mother was somewhat of a martinet. When Joseph came in from school he had to present himself to her, and “was not allowed to sit down in her presence without permission.”
In 1832, Joseph, then fifteen years of age, entered Glasgow University, being already, in the words of his father, “a fair British botanist” with “a tolerable herbarium very much of his own collecting”; he adds, “Had he time for it, he would already be more useful to me than Mr Klotzsch” [his assistant].
It was in 1838 that Hooker got his opportunity,for it chanced that James Clerk Ross, the Arctic explorer, was in 1838 visiting at the Smiths of Jordan Hill. In order that Joseph might meet Ross, both he and his father were invited to breakfast. The meeting ended in Ross promising to take him as surgeon and naturalist. There seems to have been a little innocent jobbery with folks in high places, and it fortunately turned out that the expedition was delayed so that Joseph had the opportunity of spending some time at Haslar Hospital.
The expedition seems to have been fitted out with astonishing poverty. Seventy years later he wrote, “Except some drying paper for plants, I had not a single instrument or book supplied to me as a naturalist—all were given to me by my father. I had, however, the use of Ross’s library, and you may hardly credit it, but it is fact that not a single glass bottle was supplied for collecting purposes; empty pickle bottles were all we had, and rum as a preservative from the ship’s stores.”
It is interesting to find Ross, in his preliminary talk with Hooker, saying that he wanted a trained naturalist, “such a person as Mr Darwin”—to which Hooker aptly retorted by asking what Mr Darwin was before he went out.
I imagine that Hooker was lucky in being taken on Ross’s voyageas a naturalist, since the primary object of the expedition was to fill up “the wide blanks in the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism in the southern hemisphere.”
It seems like a forecast of what was to be the chief friendship of his life, that Darwin’sNaturalist’s Voyageshould have been one of the books that inspired him to join in the voyage of theErebusandTerror. Hooker “slept with the proofs under his pillow, and devoured them eagerly the moment he woke in the morning.” Much earlier he had been stirred by Cook’s voyages, and, like Darwin, was fired by Humboldt’sPersonal Narrative. While at sea his work was largely zoological, and the tow-net was kept busy. But on 24th August 1841, he writes to his father of his great wish to devote himself “to collecting plants and studying them . . . but we are comparatively seldom off the sea, and then in the most unpropitious seasons for travelling or collecting.” He speaks, too, of his wish to see the end of the voyage, in order that he might devote himself to botany.
The voyage had its dangers: in March 1842, during a storm, theTerrorcollided with theErebus, and for nearly ten minutes the interlocked ships drifted towards a huge berg: theErebusremained rolling and striking her masts against the berg, but managed by the “desperate expedient” of “sailing stern first down wind” to escape destruction.
Hooker writes to his father, 25th November 1842: “The Barrier, the bergs several hundred feet high and 1–6 miles long, and the Mts. of the great Antarctic continent, are too grand to be imagined, and almost too stupendous to be carried in the memory.”
In a letter to his mother he describes seeing at Cape Horn “a little cairn of stones raised by the officers of theBeagle.” And again he writes, “Cloudsand fogs, rain and snow justified all Darwin’s accurate descriptions of a dreary Fuegian summer.” He speaks of Darwin’sNaturalist’s Voyageas “not only indispensable but a delightful companion and guide.” There is plenty of interesting matter in the account of Hooker’s voyage, but the above fragments of detail must here suffice. TheErebusandTerrorreached Woolwich on 7th September 1843.
Having safely returned to England, the next problem was what was to be Hooker’s permanent occupation. Nothing, however, was fixed on, and in the meantime he fulfilled “his intention of seeing the chief Continental botanists, and comparing their gardens and collections with those of Kew.”
His first visit was to Humboldt, at Paris, who turned out “a punchy little German,” whereas he had expected “a fine fellow 6 feet without his boots.” Of the great man he says, “He certainly is still a most wonderful man, with a sagacity and memory and capability for generalising that are quite marvellous. I gave him my book [Flora Antarctica], which delighted him much; he read through the first three numbers, and I suppose noted down thirty or forty things which he asked me particulars about.” Humboldt was then seventy-six years of age. Hooker’s impression of the Paris botanists was not favourable; he speaks of their habit of telling him of the magnitude of their own researches, “while of those of their neighbours they seem to know very little indeed.” Of Decaisne, however, he speaks with warm appreciation. He would have been surprised if a prophethad told him that he was to be instrumental in bringing out an English version of Decaisne’s well-known book.
In 1845 Hooker acted as a deputy for Graham, the Professor of Botany at Edinburgh. In May he wrote to his father, “I am lecturing away like a house on fire. I was not in the funk I expected, though I had every reason to be in a far greater one.” Finally, when Graham died, Balfour, the father of the present holder of the office, was elected professor, and Hooker was fortunately freed from a post that would have been a fatal tie to his career.
But happier events followed; he became engaged to Frances, daughter of Professor Henslow. Sir William spoke of the affair with a certain pomposity: “I believe Miss Henslow to be an amiable and well-educated person of most respectable though not high connections, and from all that I have seen of her, well suited to Joseph’s habits and pursuits.” Their engagement was a long one, and their marriage could not take place till after his Indian journey, which was the next event of importance in his career.
On the voyage out, he was fortunate in becoming known to Lord Dalhousie, and the friendship built up in the course of the journey and afterwards in India “showed itself in unstinted support of Hooker.” It was, however, “a personal appreciation of the man rather than of the scientific investigator.” Indeed, Lord Dalhousie, “a perfect specimen of the miserable system of education pursued at Oxford,” had a “lamentably low opinion” of science.
At Darjiling began Hooker’s “lifelong friendshipwith a very remarkable character, Brian Hodgson,”[122a]administrator and scholar, who had “won equal fame as Resident at the court of Nepal and as a student of Oriental lore.” Mr L. Huxley points out that “if the friendship with Lord Dalhousie provided the key that opened official barriers and made Hooker’s journeyings possible, the friendship with Hodgson more than anything else made them a practical success.”
I shall not attempt to follow Hooker through his wanderings—only a few scattered references to them are possible. It is pleasant to read that when Mr Elwes visited Sikkim twenty-two years after Hooker, he found that the Lepchas almost worshipped him, and he was remembered as a learned Hakim, an incarnation of wisdom and strength.
The most exciting adventure of Hooker and his fellow-traveller was their imprisonment in Sikkim, where their lives were clearly in danger, and they were only released when “troops were hurried up to Darjiling” and “an ultimatum dispatched to the Rajah.”[122b]
For the rest of his botanical journeyings he had the companionship of Thomson, who had been his fellow-student, and, like himself, was the son of a Glasgow professor. A letter to his father (undated) gives an idea of the wonderful success of his Indian travels: “It is easy to talk of aFlora Indica, and Thomson and I do talk of it, to imbecility! Butsuppose that we even adopted the size, quality of paper, brevity of description, etc., which characterise De Candolle’sProdromus, and we should, even under these conditions, fill twelve such volumes at least.”
The usual shabbiness[123]of governments towards science is well illustrated (p. 344) in the case of Hooker:—“His total expenditure was £2200; the official allowances were £1200: the remainder was contributed from his own and his father’s purse.”
In 1855 Joseph began his official life at Kew on being appointed assistant to his father. And ten years later, on Sir William’s death, he succeeded as a matter of course to the Directorship.
Shortly before this,i.e.in 1854, he was the recipient of an honour greatly coveted by men of science, namely the award of the Royal Medal. He is characteristically pleased for the sake of the science of Botany rather than for himself, and refers to the neglect that botany has generally experienced at the hands of the Society in comparison with zoological subjects. His own successcharacteristically reminds him of what he considered a slight to his father, viz., that he had not received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This, the highest honour which men of science can aspire to, is open not merely to Britons but to all the world, and I should doubt whether Sir William had ever been high in the list of possible recipients.
We are now approaching the great change wrought in the scientific outlook of the world by theOrigin of Species. In November 1856, after reading Darwin’s MS. on geographical distribution, Hooker wrote that though “never very stubborn about unalterability of specific type, I never felt so shaky about species before.” It must be remembered that throughout the companionship of Hooker and Darwin the latter was a convinced evolutionist. He writes in his autobiography that in 1838, after reading Malthus on Population, he was convinced of the origin of new species by means of natural selection. Throughout the close intercourse which subsisted for so many years between Hooker and Darwin, in which the views afterwards put forth in theOrigin of Specieswere discussed, Hooker seems not to have been a convinced evolutionist. His conversion dates apparently from 1858, when the papers by Darwin and Wallace were read at the Linnean Society. This has always appeared to me remarkable, and T. H. Huxley[124]has said with regard to his own position:—“My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the‘Origin’ was, ‘How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!’”
After the publication of theOrigin of SpeciesHooker wrote to Darwin,[125]“I have not yet got half through the book, not from want of will, but of time—for it is the very hardest book to read, to full profit, that I ever tried—it is so cram-full of matter and reasoning. . . . Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often fancy that I must have been very stupid not to have more fully followed it in MS.”
Whatever Hooker may have been he was not stupid, and though nowadays it is easy to feel surprise that his long-continued familiarity with Darwin’s work had not earlier convinced him of the doctrine of evolution by means of natural selection, we must ascribe it rather to his early education in the sacrosanct meaning of the wordspecies.
I think it must have been roughly about the time of the publication of theOrigin of Speciesthat my earliest memories of Sir Joseph Hooker refer. I clearly remember his eating gooseberries with us as children, in the kitchen garden at Down. The love of gooseberries was a bond between us which had no existence in the case of our uncles, who either ate no gooseberries or preferred to do so in solitude. By a process of evolutionary change the word gooseberry took on a new meaning at Down. Hooker used to send Darwin some especially fine bananas grown in the Kew hothouses, and these were called Kew gooseberries. It was characteristicof my father to feel doubts as to whether he ought to receive Royal bananas from a Royal garden. I wish I could remember Hooker romping with us as children, of which he somewhere speaks.
It was about this time that Darwin had a fancy to make out the names of the English grasses, and Hooker wrote, “How on earth you have made out 30 grasses rightly is a mystery to me. You must have a marvellous tact for appreciating diagnosis.” It was at this time that one of Darwin’s boys remarked in regard to a grass he had found:—“I are an extraordinary grass-finder, and must have it particularly by me all dinner.” Strange to say he did not grow into a botanist.
Hooker’s letters at this time impress me with the difficulty he met with in adapting his systematic work to the doctrines of evolution. He gives the impression of working at species in a puzzled or discontented frame of mind. Thus on 1st January 1859, he writes to a fellow-botanist:—“What I shall try to do is, to harmonise the facts with the newest doctrines, not because they are the truest, but because they do give you room to reason and reflect at present, and hopes for the future, whereas the old stick-in-the-mud doctrines of absolute creations, multiple creations, and dispersion by actual causes under existing circumstances, are all used up, they are so many stops to further enquiry.”
A few days later he continues to the same correspondent: “If the course of migration does not agree with that of birds, winds, currents, etc., so much the worse for the facts of migration!” Onthe whole it seems to me a remarkable fact that Hooker’s conversion to evolution was such a slow affair. As Mr Huxley points out, “The partial light thrown on the question in fragmentary discussions was not enough, and until 1858–59, after the consolidation of Darwin’s arguments in the famous Abstract [The Origin of Species], Hooker . . . worked avowedly on the accepted lines of the fixity of species, for which he had so far found no convincing substitute.”
It is pleasant to read Darwin’s warm-hearted words:[127a]“You may say what you like, but you will never convince me that I do not owe you ten times as much as you can owe me” (30th Dec. 1858).
Hooker’s importance in the world was ever on the increase, and this had also its usual concomitant drawbacks. Huxley wrote to him[127b]on 19th December 1860: “It is no use having any false modesty about the matter. You and I, if we last ten years longer—and you by a long while first—will be representatives of our respective lines in the country. In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform, to ourselves, to the outside world, and to Science. We shall have to swallow praise, which is no great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and irritations.” And this was doubtless a true prophecy for both the friends.
Hooker’s work—both his botanical research and duties of a more public character—was ever on the increase.
In the first category comes theGenera Plantarum, a gigantic piece of work begun with the co-operationof Bentham in the ’60’s, and continued until 1883. The aim of this celebrated publication was no less than to give a revised definition of every genus of flowering plants. If this had been the only publication by the two friends, it had been enough to found a high and permanent place in the botanical world. But as far as Hooker was concerned, it may almost be said to have been carried out in his spare moments. It should be remembered that for part of this period he was aided in the management of the Gardens by Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, who began as Hooker’s Private Secretary and was then made Assistant Director.[128a]
The Presidency of the Royal Society, which Hooker held 1873–78, was clearly a great strain, but he carried out the work (which is in fact that of a ministry of science) with conspicuous success.
In January 1873 he wrote to Darwin:—“I quite agree as to the awful honour of P. R. S. . . . but, my dear fellow, I don’t want to be crowned head of science. I dread it—‘Uneasy is the head, etc.’—and my beloved Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded.” It gives some idea of the strain of his work as a whole when we find him writing[128b]to Darwin (Jan. 14, 1875): “I have 15 Committees of the R[oyal] S[ociety] to attend to. I cannot tell you what a relief they are to me—matters are so ably and quietly conducted by Stokes, Huxley, and Spottiswoode that to me they are of the same sort of relaxation that metaphysics are to Huxley.”
He speaks,[128c]too (1874), of the annual conversazioneas “a tremendous affair. . . . How I did pity the President of the United States.” I am reminded of an American caricature of the President of the United States with red, swollen fingers, inscribed:—“The hand we have shaken so often.” With regard to other honours, he declined at once the K.C.M.G.; he then began to dread a K.C.B.; finally he was trapped into the K.C.S.I., an honour which most men would desire quite as much as Hooker longed to decline it.
In 1873 Hooker made a series of experiments on the digestion and absorption of food by certain insectivorous plants, notably Nepenthes, with the object of helping Darwin in his work on that subject.
We must return a year or two to deal with a matter which, as Mr L. Huxley remarks, “ravaged and embittered” the period 1870–72—namely, his conflict with Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone’s Government. Mr L. Huxley, like a clever musician, gives a touch of Ayrton’s tone in the opening phrases of his composition. At a grand festivity in honour of the Shah of Persia this sovereign was unaccountably anxious to meet the Commissioner of Works. Ayrton was at supper, and bluntly responded, with his mouth full of chicken, “I’ll see the old nigger in Jericho first!”
He began to show his quality by sending an “official reprimand to the Director of Kew.” This, the first received in twenty-nine years’ service, was based “on a misapprehension.” Ayrton’s aim seems to have been to compel Hooker to resign and convert Kew Gardens into a public park.
In 1871 Hooker casually discovered from a subordinate “that he himself had been superseded . . . in one of his most important duties—namely, the heating of the plant-houses.” It would take too long to enumerate the endless acts of insolence and folly which marked Ayrton’s treatment of Hooker. A full statement of the case was drawn up and signed by a small body of the most distinguished scientific men of the day, and after a debate in the House of Commons, Mr Ayrton was kicked upstairs “from the Board of Works to the resuscitated office of Judge Advocate General.” I remember an anecdote which illustrates Ayrton’s stupendous ignorance of the great department over which he was called to rule. Hooker was taking Ayrton round the Gardens when they met Mr Bentham, who happened to remark that he had come from the Herbarium. “Oh,” said Ayrton, “did you get your feet wet?” For the official ruler of Kew there was no difference between a Herbarium and an Aquarium.
This period has pleasanter memories, for it was in 1873 that Huxley, much out of health and “heavily mulcted” by having to pay the costs of an unsuccessful action brought against him by a man of straw, was persuaded to accept from a group of personal friends a sum of £3000 to clear his financial position, Hooker wrote to Darwin, “I am charmed by Huxley’s noble-minded letter.”
In 1874 Mrs Hooker died, leaving six children, of whom three still required care. Hooker wrote later to Darwin from Nuneham (ii., p. 191): “I am here on two days’ visit to a place I had not seensince I was here with Fanny Henslow [Mrs Hooker] in 1847. I cannot tell you how depressed I feel at times. She, you, and Oxford are burnt into my memory.” Here occurs, in a letter from Mrs Bewicke, some account of Hooker’s method of dealing with his family. She gives the impression (though clearly not intentionally) that Hooker rather worried his children. She speaks of the many questions he asked them at meals and the pleasure he took in their success in answering. She adds, “When we drove into London with him, he would tell us the names of the big houses and their owners, and then expect us to know them as we drove back.” This confirms my impression that Hooker was not quite judicious in his manner of educating or enlightening his children. I have a general impression of having sympathised with them in their difficulties.
In 1876, Hooker was happily married to Hyacinth, widow of Sir William Jardine; and about the same time Sir William Thiselton-Dyer married Sir Joseph’s daughter.
TheIndex Kewensis, which unites the names of two friends, was carried out at Kew, with funds supplied by Darwin. It was in fact a completion of Steudel’sNomenclator, and was published in four quarto volumes in 1892–95. The MS. is said to have weighed more than a ton and comprised about 375,000 entries. Hooker, with wonderful energy and devotion, read and criticised it in detail.[131]
In 1885, Hooker resigned his position as Director at Kew, and henceforward lived at the Camp, Sunningdale, his “Tusculum” among the pine-woods as Mr Huxley puts it, where he remained, ever hard at work, for twenty-six years.
He was still astonishingly vigorous; at eighty-two he was “younger than ever,” though at ninety-three he confessed to being lazy in his old age.
In 1885 and subsequent years he was, as I gratefully remember, employed in helping me in theLife and Letters of Charles Darwin. I could not have had a kinder or wiser collaborator.