TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.
1868-1880.
Dr. Gray made his fourth journey to Europe in the fall of 1868. He
landed in September, and went at once to Kew, where he remained most of
the time at work in the herbarium until November. He made a short round
of visits, first to Mr. Church, who was then rector of Whatley, a
village of Somersetshire, where, with Mrs. Gray, he enjoyed to the full
his stay in one of the loveliest parts of rural England. They went also
to Down to pay a visit to Darwin, and with them went Dr. and Mrs.
Hooker, with their two eldest children, and Professor Tyndall. Those
were days never to be forgotten. In November, Dr. and Mrs. Gray joined
some family friends in Paris, with whom they went to Egypt and passed
the winter on the Nile, taking the longest vacation, Dr. Gray said, he
had ever enjoyed. Upon their return they passed through Italy,
Switzerland, and Germany, where old botanical acquaintances were
renewed, and some persons seen whom he had known only by correspondence.
In England he again worked at Kew, and repeated the visits at Whatley
and Down, sailing for America, November 9, 1869.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
DOWN, BROMLEY, KENT, October 29, 1868.
In all these busy days I have neglected your kind letter of October 6,
partly in the expectation that I might be able to announce to you
definitely the time we should reach Paris. I can even now only say that
we expect to be there between the 15th and the 20th of November, and I
think we shall have just about those days (15-20) in Paris. If we can
meet, very pleasant it will be; but I dare hardly expect it. My own and
Mrs. Gray’s parcels for you shall be left at Masson’s in case we do not
see you. I am making, with Mrs. Gray, a pleasant week of holiday, most
of it here with Mr. Darwin, whose health just now is, for him,
remarkably good.
I mean to keep you apprised of our movements; and we may, by some nice
adjustments, meet in Germany. At least, and best of all, in Switzerland,
which we shall be likely to reach at midsummer. But I have matured no
plans for anything beyond the winter.
... I should like to visit Montpellier and to see Planchon, but we
shall, when we reach the Mediterranean, be attached to a party, time
will be short, and our movements no longer free.
Bentham is working at Kew with his accustomed regularity and diligence.
Hooker’s time is much occupied with matters of administration....
It must be a great satisfaction to you, that your son not only takes to
botany, but shows so great talent. I hope the line may not fail, but
that De Candolle botanists may flourish in the next century as they have
in the nineteenth....
* * * * *
The death of Horace Mann, mentioned in the next letter, Dr. Gray felt
as a great personal loss, as well as a loss to science. He was a young
man of much promise, and he felt on leaving home that, in putting him in
charge of the herbarium and of the college classes, he could not have
made any arrangement more promising and satisfactory. He had counted
much on his future help as assistant, and anticipated that he would
become a very valuable aid in carrying on his work, for he had patience,
conscientiousness, and steady diligence. Mr. Mann’s lungs were weak, and
his health required care, but nothing of immediate danger was feared.
But consumption developed rapidly, and he died after a few weeks’
illness.
Charles Wright was also working at Cambridge, and took charge of the
herbarium and garden during Dr. Gray’s absence.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
HYÈRES, EAST OF TOULON, November 29, 1868.
I had yesterday at Marseilles a letter from Mrs. Mann, conveying the sad
intelligence of her son’s death. Very sad it is....
My heart bleeds for poor Mrs. Mann, who was wrapped up in Horace, and
who feels it as the greatest of disappointments. To me, also, it is a
very great disappointment of long-cherished hopes.
I expect to find letters at Alexandria when we reach there. We sail from
Marseilles a week hence, going meanwhile to see some of this famous
shore further east....
CAIRO, December 16, 1868.
Thank you heartily for your letter of November 13. I am here learning
some subtropical botany, seeing trees growing which you have in Cuba,
etc., Parkinsonia, Schinus molle, Carob, etc. Off up the Nile
to-morrow....
In brief, I want to retain you permanently as my fidus Achates. You are
to have supreme control of the Garden. When I get home we will see what
can be done. You will have to cut off Cuba till then, but can work at
Flora Cubensis a good deal of the time. As far as my means can go, you
shall be made as comfortable as possible....
Arrangements were made to have H. sweep and keep clean the herbarium,
and Mrs. L. to scrub when needed. I fear the herbarium may have been
left to get dusty and untidy. Please take it in hand; ask L. as to
getting H., or some one, to sweep regularly; let no dusty work that can
be helped be done in the large herbarium room. Keep coal-ashes dust from
the fire from getting in, etc. Spare no expense and pains to keep down
dust and dirt....
As to dampness in herbarium, look out according to your judgment. Air
occasionally by leaving open doors of cabinets when a good fire is on,
or a dry day out. The north corner of the herbarium is the only place
that dampness gathers in, except the shelves next the floors. Well, do
the best you can. Good-by....
TO JOHN TORREY.
ON BOARD THE STEAMER POONAH,
MARSEILLES HARBOR, December 5, 1868.
We started from Paris a few days before the rest, and before Charles
Loring had arrived. We changed the cold north for the bland south in one
night, going from Paris to Avignon, where I had the pleasure of showing
J. olive groves, old walled towns, and all sorts of mediæval things;
then at Nîmes I introduced her to the old Roman world in the
well-preserved amphitheatre and the beautiful temple called Maison
Carrée, ruins of temples, baths, pavements, and all that,--a charming
place, of which I had very pleasant memories almost thirty years old.
Then, to revive old memories, we went on to Montpellier; had a nice day
with Martins[72] and Planchon[73] (whose photographs, as well as
Brongniart’s, I have for you); then we came on via Arles to Marseilles,
within an hour of the rest of the party coming direct from Paris. They
all sailed next day; we waited a week, so as to get a view of this
interesting shore, which we should not be likely ever to visit again. So
we went first to Hyères, where we first saw orange groves laden with
fruit and tall date-palms, and eucalyptus-trees forty feet high, and all
such nice things; roses by the ten thousand in hedges.... Toward evening
on the third day, we took a carriage, drove through Mentone along the
coast road to Monaco; passing by the modern and gaming district, we went
into the old fortified town to lodge; went round the ramparts in the
morning, saw more agaves than ever before, and the steep rock 300 feet
high covered with opuntias, having stems as thick as my leg, not to say
my body. Next morning took railroad through Nice to Antibes; visited M.
Thuret,[74] the botanist, by appointment; a most charming man, a French
Protestant; his carriage waited for us at the station; a delightful
place, which made us crazy with delight, 3,000 or more species of the
most interesting plants growing in the open air, where frost is seldom
seen; plants and trees which starve in conservatories here grow to vast
size; all kinds of things I never saw growing anyhow before! Roses by
the thousand. Oh, what a delightful time! But after a nice déjeuner at
two o’clock, we were off soon after three to the station, and so reached
Marseilles at nine P.M. yesterday.
I have left no room to speak of the most sad loss of Mann, very sad. How
it will affect me I cannot tell now, but suppose it will bring us home
next fall....
TO R. W. CHURCH.
ON THE NILE, BETWEEN
GIRGEH AND DENDERA, January 3, 1869.
It is only by an effort of memory that I can recall that seemingly far
distant week, with which my narrative must commence, when we went, on
Monday, to Nice by railway, and on Tuesday (taking my college colleague,
Professor Lovering), by a carriage over the finest part of the Corniche
road to Mentone, and, dropping our companion there, three miles further
to Palazzo Orengo, just within the present Italian frontier; a house
several hundred years old, which Mr. Hanbury, our host, has recently
restored and is beautifying. It is near the base of a steep acclivity,
projecting a little into the sea and commanding a view of Mentone and
Monaco with the mountains behind and westward far beyond them on the one
side, Ventimiglia and Bordighera on the other, and seaward on rare
occasions giving a view of the mountains of Corsica, over a hundred
miles distant. One of those rare occasions, well-timed for us, we
enjoyed the next morning before sunrise, and again in the afternoon. All
that day (Wednesday) we enjoyed the place and its surroundings, and the
pleasant society of Mr. and Mrs. Hanbury. They are much liked by the
people of the hamlet and district, for whom they are doing a great deal,
establishing a school for girls, with the hearty coöperation of the
curé. Wednesday, after dinner, this good-will of the neighborhood was
shown in a truly Italian way. The advocate of Ventimiglia, having some
business relative to land to transact with Mr. Hanbury, stayed to
dinner, and then asked permission to read and present a poem which he
had composed in compliment to Mrs. (Catherine) Hanbury; it being St.
Catherine’s Day. It was delivered with Italian grace and fervor, and an
Italian lady, now one of the family, told us that the versification was
very choice. Thursday, the grounds and house were thrown open, and a
collation provided for all the English people at Mentone that Mr.
Moggridge chose to conduct. Earlier I walked over to Mentone to make
some calls, especially upon young Moggridge,[75] whom you know, and who,
I am sorry to say, had been seriously ill, and was still confined to his
bed. I found him busy over the flowers and plants which his most
attentive and energetic father brings to him from all the mountains
around, cheerful and happy, but I fear he will hardly be able to
complete his illustrations of the botany of Mentone. Late in the
afternoon, after enjoying the picnic, a carriage took us to Mentone, and
thence to Monaco, where we slept, in order that the next day might not
be too fatiguing to Mrs. G. Friday, the railway, newly completed along
the shore to Monaco, took us through Villa Franca to Nice, and to
Antibes, where I had arranged to have some hours with M. Thuret (a
charming man and excellent botanist) and his incomparable garden.... The
only thing lacking was the magnificent view of the snowy Maritime Alps
(of which I saw a sketch made by young Moggridge) which the house
commands in good weather, but which was hidden from us by clouds and
mist. We reached Marseilles and our hotel in the evening; had Saturday
for our preparations, and at evening went on board the Poonah, which was
to start for Alexandria early Sunday morning. I need not say anything
about the scenery of the region we traversed, nor of the pleasure of
first seeing date-palms and eucalypti, etc., and orange and lemon trees
in groves, laden with blossom and fruit, and long hedges of roses in
full bloom in December.
... Fine weather and smooth water from Sunday to Thursday evening,
especially during the long and lovely day which opened with Stromboli
and the other Lipari Islands directly before us, and the snowy summit of
Etna in the distance, and closed with the sun setting behind the
southern base of Etna, and an inverted pyramid of smoke resting on its
summit. The day was perfect, and, not to speak of anything else, Etna
was in full view all day long, except when hidden for an hour by the
cliffs behind Messina. The latter end of the voyage was uncomfortable
enough, the sea very heavy, and glad we were to land at Alexandria,
Saturday noon, December 12, a showery day, the streets deep with mud and
filth. Early Sunday morning we were off by rail for Cairo, where we
joined the main body, awaiting our arrival, and I had time for the
English service in the afternoon, a bare dozen of people; but Mrs. L.
said the congregation was very much larger in the morning. Monday to
Friday we lived “Arabian Nights” in Cairo. If I let my pen run on my
story might be only shorter than the thousand and one of the volume
aforesaid.
On Friday, all being ready, we took to our boats, in which we have now
been domiciled so long, seemingly, that events of October and November
in England are dimly remembered, as if they belonged to another
“dynasty.” There are nine of us, in two boats. The first and larger one,
in which our table is spread, the Ibis, accommodates all the ladies and
myself, the only married man of the company.... The bow is occupied by
the crew, and at the very prow a simple cooking-affair, from which
excellent dinners of four courses, breakfasts, etc., are produced in
some wonderful way by our Arab cook and his assistant. The smaller boat,
the Undine, gives ample quarters to the three single men, also our
dragoman, the younger Sapienza, a Maltese, whose time, however, is
mostly passed on our boat.
An independent party, but arranged to keep in company, consists of Mr.
and Mrs. Howland of New York, very nice people, with their servant and
dragoman, in the Heron. But I must cut short these details, or I shall
never come to an end. On Friday and Saturday the wind was dead ahead,
and, tracking being impossible until we get out of Cairo, we were
stationary, and on Saturday some of us visited the interesting museum at
Boulak, made by Mariette. Sunday, wind still unfavorable, until nearly
sunset, when we got up two or three miles, where we commanded a superb
view. In the morning you preached to the great satisfaction of your
congregation of eleven, a very appreciating audience. We established a
regular liturgical service. I was installed as curate; but Mrs. Gray
read the first of your university sermons.... Monday and Tuesday, and I
think Wednesday also, the boat was tracked, and so we made only a few
miles a day, and some of us were much on shore....
This [the temple of Abydos] was the first Egyptian structure of any
consequence I had ever seen, and it is very impressive. Most of the
roofing remains, and having been exhumed, for the greater part, within a
very few years, the colored sculptures covering the walls are very
perfect and fresh. They are in the best style, of the same age as those
in the great temple at Thebes, which we have yet to see.
Yesterday we sailed along slowly, to-day still more so, luxuriating in
this January weather, which is like our June at home, without any of its
fitfulness. To-day we had full service, and I read your second
university sermon, which all liked very much indeed, and have bespoken
the third for next Sunday. Your audience consists of eight Unitarians
and three Orthodox Presbyterians. By the way I was much gratified with
the appreciative review of your sermons in the “Spectator,” in a number
which I received at Alexandria. Thanks for the other papers you
forwarded also. I think only letters are awaiting us at Thebes (Luxor),
but Mr. Hale may send up papers by private opportunity. The mails taken
by runners carry only letters. Our latest intelligence from the Western
World is barely up to the formation of Gladstone’s ministry. I shall
have a deal to read up. But here our days pass on with scarce a thought
of the modern and western world, except on Christmas and New Year’s
days. I wish I could give you some idea of our life here, and of all we
see and enjoy, but you must imagine it. We are well supplied with books,
especially relative to Egypt, are busy from morn to night in a leisurely
way, and are intensely comfortable....
We had yesterday for Dendera, where the temple, as to structure, is in
most complete preservation, but the architecture is of the rather
debased Ptolemaic period, and the sculptures on the walls, never equal,
I imagine, to those at Abydos, have been sadly defaced by the early
Coptic Christians. But all was very interesting, and the ladies were all
with us to enjoy it.
Evening.--We are lying eight miles below Thebes, which we expect to
reach early to-morrow morning, and to receive and dispatch letters. So I
must close this. We are writing at nine P.M., with almost all the cabin
windows open. The day has been like one of July in England,--in one
respect unusually like, for the sky has been overcast with light clouds,
and the air sultry, ending as such a day might with a sudden and brief
storm--of wind only, though it seemed about to rain; but it is now
still, and the stars are shining out of a clear sky.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
NUBIA, BELOW DERR, January 21, 1869.
Let me begin a line to you from this Æthiopian region. The object is to
inclose to you some fresh seeds of Ficus sycomorus, the true sycamore or
fool fig,--not bad to eat. They were gathered at the first cataract of
the Nile, at ancient Syene, or between it and Philæ. I think you may
like to send a part to Don José, for culture in Cuba, where it will be a
good thing to have. And the rest, let Guerrineau try to raise some, that
we may have one in the conservatory. I shall send, along with heavy
things, some nuts of the Doum palm, Hyphæne Thebaica, which branches and
is picturesque. That and the date palm are the principal trees here.
Besides, there is Acacia Nilotica (the sont) and one or two other
acacias, and an occasional sycamore. Below, a jujube tree was not
uncommon, and plenty of the fine Acacia (or Albizzia) Lebbek, with its
great flat pods and large leaflets. But none in Nubia. Up here the
cultivable valley of the Nile is just the slope of the banks bared as
the river subsides after the inundation, making a strip of green crops
from five feet to five rods wide,--all else desert, either rock or sand
as the case may be. We came twenty-four hours ago within the tropics,--a
new thing for me, and I thought of Cuba and you. But it is just
comfortably warm, 70° in the shade as I write,--has been 76°,--the
nights down to 60° or so; just nice and comfortable if you keep out of
the sun, which, though seemingly not hot, has an overpowering effect I
never knew at home. Our winds are steady from north and northwest,
pushing us up the river steadily. About sixty miles more, or may be
seventy, is the second cataract, and our limit. Then we turn our faces
north again, and descend, making our principal stops by the way. For
thus far, we have stopped only little or briefly, taking only such
sight-seeing as came in our way or took us little out of it. Yet we have
had a glance at several of the greatest things. Abou-Simbel--the great
rock temples of this region, and the main thing to go up into Nubia
for--we hope to reach to-morrow or day after. We should have been there
now, but were delayed at Assouan by long negotiations before we could
get put up the Cataracts, and afterwards lost forty-eight hours by
breaking the rudder of our larger boat. No letters till we get back to
Thebes (Luxor)--some weeks hence. There I trust there is something from
you....
TO JOHN TORREY.
January, 1869.
... At Luxor, on our way up, we stopped only half a day, and took our
first view of the great temple at Karnak. Left on the morning of January
8; reached Esneh, the capital of Upper Nubia, in early morning of the
10th. Sunday, passed the day and night there. The Ptolemaic temple, or
rather the first court of it, very perfect and thoroughly cleared out
within, the columns especially beautiful and all perfect. January 12,
having sailed past Silsilis quarries, etc., by night, reached Assouan
before noon. Here we reached the granite rocks and the basalt, and the
next day visited the quarries whence the obelisks and all the great
shafts, blocks, sarcophagi, granite colossi, etc., have been taken
during several thousand years, the last almost two thousand years ago;
and here are the chisel-marks and places cut to receive the wedges as
sharp and fresh as if the workmen had only just left off work. Of course
we viewed the obelisk left in the rough, only partly detached. We were
moored right opposite Elephantiné, and during the two or three days’
delay before we could arrange to be taken up the cataracts, or secure
fitting weather, the excursion up to Philæ was made by most of the
party, on camels or donkeys (I greatly prefer the latter), and the very
picturesque scenery enjoyed.
January 16 and 17 were grand days, going up the cataracts, our boats in
charge of the Nubians. The first day, Saturday, sailed up to the rapids
and were drawn up the first severe one,--a hard pull and barely room to
get our larger boat through; 17th, a quiet Sunday, in still water
between upper and lower rapids; under most picturesque surroundings of
river, rock, and desert, here strangely mingled, and a hot cloudless
sun; had service and much enjoyed Church’s sermon No. 3. Climbing one of
the rugged masses of rock toward sunset, had a fine distant view of
lovely Philæ. Monday, 18th, the army of Nubians again took hold of our
boats, and with noises indescribable and persevering efforts the boats
were drawn, one by one, up the final and worst fall; we were in calm
water before sunset, and at dusk were moored close to Philæ, which we
got charming views of, from the opposite shore next morning at sunrise;
came up and made a brief visit to the ruins after breakfast, and sailed
on with a beautiful breeze, when suddenly, about twenty miles on, the
rudder of the Ibis gave way (injured probably in the cataracts), and for
forty-eight hours we lay by near a Nubian hamlet (climbed the mountains
on Arabian side; got wonderful views of desert, rock on this side,
reddish-yellow sand on the other), while Antonio, the dragoman, with
rowboat went back to Philæ, and thence by land to Assouan, whence on
camel brought up new rudder-post, workmen, etc., reinstated the rudder,
and--January 21, afternoon--we were off again.
Nubia is very different from Egypt, picturesque rocky ranges always near
the river and broken into peaks and pyramids, and all desert except the
narrow selvage reclaimed by irrigation with sakias; here the vegetation
(barley, peas, beans, and lupines) intensely green by the contrast with
yellow sand or light brown sandstone.
January 23, before reaching Korosko (whence caravans to Dongola; visited
their camps, very wild Arabs and blacks, and very disagreeable white
traders, Greeks, probably, with villainous faces) saw our first
crocodile, and sent two shots at once at him, but the huge fellow
flounced off the sand bank into the river, probably not much hurt.
January 24, first met with chameleons; got three or four from the boys,
but finally kept only one, which we still have here at Cairo--a lovely
little brute whose name is Billy, and a great pet; a great diversion to
watch his change of hues, and especially to see him catch flies by
darting out his slender, india-rubber-like tongue to the length of
several inches (nearly that of his whole body when the fly was far
enough off), and with wonderful quickness and certainty. Service in the
afternoon, with Church’s last sermon, and sorry we were to have reached
the end of them.
But I shall never have done with our journey at this rate, and shall
give you not the least idea of it after this fashion; how some days we
sailed on with fair winds, which is very cheerful; some we tracked, and
then we were much on shore and mingled with the people; and often strong
head winds kept us fast at the bank, sometimes for two or three days,
which grew tedious. Well, on the 27th we came to the great attraction of
the upper Nile, Abou-Simbel; but the wind being fine and fair, sailed
on at a great rate, and reached our terminus, Wady Halfeh, next morning.
Made next day excursion to the farthest point, the high rock Abou Seir,
which dominates the second cataracts, and gives extensive view beyond,
far into Africa; head winds next day kept us at the village, which we
explored and exchanged hospitalities with the inhabitants, the poorer
part of which were beginning to suffer from famine. Later, going down,
we met boat loads of corn for seed and food going up from the viceroy
for their relief; little enough to do for a people so cruelly oppressed
and peeled as the fellahs are. At evening we could be off, the great
yard and sail now down, and small mizzen in its place, to use on the
rare occasion of a south wind, and now we depend upon the current and
oars, five on each side, handled by our stalwart crew, their strokes
timed by queer Arabic chants; more severe labor than in ascending
(except when tracking) and not so pleasant to us as sailing; but yet we
could come down much faster than we came up. Whenever there was
sight-seeing by day the crews would usually row all night, so we got on
finely.
MESSINA, March 24.
Behold us so far back towards Europe. Here, kept in by that strange
thing in our experience, a rainy day, and prevented thereby from going
to Taormina (Tauromenium) to see the Greek theatre, the site of Naxos,
and a near view of Etna, I resume my writing; which was interrupted a
week ago by multifarious things at Cairo.... I think I must go back to
the diary, and so try to tell you, in this mechanical sort of way,
somewhat of our occupation day by day. The bare names of the places must
convey to you all I can hope to of our seeings and doings.
February 1.--Reached Abou Simbel at daybreak, and were under the great
giant Rameses when the first rays of the sun touched their huge, placid
faces, and were in the rock temple within when the horizontal rays
entering the small opening for a half hour lighted up the great Osiride
figures to best advantage, and even reached the broken statues at the
bottom of the adytum. Later in the day explored leisurely and repeatedly
the whole interior chambers with candles, and occasionally with Bengal
lights and magnesium wire (the best of all lights), bringing out well
the famous sculptures that cover all the walls. Climbed the heights
later in the day to get superb views of desert and river and the sunset.
Late in evening some went again through the sand to see the great faces
by moonlight, which, however, they supplemented by torches. We were
moored right under the face of the smaller rock temple....
February 9.--Awoke at Philæ; of which I will only say that even Miss
Martineau does not exaggerate the interest of the whole, and the beauty
and picturesqueness of the site.
February 10.--All day at Philæ, and dropped down to Mahatta just as the
sun set gloriously behind the ruins and the mighty rocks which surround
them.
February 11.--The Ibis shot the great cataract, all but one of our party
being on the shore to see the exciting sight,--finer, it is thought,
than being on board, though you thus lose the sense of personal danger.
We were taken on shore round the trying points, and in our rowboats the
rest of the way down to Assouan, where we joined the Ibis, vociferously
welcomed by our combined Egyptian and Nubian crews, all rejoicing, as
they well might, in the safety of the Ibis, which had never done the
feat before and was reckoned rather large for the undertaking. Shopping,
etc., filled the day. At evening some of us called on Lady Duff-Gordon,
living on her boat, now lying here. I went back later and passed an hour
more with her, taking her some books we could spare her. Much pleased
with her spirit and affability, but distressed at the progress disease
is making; do not think she can last much longer, even in Egypt. Her
last year’s visit to Syria injured her seriously.
February 12.--The Undine came down famously at sunrise, and joined us
soon opposite the upper end of Elephantiné, where we went up to meet
her, expecting to round the island and be off at once down the river.
But a heavy blow from the north, and consequent great discouragement; we
had to lay by all day, not even getting on shore with any comfort, and
almost all night.
You must know that in Upper Egypt and Nubia a hakim or doctor is a great
godsend to the people, and you have to give medicine all day long. On
returning to Assouan I was met, when I stepped on shore, by the beaming
dark countenance of a papa, to whose son, whom I thought rather far
gone, I had given some medicine when going up; he had now brought down
the fellow from a village several miles off, to show me how well--or
nearly well--he was. Another widely grinning face met me, of a papa who
had brought me his boy with a dreadfully ill-looking sore head, which I
had dosed with mercurial ointment rubbed in with colza oil. He did not
now bring the lad, but came a good distance to recall him to my
recollection by expressive pantomime, and to say in the same way that
he was “all right.” Eye-wash I dispensed in profuse abundance; and among
the men cured several cases of ophthalmia which looked serious; and many
a petty surgical operation did the “Hakim-Pacha”--as he came to be
called--perform. I cannot tell you how much attached we got to our crews
and their officers, and before we parted I made sure that many tears
should flow in my behalf, by acceding to requests for eye-lotions, which
were most copiously used,--by those who needed it, for cure, by those
who did not, for prevention. Two sorts of creatures with which I
formerly had little sympathy, I have learned to appreciate and
respect,--donkeys and people of color, Arabs and Nubians especially. All
idea of anything disagreeable or inferior in color of skin disappeared,
or rather the darker fellows seemed the finer. As I remember sundry dark
Arabs, they seem to me among the best-looking and best-behaved men I
ever knew. But this digression will never do.... At sunset reached
Edfou.
February 15.--Whole day at the temple, which is all but entire, and
large as well as complete, and the acres of sculpture and hieroglyph in
excellent preservation, all recently excavated under the care of
Mariette and placed under a custodian. If I could be dropped down in
Egypt for one morning only, to see only one thing, it should be this
temple at Edfou, though only of Ptolemaic date. I cannot stop for a
single detail about it....
February 22.--Luxor: across river, tombs, Medinet el Bahree, Ramaseum,
again, etc. I and some others dined in the evening on boat with our
English friends (Legge, Eaton, and Baird), and celebrated Washington’s
Birthday.
February 23.--Boats dropped down to Karnak, had afternoon at the great
temple, tea there at dusk,--a famous tea-party in the great hall of
columns, all the dignitaries at Luxor and Karnak invited; the full
moonlight enjoyed for an hour or two, and then illumination with Bengal
lights, making splendid effects among the 137 columns, and other parts;
then rockets; some of our parties back to boat, the rest to a feast
given by a splendid old Arab, the chief of Karnak, in full Arab style,
with music, dancing-women, and all. Imaun Joseph, who had been our guest
at the temple tea, was his relative’s guest at this banquet. Lady
Duff-Gordon’s account of him had made him known to us most favorably,
and we got most thoroughly attached to the man, especially after having
him to dine with us next day, his smile, voice, and manners of the
sweetest, and his character is every way lovely. He is as dark-skinned
as most American negroes, but with very handsome features. All these
experiences cannot be written, but could be talked over at large. That
evening view of Karnak is the one I want to keep, so I did not go again;
Mrs. G. did once more.
February 24.--Tombs of the kings; a grand but fatiguing day, most of the
time in Belzoni’s, the finest and largest; most of us did two or three
more. I came home over the mountains to get the fine view over the
valley, etc....
March 4.--Siout: ascended the hill for the great view, from mouth of one
of the great old tombs; shopped in the pretty town; accepted the
American consul’s great attentions for the morning only (rich Coptic
Christian family), but tore ourselves away from entreaties to stay for
dinner and fantasia in the evening, in honor of the inauguration of the
American President, so secured the good wind and were off in the
afternoon....
March 9.--Went over the site of Memphis; saw the colossal figure of
Rameses lying pathetically on his face, pyramids of Sakkara, Serapeum,
the wonderful Apis sarcophagi, and finally that newly excavated,
beautiful tomb structure, of date very early in old empire (fourth or
fifth dynasty), with paintings and low reliefs with truthfulness,
spirit, taste, and fineness of execution, much surpassing the best days
of the later empire, and all free of the grotesque mythology of later
times. A fine treat to come at the last.
March 10.--Hard rowing against wind to reach Gizeh; went in carriages,
by road made for the Prince of Wales, to the Great Pyramid and its
fellow. I went in, but no one ascended,--too much wind; Sphinx,
neighboring old tombs, etc., etc.
March 11.--Cairo: packed and left the boats so long our home, and
good-by to the sailors.
March 12-18.--Cairo: must not forget one day passed at Mariette’s
museum, studying specially the fine things of old empire which he has
discovered and rescued. Had fairly enough of mosques, Moslem tombs,
modern palaces, etc. Sorry that slight illness cut off several things,
notably a drive to the site of Heliopolis, marked only by a single
obelisk. Steamer from Alexandria would not wait, so we must needs hurry
off, our pleasant party break up, etc.
March 19.--A morning drive at Alexandria, to see Pompey’s Pillar, the
Obelisk, etc., and so on board the Peluze; a beautiful evening, but
blowy weather followed,--a seasick time; and here we got, not Monday
evening, but Tuesday morning, boat gone to Naples the day before....
Mrs. G. badly knocked up, and here is cold spring weather and fickle,
weeping skies, so unlike the thoroughly reliable weather which we had
got to regard as a law of nature; wherefore such freaks take us all by
surprise. Oh, how we long already for the dry air and certain sky of old
Egypt!...
TAORMINA, March 25, evening.
We have done it, after all, or at least are in the way of doing it....
This morning, when the sea looked rough with the recent gales, although
the very low barometer began to rise, I was not sorry when the Florio
steamer was kept back, waiting an overdue corresponding vessel from
Malta, and, though announced to sail to-morrow, I determined to wait yet
longer for smoother weather. Meanwhile it cleared off beautifully,
though with considerable wind. At four P.M. this afternoon we were off
by rail with small luggage needful, on the Catania railroad; an hour and
a half along a coast more picturesque than the finest parts of the
Corniche road, though not so grand, brought us to Giardini; whence an
ascent of an hour up a zigzag road in a one-horse carriage, commanding
charming sunset views all the way, old Etna full in view southwest,
brought us to this queer perch. It reminds us of Turbia, but is far more
striking. We are in a primitive, but very nice auberge; our window
looking full upon the whole mass of Etna glistening in the clear
moonlight. On the left hand we look directly down upon the sea and along
the jagged coast; on the right Taormina Castle overhangs us almost, the
old castle or forts covering its narrow summit, probably 1,000 feet
above us; it must command an extraordinary view. We shall see to-morrow.
Rather behind us lies the amphitheatre, on a craggy buttress between us
and the sea.
Morning; up at daylight, to the amphitheatre, to see sun rise out of the
sea and light up Etna, which was without a cloud. The theatre really a
Roman ruin, with bits only of the original Greek; the situation
superb.... I climb up to Mola, get a grand study of Etna from height of
1,500-2,000 feet, the clouds keeping off till I had done. Extensive sea
and coast view, but haze in the far distance. Descended on to the peak
bearing the Saracenic ruins of the Castle of Taormina, overhanging the
town; and now, having dined, and found Mrs. G. better, as well as
desirous of warmer quarters, we are soon to descend to the shore below
us, and take train for Catania. This place is very well worth visiting,
and I am glad that I arranged as I did, only sorry that I had to enjoy
most of it alone.
NAPLES, Tuesday, 30th.
Found Catania well worth a visit; had pleasant Easter Sunday, and superb
view of Etna, and of its various former doings, sending its lavas down
to the sea in a tremendous way. Getting back to Messina, the steamer, a
little one, was off Monday afternoon; good parting views of Etna toward
evening; an uncomfortable night; we entered the bay at daybreak, and
Naples soon after sunrise, and are now domiciled in full view of
Vesuvius.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
ROME, April 22, 1869.
... I am thirsty for botanical news, after having laid aside the
botanist for a much longer time than ever before. Well, we were three
and a half months in Egypt, three months of it on the Nile itself, and
we have avoided the chills of winter and had a season of great enjoyment
and interest. I passed your friend Professor Marcet in Nubia, but missed
visiting his boat, from his sailing under the English flag, but hit upon
that of Mr. Naville,[76] whom we saw afterwards at Edfou, and were much
pleased with.
Botany on the Nile is nearly _nil_, yet I collected a small suite of
specimens, as souvenirs. Returning, we had a most uncomfortable passage
to Messina.... In Naples and in the charming environs we passed a
fortnight and rather more, and have now had a week in Rome.
We are just now recovering the mild and charming weather which we left
behind in Egypt. We shall stay here, I suppose, only ten days more, make
a short stay in Florence, also in Venice, visit the Italian lakes, and,
I think, go to Vienna by way of Innsbruck, to be there the first week in
June. All else is uncertain, except that we mean to be in Switzerland in
July....
* * * * *
Dr. Gray said he found more botany in a half day in the desert than in a
week in Egypt! A country cultivated for five thousand years had no
weeds. There were long walks and occasional excursions in Nubia into the
desert when the dahabeah was lying still.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
MUNICH, June 8, 1869.
... It is hurrying and distracting work, this traveling with a pair of
nice young ladies, sharp for sight-seeing, ... and a lot of botanists
and gardens, etc., you want to see on your own hook. So you will excuse
all curtness in letters....
At Munich we saw, of course, much of Madame de Martius,[77]--a sweet,
good soul, deeply grieved by the loss of her husband, and yet bears up
bravely. And we learned many interesting things about good Martius.
Notices of Martius’ death were sent, as usual, to all friends....
11th. Nuremberg is a queer old place indeed. We have nearly twenty-four
hours here, and go on the way to Dresden to-day.
TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.
DRESDEN, June 13, 1869.
I’ll tell you what our plans are at present. To stay here till Friday
noon, the 18th; Mrs. G. to be very quiet, as she cares mainly to see the
gallery and enjoy it leisurely. On Tuesday, I, with the young ladies, go
up to Freiberg to visit the celebrated mining school, etc., and on
return next day, to see the Forst-Akademie at Tharand. Friday night all
to Töplitz, to pass two days with a friend,--the Sunday’s rest. Monday
to Prague, Tuesday to Regensburg, Wednesday or Thursday to Munich, and
Saturday evening to be at Ragatz (or Pfeffers). Soon after at least Mrs.
G. and I will be settled for a while at Geneva.
HÔTEL BYRON, VILLENEUVE, July 15, 1869.
... Boissier has been seriously sick with a pleurisy, etc.; is at Orbe,
or was. If still there I should go to see him; but he has now gone to
Gries, in Appenzell, to a bathing-place, and I shall not see him....
Reuter, his curator, was away last week, but I shall see him, I presume,
to-morrow.
I have just lost my mother, at a good old age. My father died
twenty-four years earlier....
It is a charming place here. We are spending the morning lazily, and go
on soon to Geneva. The young people have gone on to Chamouni, which we
do not care to revisit.... Kindest regards to Professor Fenzl, with
regrets that I shall not see him.
TO JOSEPH HOWLAND.
INTERLAKEN, July 26, 1869.
... We have had a joyful time in Switzerland, and for me a complete
rejuvenation. And as to Mrs. Gray, who did not need that, what we call
“the movement cure” has done her more good than all Egypt. That my
lamentable failure of breath on Piz Langarde was owing, not to advancing
years, as I had foreboded, nor wholly to the rarefaction of the
atmosphere above 9,000 feet, as Mrs. H. suggested, but to a violent
cold, then impending, I proved satisfactorily by walking the other day
down from Mürren to Lauterbrunnen (having walked up the eve before), and
then right on over the Wengern Alp to Grindelwald, and I believe as
comfortably as I did it (all but the first part) thirty, and then
nineteen, years ago!
Weather has been all we could ask for,--this the first rainy day to keep
us indoors, and it now promises to be pleasant by noon, so that we can
go to Giessbach. Let me tell you what we have done....
Wife and I started Thursday, to Sierre, by rail. Friday, carriage to
Visp, and horses to St. Nicolaus. Saturday, char-à-banc to Zermatt, and
horses to hotel on the Riffel. Only my wife’s own pen can relate how
she felt in flesh, bones, and spirit after that, nor her surprise to
find next morning that she was “alive, and alive like to be,” nor her
keen delight in Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and surroundings, and the
profusion of alpine flowers. Sunday and Monday on Riffel most enjoyable.
Tuesday, Mrs. G., thinking _facile descensus_ inapplicable to such a
steep path, insisted upon walking down to Zermatt, which she did; a long
rest at Zermatt, with pleasant English friends, and a dinner enabled us
to go in char to St. Nicolaus to sleep, taking a small thunder-shower in
the way.
Wednesday, “we still live,” and go on horses, through two showers, to
Visp again, and then carriage to Sierre and rail down to Hôtel Byron, to
get charming view and sleep.
Thursday, all fresh comparatively, and go in a chaise to Chillon, and
then back to our pleasant quarters in Hôtel de la Metropole, Geneva.
Here we rest, see friends, and do botany till Tuesday last.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
LONDON, August 22, 1869.
... With all my endeavors I could not get off a note to you by
yesterday’s (Saturday’s) post, and so shall be late in announcing to you
our prosperous return to England. We left Paris on Thursday, reached
Amiens in time to visit the cathedral, a most striking specimen of
fullest-flowered Gothic, saw it again on Friday morning, and, after a
smooth crossing, got to London before sunset. Yesterday I had to go to
the banker’s, to Kew, and to see our Harvard men at Putney.[78] I must
now needs be with them on their trial day; and then, tell me frankly if
it would perfectly suit Mrs. Church and yourself if we came to you on
Saturday (28th) for a few days. Later would serve us, if you prefer....
After that I hope we can get settled at Kew, and do some work, for which
I have little enough time left.
As to Exeter meeting of British Association, I am on the whole glad
enough to keep away, especially from Darwinian discussions, in which I
desire not to be at all “mixed up” with the prevailing and peculiarly
English materialistic, positivic line of thought, with which I have no
sympathy, while in natural history I am a sort of Darwinian.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
KEW, [CHARLTON HOUSE], September 20, 1869.
The skies were propitious to us in Switzerland, and the only very warm
day was the one which we passed, very pleasantly indeed, with Godet at
Neufchâtel. Thence we went to Paris, stopping at Dijon en route....
Oliver and Baker are here steadily at work. Dr. Masters[79] drops in now
and then. Dr. Hooker, after some respite, was at home. Dr. Thomson
returned last week; and now Bentham is here also, fresh from the
Continent.
At British Museum I find Dr. Carruthers[80] and the new assistant, Dr.
Trimen. Mr. Bennett still, I think, away on his holiday. Botanical and
other news I have none. I send you this mere apology for a letter, in
the hope of getting something from you; and later I may have more to
say. Can I be of any use to you here?
Remember me kindly to Dr. Müller,[81] to whom best thanks for all the
friendly services which he has rendered me.
Our united kind regards to Madame De Candolle, and to your son (from
whom I still expect a photograph), and my wife’s to yourself. We have
the most pleasant recollections of our brief visit to Geneva.
Believe me ever your devoted
ASA GRAY.
TO GENERAL HOWLAND.
KEW, October 3, 1869.
I don’t know when you would get a response to your welcome letter of
August 22, which reached us here in due course, so long as things went
on in the ordinary way,--I working at botany as much as possible, but
presiding here over a considerable household, some sight-seeing and much
intermittent visiting. But now that I am all alone, and my wife with the
rest of them _girareing_ over the north of England, sober reflection has
its hour, and I remember the friends that are far away, perhaps on the
shores of Italian lakes, and long to know how they get on and what they
are about. To attain which knowledge and put myself _en rapport_ I
should first, I know, give you some account of ourselves and our doings.
But where to begin? I think we wrote you from Paris. We had three weeks
there, I mostly at the Jardin des Plantes till near dinner-time....
For ourselves, after cool weather in Paris we came in for a piece of
very sultry weather in London, where we had to stay awhile, our lodgings
here not being available till about 15th September. So after staying to
the Harvard boat-race,--which I saw from the umpire’s boat, and Mrs.
Gray, with good Miss S., from some grounds above Fulham,--we set off on
a little round of visits, first to the Darwins’, near Bromley, then to
the Churches’ in Somersetshire, a pleasant country rectory and a
delightful couple. You remember the university sermons we had up the
Nile were his. Next we passed a day with an old bachelor botanical
acquaintance near Taunton, who makes a capital squire; then to Torquay
for three days (with a daughter of Sir William Hooker, and her husband,
Dr. Lombe), one of which I devoted to an excursion down the river Dart
from Totness to Dartmouth (which the English think much of, but you
dwellers on the Hudson would not), and to a view of that quaint little
town. On our way back we had an hour at Exeter to see the cathedral; a
night and morning at Salisbury, the cathedral as to exterior, site, and
all, and beautiful spire, one of the most satisfactory in England; took
a glance at Wilton, a peep into old George Herbert’s little church of
Bemerton and into his house and garden; stopped over a train at Romsey
to see the fine Norman abbey church, and to Winchester, most interesting
cathedral as to the interior, Winchester school and the old Hospital of
St. Cross. Then, on returning to London, we settled down here, and after
a few days were joined by the rest of our party from France.
... No one in England recognized me with my venerable white beard!
Ever, dear Howland, your affectionate
ASA GRAY.
The winter Dr. Gray spent in Egypt, in 1869, he raised a full beard,
which so changed his appearance that, though eyes and voice were there,
his oldest friends did not know him on his return, and he had great glee
in imposing himself on his old friend Dr. Torrey, when he went to the
station to meet him in Boston, as a persistent hack-driver. Even when he
declared himself, Dr. Torrey would scarcely believe him; he and
Professor Henry always maintained a man had no lawful right so to change
his outward appearance after middle age.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
KEW, October 6, 1869.
... A week ago Saturday Mrs. G. and I went down via Warwick to
Stratford-on-Avon, where we had never been, with Professor Flower,[82]
to visit his father and mother, whose house (almost always thronged by
Americans), a short mile out of Stratford, commands one of the most
charming and wholly English views (that of English landscape-painters).
On Monday morning Loring and the girls, who had passed the Sunday at
Warwick, drove down and took us up, and we saw the Shakespeare
memorials, even to Anne Hathaway’s cottage (all but myself, who studied
brewing instead), and back to “The Hill” for a lunch-dinner. Then they
took my wife and departed to pass night and next day at Warwick. At
evening I went by a direct train to Oxford to sleep, seeing first
Professor Rolleston[83] for a moment. And, breakfasting with him and
his agreeable wife next morning early (his windows command a lovely
view), set about seeing all the structures, etc., that have sprung up
since the almost twenty years that have passed: the Museum and its
workings, the Ratcliffe turned into an admirable reading-room, chapel of
Exeter, also Balliol, new buildings of Christ Church, etc. I did not
fail to look in upon the quadrangle of Oriel, also, to ask for Mr.
Burgon, but he was in France. After lunch I took train, and was in Kew
soon after sunset. Since then I have been away one day and one night,
with Mr. Rivers of Orchard-house fame, at Sawbridgeworth, Herts....
TO JOHN TORREY.
KEW, October 11, 1869.
I am now almost through with my examination of the Polemoniaceæ, for
which I brought over all mine here. I have got them into good shape,
settled many things only to be determined here, and have a clear and
definite idea as to what I would do with the genera, and have
straightened out the species.
October 31.
After so long a drought--as happens in some climates--when the change
comes, you pour refreshingly. But with all your three rapidly following
letters not one of them makes the least reference to my letter, written
for one special purpose.
Bennett is as pleasant as ever. When I go up next to British Museum I
will give your regards.
Old Gray (J. E.), who has ever been particularly kind to us, has had a
paralytic stroke, which, with other infirmities, seemed about to close
his life. But he is wonderfully rallying....
How glad we are about the grandchild, and what real comfort and delight
you will have with the little fellow! And then the satisfaction of
having your name go down in the direct line. Why, he may be a botanist,
or at least a chemist, and add honor to the name in another generation.
Please give, with our love, our united congratulations to the happy papa
and mamma.
We have been corresponding with Carey, and shall see him soon.
The sheet is full; so adieu for a few weeks. Ever your affectionate
A. GRAY.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
QUEEN’S HOTEL, LIVERPOOL, November 8, 1869.
We broke up our establishment at Kew, this afternoon, and are having the
night here, preparatory to embarkation. Before leaving Kew I received
the proof of your sermon,[84] and here I found your last note, and
Loring another proof-copy of the sermon; for which he sends best thanks.
So you have been again to Windsor, and this time, I trust, had her
Majesty in the congregation....
Loring, the young ladies, and myself had the Sunday at Canterbury, our
last cathedral, and a most interesting one, both in the sight and the
associations. We have Stanley’s “Memorials” to read up, with other
things, on the voyage, if the Atlantic will allow it.
Wednesday morning.--Off Irish coast; shall reach Queenstown before
noon; very smooth water, especially since we were out of the St.
George’s Channel. We are all doing very well, though some of our party,
including Mrs. Gray, are poor creatures on the water.
I have read over the sermon with real interest. What I much like in it
is the broadness of view and moderation of claim, which adds strength to
the argument. It seems to me that every Christian man, churchman or no,
would yield full assent to all you say.
And, dear Mr. Church, consider that all your friends think, no doubt, as
I do, that you are hardly at liberty to take counsel of your misgivings
and humility, if asked to take some position in which your gifts may
tell more directly upon educated men, especially the younger men. I
don’t want to see you in a position which brings cares and anxieties
along with high honors; these I do not covet for you in the least. What
I covet for you is fruitful leisure, some position for you which, while
it gives you time, and income enough to supply real wants, makes also
some demands; for rarely does one do anything to much purpose that he is
not somehow constrained to do.
We leave behind us in England most delightful friends, and we are not
likely to forget them; but we are somehow drawn to you in a peculiar
way, and shall often be thinking of you and yours when settled down
again, if it please God that we may be, at our pleasant home on the
other side of the Atlantic.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., November 23, 1869.
Just a line to tell you--which you will be glad to know--that we safely
accomplished our voyage home, landing yesterday morning [Monday] early,
on the thirteenth day. Very well for that vessel, the slowest of the
line, and at this season, with much head wind. No gales, but some stiff
breezes, and the vessel tumbled and rolled about, to our discomfort.
However, it is all over; and Mrs. G. and the other ladies, who suffered
a good deal, are looking brighter again.
My wife sends kind love to you and all yours, and the young people, if
they knew of my writing, would send kind and grateful messages. The
voyage now seems to me only as a disturbed night’s sleep, dozing off in
Old England to awake in the New.
Ever yours affectionately,
A. GRAY.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, February 14, 1870.
MY DEAR DARWIN,--Being eve of post-day we respond at once to yours of
the 27th January--which arrived this very morning--lest you should send
us down to posterity with a fabulous dog-story.
I well remember telling you of our “Max”[85] and his habit of washing
cat-fashion; which you suggested might have come from being brought up
with a cat, and I think I told you that I had not been able to learn
definitely whether that was the case or no. Here, you see, by some
shuffling of memory, a suggestion of what might explain a fact has taken
the place of the fact itself. I am curious to know if it be true, for it
is the only explanation I can think of.
I trust you have some of the slender-leaved Drosera I sent through
Hooker.
Well, our homeward voyage was not a nice one, especially for Mrs. Gray,
and it now seems a long time ago. I dropped at once into a world of
work; but am not killing myself. The main struggle for existence will
come in the spring, when my duties crowd on me dreadfully.
It gave us both very great pleasure to see again Mrs. Darwin’s
well-known handwriting, and your signature.
I knew you would be pleased with young Agassiz and his Yankee wife. I
wish his health were better; and I do hope your own will be such that
you can next summer see and know my trump of a colleague J. Wyman.
TO GEORGE BENTHAM.
CAMBRIDGE, March 28, 1870.
... You hope that I will not resign my chair here unless to devote
myself wholly to botanical work. What other object could I have in view?
I am not likely to be idle, and I care for nothing else. The difficulty
is, that the university cannot well spare me now, nor find a fit person
to take either the whole or a part of my work, but there is a good
disposition to favor my views.
Charles Wright is helping me as curator of the herbarium, and is getting
the large accessions into it--rather slowly.
The winter is nearly passed; I have employed diligently all the time I
could command, but the net result looks small. All I have for the
printer is a revision of Eriogoneæ, which I have turned over to him, and
which you shall soon see. I think I have done it very well. I have in
Eriogonum made use of a character which you have not employed, i. e.,
the attenuation of the base of the flower into stipes, which marks the
umbellata and the eriantha well, and I have increased the number of the
sections. The species I have actually diminished from eighty-one to
seventy-nine, although several had been added to those in the
Prodromuses, and I have added half a dozen myself.
I should have written to you long ago, but as you would always have news
of me through Hooker, and I had nothing special to say, I refrained. It
is always a pleasure to hear from you, and I have no idea that our long
correspondence should drop. I should have seen more of you and Mrs.
Bentham (and my wife, too, regretted much), but you were much laid up
with that sciatica, and we were dreadfully pressed at the last. Could we
have had this winter in England, as we had at first hoped, it would have
been well.
Torrey made me a visit in January; is well and happy, except that he
gets only odds and ends of time for botany, and so cannot do anything to
much purpose. The Eriogoneæ being a pet group of his, and his old
sketches very useful in my elaboration, I have joined his name to my own
in the paper I am now printing.
At the wonderful rate you are going on you will soon complete the “Flora
Australiensis.” Happy and fortunate man that you are, both in the
faculty of accomplishing work and in having your whole time for just
what you want to do.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S., February 15, 1870.
MY DEAR CHURCH,--My good wife has just handed me these sheets for Mrs.
Church, and if it were not just on post-morning I should gossip with
you, I suppose, to the extent of a sheetful, and send you our hearty
thanks for your most kind and welcome Christmas letter,--the
acknowledgments for which have been deferred too long already.
For myself, I have had three or four delightful weeks out of our short
winter vacation, which have been given wholly to botanical work in my
study. But this week begins again my round of official duties, to
continue till July.
I rather weary of it as I grow older; and still more I grudge the time.
I could now, I see, make fair arrangement for relinquishing a large part
of my work in the university if there were some one ready to come in as
a colleague or suffragan. But the person wanted is not to be found, and
it will take a long while to hatch and raise one. We shall see.
I keep up all my lively interest in English affairs. But I do not get
the items of news now as early as I used to do when the “Gardener’s
Chronicle” had a news-sheet attached. I do well enough in the scientific
line, however, as I see both “Nature” and the “Academy.” The former
should bear for its motto “Natura non facit saltum;” it does not jump at
once to perfection; the articles are many of them rather weak and washy.
The “Academy” in its way seems better. The “Athenæum” (which I hope will
revive, now that Dixon is out of it), the “Saturday Review,” and the
“Pall Mall Budget” come to us in our book club, after a while, in our
turn.
So Temple, having carried his point, is now making his over-active
opponents look a bit foolish by preaching earnest orthodox sermons. And
Gladstone has done a (to me not unexpected) thing which gratifies his
friends here, in giving to Mr. Fraser the see of Manchester; I had not
heard of the death of the former incumbent when the news of this offer
came. What a run Gladstone is having in the way of church patronage!
Then the memorial from both universities themselves for the abolition of
religious tests! How you are getting on! And how are you to manage to
secure proper religious influence at the universities? By moral power
and the strength of your cause alone? which may, after all, be more
truly effective than statutes. Yet there will be natural anxieties.
Pray give me, now and then, an inside view of what is going on, or
better, what is thought.
Why, here is my sheet filled and nothing said. I have nothing to tell
you from here--nothing worth sending you. I don’t think much of Lowell’s
“Cathedral.” The grotesque bits are not in half as good keeping as the
gargoyles and other queer pieces of ornament on the old cathedrals.
CAMBRIDGE, April 4, 1870.
I have for a long while been wishing and endeavoring to write to you,
but it is not so easy, so many other letters have to be written, to
answer letters from persons that I don’t particularly care for, as to
leave little time for those that I do.
I owe you for two very interesting letters; for it was a hurried note of
mine that we need not count, which crossed yours of February 4, and then
there is your later one of March 1, along with Mrs. Church’s to my wife.
I leave it for her to tell you about the novelists. And I have not much
to say of myself. I have pottered all winter over the herbarium and upon
an article for our “American Academy’s Proceedings,” of a wholly
technical nature, which is just in the printer’s hands. I am about to
begin another,--a study of another group of North American plants; but
the professional work absorbs so much of my time and energy that it
will, I know, make no great progress until July brings a long vacation.
And then I may have my hands full, somewhat as yours will be,
superintending building. I have _my_ church to enlarge. I need a
lecture-room here on the spot, and a students’ laboratory in connection
with it; and I have a plan for this, to form a wing to the herbarium
building, and a fair prospect that I may get it done. We shall see
before long; and if the means are forthcoming, I will soon let you know,
with all the details....
The last “Spectator” received gives an abstract of Gladstone’s and
Forster’s Irish Land and Education bills, and of the general favor they
were received with upon their introduction. To have almost satisfied all
parties and interests is really a wonderful and a most unexpected
achievement. You ought to be proud of Gladstone, and well satisfied at
having inevitable and great changes wrought out under so strong a
ministry, and so high-minded a leader. Courage, earnestness, and high
principle here are seen to command success, in Parliament at least. How
anything will work in Ireland remains to be seen. But don’t think as
some of my English friends do, that the Irish are incapable of good
things. The race over here, as a general thing, develop at once what
they seem to lack at home, thrift, and with thrift come order and
respect for law.
I happened to be in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day, and was stopped in my
carriage while a very long Irish procession passed. They were mainly of
the more well-to-do sort, no doubt; but they had made themselves so.
Probably nearly every one of middle age was born in Ireland, and would
have been a peasant laborer at home, very likely ill-conditioned enough.
They were, however, in holiday attire; still they were fair
representatives of the race, and I wished we could send them over to you
for a day, as specimens of what may be made out of such material, under
circumstances, not altogether the best, but much better than those at
home. They are not the best element of our population, certainly, but
they make by no means a bad lower stratum, out of which many show a
truly Yankee-like aptitude for rising. They are almost all Romanists, to
be sure; and there is an element of danger. But the influence of the
priesthood is much tempered (as witness how they ran into Fenianism,
against their exhortations) and in most respects is far from bad. The
Germans are counted as a much better population, but they are quite as
clannish, and in the towns are rather disposed to be actively
anti-Christian.
By the way, I met some time ago Mr. Stanley, who has been in the country
before; is now on his way round the world via California, a favorite
route. He is, or was, an M. P., a son of Lord Stanley of Alderley, an
Oxford man, bright, sharp, and very talkative. He is a specimen of
ultra-secularistic liberalism, I should think, of a set that will be apt
to give you some trouble hereafter, in the questions that are to come
up; if I do not misjudge him, one who thinks the world, or at least
England, has not much farther use for distinctive Christianity; just one
of the sort you must have had in view, in yours of February 4, as
extremely generous “in making free with what other people value, and you
don’t care for.” Most uncivilly, I fear, I fell almost into a wrangle
with him directly. He even seemed to think us on the whole a bigoted set
here in Cambridge,--rather a novel view to us....
Well, I must break off.
Our spring is tardy, after a wintry March. Only snowdrops yet out in the
Garden, and those in the sunniest place, a lot which I brought with me
from England. For primroses we have to look into a cold frame, in which
they, with violets, have been blossoming all the latter part of the
winter.
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
November 15, 1870.
MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--Many thanks for your most kind letter of the 24th
October. Taken along with one from Mr. Bentham of about the same date,
it gives me tidings of several of our French confrères, who are now in
such great tribulation. What a change since last year, since last summer
even; and for Mrs. Gray and me, how fortunate that we had our visit made
and over before the deluge! And what can be the end, and when? It is
useless to conjecture. And now there is fear that while Germany is
holding the Gallic wolf by the ears,--a situation growing daily more
uncomfortable and dangerous for Prussia, and England is left quite
alone,--Russia is to take a step forward in the Black Sea, etc., which
will greatly vex England and Austria, and perhaps send the torch of war
all over Europe; and if all closes up soon Europe will feel this
powerful Germany. But it may be the better for Switzerland, whose danger
is always from France. It used to make me uneasy and indignant to see
the French flag on the shore of your Lake, where it has no business to
be!
The Caruel[86] pamphlet reached me to-day. To the first question the
answer is simple and easy. About the second, there is perhaps more to be
said. As the publication of a name without a character goes for nothing,
why should the dubious proposal of a name with a hypothetical character
go for more? And suppose the suggested character does not prove true,
and a genus afterwards be founded well upon the same species with a good
character, and under another name, must that give place to the
conditional name, etc.? Vain the endeavor to settle every such little
question by the terms of any positive enactment.
One thing I see, that is, that our solitary point of disagreement will
erelong disappear. The fact of the publication of a certain name, at a
certain date and a certain place, being the main thing, the form (and I
add the agent) of publication being a subsidiary consideration, I think
you will come to agree that, _e. g._, names proposed by Fischer and
published in his name by De Candolle, must be said to be Fischer’s, and
cited, in the last resort, as, _e. g._, “A. dasyglottis, Fisch. in DC.,”
just as I write “Phlox rigida, Benth. in DC.” For all the rest, I think
I agree with you fully. I perfectly agree that, _e. g._, “Diceratium
Lag.” is correct only as a generic name, that “Sect. Diceratium DC.” is
the only correct way. I myself and others have not followed this proper
course always in former times; but should do so hereafter....
Believe me to remain as ever, most cordially yours,
ASA GRAY.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
CAMBRIDGE, October 14, 1870.
MY DEAR FRIEND: ... I have the hour of leisure and am in the mood for
writing this evening. The latter I may count on, but the former I
cannot, in these busy and rather distracting days.
On Tuesday evening last I heard Tom Hughes give a public lecture, the
only one he gives in America. He manfully stood up and turned the tables
upon us, by insisting that the Americans were wronging the British, by
blaming them when they ought to be praised for their general conduct
during the war of the Rebellion. His lecture was very able and pleasant;
and he seemed well pleased, as well he might be, at the reception of it.
He, at least, did excellent service in our behalf, in our times of
trial.
The next evening I met him at the house of a colleague here in
Cambridge, and had a very pleasant talk with him. On telling him that I
came near to hearing him speak to the electors of Frome, and was
prevented only by the rainy day that made our walk to Longleat too late,
he spoke of you with much interest, and told me, what I did not know,
that he was of Oriel while you were tutor. He is very much pleased with
his trip through the country.
As to the Franco-German war, it is thus far a succession of wonders, and
now when a week passes, like the last, without any astounding event, one
feels dissatisfied. At first, the crowning and unexpected result, of
judgment overtaking Louis Napoleon here on the spot, was only to be
rejoiced over. And I think you in England must all be glad to see the
vulgar Empire vanish in a day, and in the collapse show how hollow and
good for nothing it was in what we supposed its strong side, military
force and military ability. But now, it is painful to see France reduced
to such straits, and I long to see peace made with as little weakening
of France as may be. Only, if it goes on, this chastening, and the
effort it may induce France to make, may regenerate her spirit. But, as
you say, only the prophetic books of Scripture furnish language in which
to express one’s feelings and sentiments.
“And then this nation will I judge, saith the Lord”--sounds in your
ears, as these vast changes sweep on.
If I fail to enter wholly into your feelings as to Bismarck and Prussia,
here is Mrs. Gray, who has been anti-Prussian from the very first, and
who shares all your misgivings, and more. Now, I think it a pity, and a
loss to the world, that the German people should be broken up into
jealous rival kingdoms and little principalities, always liable to be
played off against each other by outlying nations. I think Germany as
such ought to take its place as a great Central European power. And yet
a simple centralized government is dangerous; at best could ill replace
local governments. So I hope for, and expect, a close confederation of
German states, in a restored and efficient German empire, the states of
which will be as closely united as those of our Federal Union, but yet
sovereignties in all that relates to internal concerns. I don’t despair
of the Germans working out a fairly successful constitutional
parliamentary system, along with state parliaments, etc., after their
own fashion. And I fancy that a united Germany will tend to peace in
Europe, when one section can no more be played off against another.
But what sort of a policy is this which Great Britain seems to have been
pursuing in weakening, and as if inclined to sever, her connections with
her principal colonies? Why not contrive some mode of uniting home and
colonial interests, giving the colonies imperial representation, or
something of the sort, or somehow be making sure that the men you will
be wanting one of these years shall be sturdily growing up on these
virgin soils, where crowding is out of the question, and who may feel as
they grow up that they are part and parcel of a strong empire. For
myself, I can’t abide the idea of the English nation ever coming to play
any secondary part.
As for ourselves, I feel more and more what a good thing it is, and what
an economy in the long run, to have no neighbors, but the whole breadth
of country to ourselves, and to be so far away from Europe that we may
look with unconcern upon the rise or fall of states there, so far as
they affect any interests of ours. That does not prevent our being all
alive to events in Europe, however. The telegraph feeds our lively
curiosity, day by day; but what I write about to-day will have ceased to
interest by the time it reaches you: perhaps the strife all over there;
devoutly do I wish it may be.
I see you have taken up “Anselm” again; and that, I presume, is the book
you are going to send me, and which I shall be pleased to see.
Yes, you must come over here; but when you do, please arrange for time
enough. When you cross the ocean, be sure to stay long enough to get
your money’s worth. If it be the summer after next, perhaps we may cross
the continent together, and see the parent of your Wellingtonia tree on
the lawn, and the rest of the grove, and visit the wondrous Yosemite
Valley, as yet an arduous journey from San Francisco, but it will soon
be within easy reach.
I see that my writing is very bad, and will stop short.
Inclosed are seeds of the two passion-flowers which are so good for
showing the movements of tendril, both the coiling after being touched,
and revolution, etc. Sow in April in your little conservatory, or in
hotbed, and you may have good plants for your purpose in June. The
tendrils show off best under a temperature of 80° or 90° Fahr. P.
acerifolia will give you tendrils a foot long, when in full growth.
I note the uneasiness in England, and the rumors of difference in the
cabinet,--dangerous times for Gladstone’s ministry, but I do hope it
will last.
I suppose your church is all in order, and your cares over as to the
rebuilding....
TO JOHN TORREY.
November 4, 1870.
I have to-day a long letter from Bentham, which I would send to you, but
that it is full of Compositæ queries and statements, which I have soon
to attend to. What a worker he is, and what a good one!
At last accounts Decaisne and Brongniart were drilling. Rather old
sojers, I think! Cosson[87] had dispatched his wife and daughter and
granddaughter to England, and was communicating now and then by
balloon-post! Bentham very well, and working hard at Compositæ for
“Genera.” ...
I have an advanced class this year, and they come up here, and take up
a vast deal of my time. But it is enjoyable work, as they are the pick
of a dozen out of fifty or sixty of the preceding year.
March 28, 1871.
... I hope, with you, that the Domingo annexation will break down. But
Grant is working for Cuba too, and that is worse than the other;
ignorant blacks are better than Creole Spaniards to deal with.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
February 27, 1871.
... There are so many things I wanted to write about your church (for
which it was shabby of me not to remember and send you a contribution,
in a small way) and the reopening services of which you sent us a
newspaper account; your “Anselm,” which we read aloud in our deliberate
way, on successive Sunday evenings, when not interrupted, and very much
enjoyed; I think the later chapters most; perhaps because we got more
interested as we went on, perhaps, too, the narrative flows on with a
more free movement in the later than in the earlier chapters. Then there
is this wonderful German-French war, which is only now closing, if it be
the close, in such bitter humiliation of the French as no Frenchman
could ever imagine possible, nor any but a German contemplate without
deep sorrow and pity: all their hard measures of former generations
meted out to them again, to this one hapless generation, in a way that
till now it could never have dreamed of. For long years France must play
a secondary political part, which of itself will be a bitter thing, we
may hope a wholesome thing; and when with long care and nursing of
resources she recovers, she cannot be so strong relatively again, while
the German empire holds together. And I suppose you in England have a
good deal of misgiving as to what this Germanic power portends. Perhaps
the next great wonder, and surely the best thing, may be a great
defensive alliance of English-speaking people round the world, which
would render any European continental changes less momentous.
It seems to me that the hopeful prospect for France is in the
ascendency, seemingly assured, of the conservative republicans and the
Orleanists. But there are rumors that even the Orleans family are
falling out among themselves.
As I grow older I can sympathize thoroughly with a disinclination you
may feel as to assuming any new public duties. The deep ruts which the
daily routine of life has worn for us do become such pleasant paths, as
one ages, that we do not thank anybody for trying to force us out of
them.
Nothing have we heard or seen of Mr. Horner yet: he has gone South
probably, which is wise. I hope he will come this way in June, when we
shall be very glad to see him....
By the way, I see in “Popular Science Review” a neat presentation of
Wallace’s points on the limitations of natural selection as applied to
man, by Buckle (I suppose your Oriel friend), who makes the point very
well that these limitations apply hardly less, in their way, to other
parts of the animal kingdom.
I am too much occupied with humdrum botanical work to read or think much
of such matters.
Have you read or seen Bryant’s translation of the Iliad? It was
discussed in our club last week by my neighbor, who read extracts from
this, Lord Derby’s, and other translations: it was thought to be as
readable as Lord Derby’s, to adhere quite as closely to the original,
and to reflect more truly the simple directness of Homer, both of
expression and thought. I should like to know what you think of it.
The most important matter, as concerns myself, is, that I am busy with
plans of building, having found a man who is disposed to give the money
for constructing here, adjacent to the herbarium, a much needed
botanical lecture-room and laboratory for students. Between the
herbarium (which, you know, adjoins our house, and communicates with it)
and the conservatory, there is a space of 127 feet. This we mean to fill
up: First, with a one-story brick building 60 × 38 feet, rather less
than one half for botanical laboratory and cabinet, the rest
lecture-room; then a lobby, and the remainder of the distance a low
stove and a short, cool greenhouse, to establish connection with our
present hothouse. Then, on the one hand, I can bring plants at all
seasons into the lecture-room; and on the other I can reach the same
under cover, from my private study, through the herbarium; and Mrs. Gray
may walk, in winter, from her dining-room, through our little
drawing-room, entry, library or parlor, my study, greenhouse corridor,
herbarium, lobby, laboratory, lecture-room, passage, stove and
coolhouse, into conservatory, of three compartments, a long affair, but
don’t imagine anything at all grand. A snake, of which our house is the
head and the farthest wing of the conservatory the tail, will give the
best idea. In a lucky time I asked a man to build in this 127 feet, at
an expense of at least twelve
[Illustration: THE RANGE OF BUILDINGS, BOTANIC GARDEN IN 1893]
thousand dollars; and I am authorized to get plans and estimates
complete, and I suppose it will be done, though I have no positive
assurance of it yet. I thought you would like to know it, without
waiting till all is absolutely settled.
Here is a second sheet filled: thick paper, too, and I must cut all
short. How I wish we could be with you in Switzerland next summer!
Ever yours affectionately,
ASA GRAY.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
March 10, 1871.
MY DEAR DARWIN,--It is very good of you to send me, and so kindly
address, a copy of your new book,[88] which safely reached me two days
ago. I have not yet had time to read any of it, except the preface and
the ending; and I do not like to dip into it and so blunt the edge of
curiosity. So I keep it well out of sight, not caring to look just yet
at any of the pages which you think likely to “aggravate” me, until some
day I can get a good pull at it....
April 14, 1871.
You have such a way of putting things, and you write in such a
captivating way. One can only say:--
Almost thou persuadest me to have been “a hairy quadruped, of arboreal
habits, furnished with a tail and pointed ears,” etc.
But I have read only the first part of the book and the closing
chapters; have left all the Sexual Selection till I can read it
leisurely next summer, and have lent it to a judicious friend, who has
just returned it.
I have been besought to write notices of the book, but I decline. You
don’t know how distracted I am in these days,--doing the work of
professor, gardener, builder, financier, and what not, all at once.
But I must not let this mail pass without sending you the little I could
get as to Laura Bridgman.
Through Dr. Jarvis, a medical man, etc., I got the queries put to the
woman who has now the personal charge of Laura, and he brought me the
inclosed, which I think I should not much rely on.
When Dr. Howe is on hand, some day, I will see if I can get anything
authentic and particular,--not, I fear, in time for you.
TO CHARLES WRIGHT.
CAMBRIDGE, June 28, 1871.
... Well, I say the same as then, only I feel sad about the chance of
the “Flora of North America.” What is my bête noire, as I said before,
is the care of the Garden; and till I can get rid of that, by some
complete reorganization, which shall result in the Garden’s being much
better seen to than it has been,--better taken care of and better named
up and superintended,--I shall not be comfortable nor of much use in
writing “Flora of North America.”
I am going to try if I cannot find or make some sort of superintendent,
and pay him out of what I pay for rent of house, and have succeeded in
getting credited to Botanic Garden fund. This will leave me to pay for
work in the herbarium (which is the work you prefer) out of the only
$800 a year yielded by herbarium fund, which has first of all to pay for
books, paper, fuel, and freights,--in short, most of it, and some years
all,--must come out of my own pocket, until I can find somebody who will
endow a curatorship. Or else I must put this work in the herbarium on to
my assistant, Farlow, who, however, will have his hands full enough
without it.
As to the way you are doing up Cuban botany, I do not find fault with
it. I think, with you, that you are doing about the best possible thing
under the circumstances. The only thing that you may justly complain of
me for, I think, is my sensitiveness and pooh-poohing new-species-making
in families where old species are yet all in a jumble, and where I have
thought that you could not yet tell what were new and what old. I dare
say I have been too impatient about it, and I see I have hurt your
feelings somewhat, which I am sorry for. I only meant, take time and
pains to clear up the old ones in the books, and get a better assurance,
if you can, about the proposed new ones. But, after all, it is wrong and
foolish in me to worry myself, or you, about them.
You will have more experience of the sort, in the working up of your San
Domingo collection. But if we can get time to refer doubtful cases to
say Oliver at Kew, and some one at Paris (where they have many old San
Domingo plants), I suppose you may get them pretty straight....
TO R. W. CHURCH.
September 10, 1871.
I have addressed the envelope for this letter before writing it,
determined to use once more the familiar superscription. The official
may bide its time.[89]
Only yesterday we learned of Gladstone’s doings by a newspaper slip sent
us by a friend who knew of you through us on the Nile, Mrs. Howland. But
I had a sort of premonition of it and was on the lookout....
I do not know where the Deanery is,--not in so attractive a situation as
Whatley Rectory, one may safely say. But I suppose you are not expected
to reside there in summer, that you will be fairly able to have some
country quarters to your liking. And there is Switzerland always within
reach. Happy mortals, who can reach the Alps within forty-eight hours,
and with only a narrow, though proverbially nasty, bit of water to
cross! But what we hope to gain from this upturning is to see you over
here. When Mr. Horner returns (we have heard nothing since they vanished
in the West) he will tell you it is no formidable matter even to cross
the continent. At least you can come and see us, make us a long visit,
and be as quiet here as in a Swiss wayside inn, and sally forth upon an
excursion when you like.
Please thank Mrs. Church from me for thinking of us, and writing the
very next day after this anxious matter was concluded. It is wonderful
she could find time, with so much to do and to think of. And such a full
account of the Swiss journey, too.
I owe you letters, too,--one at least lies reproachingly in a drawer of
my table, where it was thrust a long while ago along with many others
which could be postponed; but once postponed it is not easy to overtake
them.
Say to Mrs. C. it is not a part of our house which was moved; that would
not have been difficult, for it is of wood (though the herbarium, etc.,
adjacent is of brick). It must have been the Law School the moving of
which Mrs. Gray was describing. Tell Mr. Horner that, like some other
things, when once you have seen it done it ceases to be wonderful or
even difficult.
As to my lecture-room, etc., all work stopped for near a month,
including the fortnight or more when I was away; and now (September 11)
all has been clatter and hurry for the last week or so, and they really
seem determined to fulfill the terms of their contract, to finish by the
15th instant. They cannot do that; but I trust the workmen may go out
with the month. These cares of building have sadly interferred with
scientific work all summer. I have accomplished very little of what I
intended. I attended, and, when the last year’s president retired on
delivering his address, presided over, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, twentieth meeting, at Indianapolis, capital of
the State of Indiana,--a journey of forty-eight hours, in very sultry
summer weather, over long stretches of country. I broke the journey by a
day in New York, to see two sons of Mr. Darwin just as they landed, and
by a three days’ stay, including Sunday, with my old friend Mr.
Sullivant, in Ohio. The meeting was a pleasant, though not especially
interesting one. I met botanical correspondents of many years’ standing
whom I had never seen. At the close we were invited to make an excursion
to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which I counted on seeing. But I found
that the excursion was to be an overcrowded one.... So I hastened
homeward, and was with Mrs. Gray at Beverly Farms, where she had been
passing holidays at Mrs. Loring’s at the paternal homestead on the
seashore,--a place that you have heard us talk of not a little. It is
delightful. I know nothing to give you so good an idea of it as the
Devonshire coast, there being plenty of wood quite down to the water.
Were we there now, Miss K. and Charles Loring would, I know, charge me
with messages.
I must tell you that the Scientific Association is invited to meet at
San Francisco, California, next summer; and that we have fixed the
meeting there conditionally, that is, in case the Californians care
enough for our presence to transport a certain number of our
representative men free of cost, or nearly so, across the wide
continent. If not, we are to meet on the northern part of the
Mississippi,--at Dubuque, Iowa, far enough west in all conscience, but a
place from which we may easily reach the Falls of St. Anthony and Lake
Superior. I must needs attend, as I shall have a retiring address to
deliver. And though I can ill spare the time or afford the expense, yet
Mrs. Gray and I are longing to see California. What say you and Mrs.
Church about joining us for your next summer’s vacation? The mountains
which form the sides of the Yosemite Valley will hardly offer as many
kinds of flowers as the alpine turf of the Riffelberg, but they may be
more novel to you....
* * * * *
On December 15, 1871, Dr. Gray wrote to President Eliot, after
describing formally the completion of the new buildings, and something
of the history and arrangement of the department, the following letter:
* * * * *
... I beg to add, for your consideration and that of the corporation, a
few words of a personal character.
With the present academic year I shall have completed thirty years of
service in the professorial chair to which I was called in the spring of
1842. The Garden, which had been under no professorial care for years,
and which has since had a long and hard struggle for existence, the
conservatories, the herbarium and its library, both steadily increasing,
and now the lecture-room, laboratory, etc., make up an establishment
which has grown by degrees into one which requires much time, care, and
anxiety to administer, and for which I have now done the main part of
what could be expected of me or any one man. The experience of the last
and the present year clearly shows me that the work of instruction,
steadily increasing in its demands under the present system, weighted
more and more with the load of administration, is more than I can carry
on. I have some warnings, besides, of the increase of years, which I
ought to consider; and I definitively propose to lay down, at the close
of the present academic year, as large a part of this load as I possibly
can without serious prejudice to this department and this establishment.
I suppose that either the duties of instruction or of administration,
beyond that of the herbarium, must be entirely surrendered. If I can be
spared, and if what I could do for the herbarium could be reckoned an
equivalent for rent of the house I reside in, I should crave to resign
both the charge of the Garden and of the professorship. There is reason
to think that the time is at hand when changes such as are here
suggested may be propitiously made.
When I came here, in 1842, I was carrying on and publishing a most
important original work, the “Flora of North America.” I have worked on
it from time to time, but I never have been able to publish any more of
it. And now what was done has all to be done again, and carried if
possible to a completion; and there is no one else to do it if I do not.
My educational books, or most of them, require to be re-edited; and I
fail to find time and sufficient freedom of mind for the undertaking. If
I could accomplish these tasks, or a good part of them, I am of opinion
that I should in consequence be able (as is especially my desire) to do
a great deal more for the university and the permanent interest of this
establishment than I can expect now to do, as at present situated, even
if it were possible or probable that I could so continue for any length
of time. I am,
Very respectfully and truly yours,
ASA GRAY.
TO JOHN TORREY.
CAMBRIDGE, January 4, 1872.
DEAR DOCTOR,--I have a horrid cold, which makes me unwell.
I write a brief line, in response to yours of yesterday, mainly to say
that I fear I disagree with you about the reply to be made to Wilkes’s
urgent request to print the manuscript of the Oregon collection of
Wilkes’ Expedition.
It was prepared to print long ago; is not your fault that it has been
delayed so long. The library committee have a right to print it, and
might do so without your corrections if you decline to make any. We want
the plates, which are now thrown away, and must be published. I would
print in the form of a naked list,--except where remarks and
descriptions are still wanted,--and to make all right and sure, and to
relieve you, I, with Watson’s kind help, will fix it all up for you and
read the proofs once, and so save you the worry. And I urgently request
you to send this line to Professor Henry, as embodying my opinion, and
my offer of help.
I am sure that if the rest of my manuscript is called for, I shall turn
it over with satisfaction, though the same applies to it as to yours.
And I should either alter accordingly or add notes.
The rest of your letter I will respond to in due time.
But I feel concerned to have those Oregon plates out.
I think I have some right to, as I paid for one hundred of them; but
that is no matter. They are now neither published nor unpublished, which
is a bad state of things.
* * * * *
Dr. Gray had the manuscript prepared some years before for the second
volume of the “United States Exploring Expedition,” and notified the
library committee that he was ready for publishing. Meantime came the
war, and there was no money or thought for such things. When the country
was again quiet and prosperous, the library committee who had formerly
known and been interested in the work and its printing had passed away;
there was no one to care for it, and the manuscript was never called
for.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, March 7, 1872.
Mr. Packard, one of our best entomologists, a most excellent and modest
man, has asked to be introduced to you, that he may pay his respects.
I shy or refuse such applications generally, saying you can rarely see
visitors or callers. But Packard is “fish to your net,” has his head
crammed with facts bearing on derivation, is a disciple of the
Hyatt-Cope school, that you may have heard of,--people who have got hold
of what they call a law, though I do not see that they contribute any
vera causa at all.
If you will turn the world of science upside down, you must expect that
people will wish to see you....
May 31.
By the hand of an old correspondent of yours, and cousin of ours, Mr.
Brace, I send you a little book, which may amuse you, in seeing your own
science adapted to juvenile minds.[90] In some of those hours in which
you can do no better than read, or hear read, “trashy novels,” you might
try this instead. It will hardly rival “The Jumping Frog,” and the like
specimens of American literature which you first made known to us....
TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
BOTANIC GARDEN, June 10, 1872.
MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--You must set me down as a faithless correspondent.
Your pleasant letter of April 6, from Paris, has been long upon my
table, and I think there is one of older date somewhere below. But all
this spring I have been so overworked that I could respond only to the
most necessary letters of business, duties of my professorship, of the
Garden, and many other things. Well, my lectures are over, and for the
ensuing year I may hope for some emendation. I give up the
superintendence of the Botanic Garden, which has become a great burden,
and I nominally devolve other university work in part upon an
assistant, surrendering at the same time a part of my salary, hoping
thereby to purchase time. We shall see if it be possible. But I have to
begin with a new assistant, who will need training; but will then, I
hope, take much off my hands. My youthful assistant of the past two
years goes in a week or two to Europe, to study in some German
university for a year or two; to Strasburg, I think, unless he first
should go to Sweden, and there study Algæ, with Agardh, if he will
receive him. He takes a fancy to lower Cryptogamia. His name is Farlow,
an honest, good fellow. He will most likely be in Switzerland in the
summer; and I shall give him a letter of introduction to you, whom he
will wish to know. But take no trouble on his account, except to
introduce him to Dr. Müller, from whom, as a working lichenologist, he
could learn much.
Well, Mrs. Gray and I are going to set out, two weeks hence, for
California. We both need the change, and are curious to see the country,
having never seen even the Mississippi! The scientific meeting was to
have been held there; but there is now a hitch about it. We go, however,
at all events, and expect to pass a month in the Yosemite Valley, and
elsewhere in the mountain region. I wish you were here to go with us.
Hooker was counted on to go with us; but the very bad state of his
mother’s (Lady Hooker) health, and the state of affairs at Kew prevent
it....
I hope soon to receive your “Mélanges historiques,” which are sure to
interest me. If I can I will write you a long letter from California, or
Utah, or the Rocky Mountains!--more interesting than this scrawl from
yours ever,
ASA GRAY.
TO JAMES D. DANA.
June 22, 1872.
MY DEAR DANA,--I fancy you have got hold of a good topic for your
handling, and have a promising inquiry before you, in coördinating
cephalization and natural selection as operative on the nervous system
of animals. I expect you to get something interesting out of it.
But every now and then something you write makes me doubt if you quite
get hold just right of Darwinian natural selection. What you still say
about struggle not applicable to plants makes me think so.
Suppose the term be a personification, as, no doubt, strictly it is. One
so fond as you are of personification and good general expressions ought
not to object to what seems to me a happy term.
Speaking from general memory, I should say that the term, as used to
express what we mean, was introduced by the elder De Candolle and
applied in what I thought a happy way to the vegetable kingdom. I cannot
drop it because you say there is no struggle where there is no will;
perhaps you mean without consciousness, and then the field of struggle
will be much limited. But call the action what you please,--competition
(that is open to the same objection), collision, or what not,--it is
just what I should think Darwin was driving at. Read “Origin” (4th ed.),
pp. 72, 73, and so on, through the chapter, especially pp. 81-86.
This is enough to show you that when you speak of “Darwinian struggle”
as occurring only “when the faculties of an animal are called into
requisition,” you take too limited a view of what Darwin means.
For myself I should say that the faculties of the lowest animals and the
faculties of plants were equally called into requisition in the case,
in a manner so parallel that there is no drawing any but a purely
arbitrary distinction between the one and the other.
I conceive one as effective as the other as regards the leading on and
fixing variation.
When I say now again that the expression “fitted by its regional
development to the region” conveys no clear meaning to me, I am only
telling you, as I did before, my way of looking at things, not finding
fault with yours.
By the way; “variation (inherent) in particular directions,” is your
idea and mine, but is very anti-Darwin. Good-night.
A. GRAY.
Dr. Gray greatly enjoyed his visit to California, with the long overland
journey thither. It was an ever-renewed excitement to see plants growing
which he had seen only as dried specimens, and the conductor of the
train was at last almost in despair at the scattering of his passengers
to grab what they could in the short halts, as they became inspired by
seeing Dr. Gray rush as the engine slowed, to catch all within reach.
Then when in motion again the specimens were brought from all sides to
see what they were. And the preparing and drying went on to the wonder
of some and the interest of all.
His ascent of Gray’s Peak was made a great occasion in the neighborhood.
A large party gathered from Georgetown and Empire City, and started the
afternoon before, after having been most hospitably dined by Judge
McMurdy, in Georgetown; the night was passed in a mining-tavern cabin,
and the ascent, some going on horseback, some on foot, was made the
next morning. Speeches were made on the summit, and resolutions passed
to confirm the names Gray’s and Torrey’s peaks given in 1862 by Dr.
Parry, who was himself happily with the party. The ascent is not as
difficult as in most mountains of that height, as one can ride on
horseback to the top in August, when the snow lies only in patches; the
trail is mostly over the rough shale, and for a month or two the summit,
though over 14,000 feet, is almost bare. The view of the innumerable
peaks is very magnificent.
At Dubuque he was the guest of an old Fairfield comrade. As the retiring
president of the American Association he gave his address,[91] written
mostly in the cars on the long overland journey, in which he explained
still further some of his long-meditated conclusions on the distribution
of the flora of Western North America.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
CAMBRIDGE, October, 1872.
MY DEAR CHURCH,--I promised to myself, if I did not to you, that I would
write you from the other side of this continent; but writing and
journeying are incompatible, at least in case where the time for the one
is too short for your undertakings. But now we have been a month at
home, and more; the accumulation of things to be seen to is worked off
or nearly, and I mean now to tell you something of our summer’s doings.
As soon as we were free we set out.... At Chicago we had two nights and
a day in which to see the desolated and fast rebuilding town. From this
place, over a thousand miles west of Boston, we made our proper
start.... A welcome rain cooled the air and laid the dust that morning,
and not a drop more of rain did we see, any more than in Egypt, from
that day onward, until, six or seven weeks later, we were back at the
eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, when there was an evening
thunderstorm, and the next morning I called Mrs. Gray to the window to
see a novel sight,--the streets dripping and muddy! I wish I could
describe to you our journey, and the sort of life we were leading. But
if I go into particulars there will be no end.
At Omaha we were on the Pacific Railroad proper, and soon upon the
plains, at first the larger part cultivated, but barer and drier as we
advanced westward, and ascended imperceptibly; so that the next
twenty-four hours brought us, with some fine views of the range, to the
foot of the Rocky Mountains and a height of 5,000 or 6,000 feet above
the sea; that afternoon over the Black Hills of the Platte, 2,000 or
3,000 feet higher, and the highest elevation of the road,--higher than
the passes through the Rocky Mountains beyond,--and at nightfall we were
traversing the wide grassy Laramie Plains, a vast, sequestered
sub-alpine meadow. And when I rose early next morning, we were running
through a dry desert “sage brush” (wormwood) region (desert, except for
the botanist,--the first plant I saw and clutched proved to be Grayia),
the scanty waters of which run into the Colorado of the West and the
Gulf of California.
Another twenty-four hours, through grand scenery, brought us, after
three nights in our car berths, to Ogden, on Salt Lake, where we took a
branch road and, skirting the lake along the whole eastern shore,
reached Salt Lake City, the Mormon town, before sunset. Here we passed
two nights and a day, and enjoyed scenery worth crossing the ocean for,
and saw something of the strange life of the district.
Back to Ogden; two more nights and days, one long day crossing the
Humboldt desert, rendered passable only by the Humboldt River, which,
though the ragged mountains all run north and south, yet runs from east
to west and marks its course by a narrow line of greenness, and at dusk
we saw its end in the Humboldt sink, a lagoon without outlet on the
western verge of the basin, against the Sierra, the arid side of which
we were ascending all night, to awake among pine forests at sunrise; to
breakfast upon the very summit soon after; to descend through most
striking scenery into the great valley of California, and, traversing
that and the Contra Costa range, to see the head of the Bay of San
Francisco at dusk; to cross the bay in a steam-ferry, and reach our
hotel in San Francisco at ten P.M.,--a journey full of interest, not a
bit monotonous or dull, from first to last. There were fatigues and
small discomforts, of course, but these are all forgotten long ago, and
the whole transit dwells in memory as one continual and delightful piece
of pleasant, novel, ever-varied, and instructive sight-seeing. Of course
the identifying at sight, as we flew by, of flowers new to me in the
living state, and the snatching at halts, and the physical features of
districts which I had always been interested in, and knew much about but
had never seen, all gave me occupation and continual pleasure. But it
was much the same with all the party. Even the return journey was hardly
less interesting....
From Dubuque we took steamer up the Mississippi River, through its
finest scenery up to St. Paul, Minnesota; saw the falls of St. Anthony
and Minnehaha; thence, while the rest of our party essayed Lake
Superior, Mrs. Gray and I returned home by rapid stages.
I have only to-day finished the study and laying into the herbarium of
specimens I gathered and dried, regretting the while that I did not
collect more specimens and many other species, as I might have done.
Tyndall is in Boston, and I trust will be with us next week. I have not
yet seen him, nor Froude, nor even MacDonald, the third lecturing
notability in Boston.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
CAMBRIDGE, October 6, 1872.
You delight me by your promise to take up Dionæa and Drosera now, and I
imagine you as now about it. Good! And I am so glad you will take that
opportunity to collect your botanical and quasi-botanical papers. These,
with the Dionæa, etc., will make a nice and most welcome volume.
In answer to your query, I think I can “support the idea,” or the
probability of it, “that tendrils become spiral after clasping an object
from the stimulus from contact running down them.” For though some
“tendrils do become spiral when they have clasped nothing,” others do
not. The adjustment of the unstable equilibrium is more delicate in the
former, so that it starts under some inappreciable cause or stimulus.
That the stimulus may be so propagated downward is clear in the
sensitive plant, where the closing of the leaflets in succession will
follow the closing of the ultimate pair under slight and local
irritation. And in the tendril the coiling below is just a continuation
of the same movement or same change as that which incurved the tip in
clasping, that is, a relative shortening of concave or lengthening of
the convex side of the tendril. Would you not infer that the action was
propagated downward?
So you were astonished at Mrs. Gray’s audacity. Well, “toujours
l’audace;” she is all the better for it. Some horseback work in getting
to and into the Yosemite Valley was severe, but she bore it so well that
I ventured, when we made our detour into the Colorado Rocky Mountains,
to take her up to the summit of Gray’s Peak, 14,300 feet, or
thereabouts, where she acquitted herself nobly. The day was perfect, the
success complete, and the memory of it one of the most delightful of the
many pleasant memories of the whole journey. Our great trip was the
round from San Francisco to Mariposa Grove, Yosemite Valley, entering
over Glacier Point, from which (tell your sons) is a new trail down the
4,000 feet into the valley; made excursions from the valley during
several days, and returned by a long sweep through the little Tuolumne
grove, round foothills to Murphy’s and the Calaveras Grove, and so back
to San Francisco. Afterwards Mrs. Gray and I went to Santa Cruz and up
the San Lorenzo Valley among noble redwoods, rivaling the Sequoia
gigantea. On return we made one stretch to the east base of the Rocky
Mountains, then down to Denver, and up into the mountains, to 8,400
feet, where we had a pleasant week or more (just the climate to give
strength to an invalid), whence I climbed a high mountain or two, among
them Gray’s Peak, the highest, as already mentioned. Thence we came down
to Dubuque and hot weather, on the Mississippi to St. Paul and St.
Anthony, etc., and then home by rail, having been twelve busy weeks
away.
Well, we are longing to do it again, and more! But I am settling down to
my work as well as I may, well content with the summer’s holiday.
December 2, 1872.
Well, it is wonderful, your finding the nervous system of Dionæa!!! Pray
take your time next spring, and do up both Drosera and Dionæa. I will
endeavor next spring to get hold of Drosera filiformis and make the
observations. I will also do better, by sending your note on to Mr.
Canby, who lives near its habitat, and has done something already in
such observations.
As to coiling of tendril. I think your idea is that in the coiling of a
fixed tendril, one coil has its concave side the opposite of the part
that has coiled the other way.
Now take a piece of tape say a span long; black one side, let some one
hold the two ends while you twist in the middle. The two halves are
coiled in opposite directions, just as a tendril which has caught does.
The same color will be on the outside of the coil all the length.
Blacken with a stroke of paint a line along the whole length of a caught
tendril. On straightening it out the black will be all on one side.
I have not had time to follow it up, and need not, since you are sure to
do it. But I think it clear that one and the same side is concave, that
is, the relatively shortened side, the whole length of the caught
tendril. Do not you?
Mrs. Gray is absent while I write, or she would add her best regards and
best wishes to my own for a happy New Year to you all.
TO C. W. ELIOT.
BOTANIC GARDEN, CAMBRIDGE, January 1, 1873.
MY DEAR PRESIDENT ELIOT,--Will you kindly present the inclosed
communication to the corporation at its next meeting.
I need not say to you that I could not take so serious a step as this
without much consideration, and that I would not do it if I were not
confident that the department which I have served in the university for
almost thirty-one years need not now suffer by my withdrawal. I am
warned also by growing experience of the fact that the needful work
which I could formerly do with ease can now be done only by effort,
followed by exhaustion and other unpleasant effects, which may be
expected to increase; and it is clear that I have left to me, at best,
barely time enough, when rigorously economized, to complete the works
for which I have long been pledged, and without the accomplishment of
which my life will have been largely a failure. The corporation will
perceive that I do not intend to be idle, but to concentrate what
energies remain to me upon the kind of work for which I am best--and
indeed peculiarly--fitted, both by disposition and by more than forty
years of preparation. As this work proceeds, the herbarium of the
university, always requiring attention during its continued increase,
will be put into the condition in which I should leave it, with its
value greatly enhanced. In view of this, and of the fact that the
herbarium forms an important part of the apparatus of instruction here,
I trust the corporation will think it reasonable to allow me the
possession of the house I live in, in recompense of my services as
curator of the herbarium.
I offer my resignation unconditionally, that the corporation may have,
as it should, the whole matter in its hands without embarrassment. If it
be desired to keep my name for the present upon the catalogue, and
especially if the corporation should prefer not to place a permanent
incumbent just yet in the Fisher professorship, I would in that case
take the liberty to suggest that the present very capable and efficient
assistant, Dr. Goodale, be made adjunct professor of vegetable
physiology, with salary assigned from the Fisher professorship. I
remain, dear Mr. President,
Very sincerely yours,
ASA GRAY.
_Messrs. the President and Fellows of Harvard College_:
HONORABLE AND DEAR SIRS,--The time has arrived when I may, as I think
without detriment to the university, retire from the professorship to
which I was appointed in the spring of 1842; and I hereby tender my
resignation of it, to take effect at the close of the present academic
year, when I shall have completed thirty-one years of service.