CHAPTER VIII.

FINAL JOURNEYS AND WORK.

1880-1888.

Dr. Gray sailed for Europe with Mrs. Gray early in September, 1880. He

went especially to study herbaria for his new volume of the “Synoptical

Flora,” and saw almost every collection of importance, giving especial

attention to the subject of asters. The autumn was spent in western

France and Spain, and in Madrid he looked over the herbarium there. He

declared nobody had ever had so many asters pass through his hands as he

had had!

The winter was spent in hard work in the Kew herbarium. He enjoyed

heartily in spring a journey through Italy with his friends Sir Joseph

and Lady Hooker, returning to Kew to spend the summer, at work in the

herbarium, and he sailed again for home in October, 1881, landing early

in November.

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

HÔTEL CONTINENTAL, PARIS, October 3, 1880.

MY DEAR REDFIELD,--Many thanks for letter of 17th September, which

reached me at Kew, where we passed a busy and happy fortnight with the

Hookers, and did some botanical work. We left Friday morning, reached

Paris pleasantly that evening, where we make only two days more stay at

present, but leave Tuesday for the Loire district and thence to Spain,

but expect to return here after our round, and stay possibly a month.

Play first, work afterwards, is our present motto. If the Academy, or

any of the brethren, take Garber’s little Porto Rico collection, you or

they will be glad to know that Professor Oliver and I named them up

while I was at Kew, and that the list has been forwarded to D. C. Eaton.

News I have little to tell you. Yet, though we left home only a month

ago, it seems a half year. We had a botanical concours at Kew; for De

Candolle and wife came over, as he says, to see Mrs. Gray and me, and

the Hookers gave two dinner parties on the occasion; present four

botanists, whose united ages sum up high, for Bentham had his eightieth

birthday just before, De Candolle is about seventy-five, I on the verge

of seventy, and Hooker, the baby of the set, in his sixty-fourth year;

some younger botanists were with us,--Oliver, Baker, Masters, young

Balfour, etc.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

MALAGA, August 30, 1880.

... As to pictures, you know I am no picture sharp; but Madrid and

Seville (which must be taken together) are a revelation of Murillo and

Velasquez.... That kind of thing is nearly over with us on leaving

attractive and sunny Seville. We cut off Jerez and Cordova, and came in

here yesterday through olive groves enough to saponify and saladulate

creation, and the passage through the mountains from Bobadilla to

Malaga, wonderfully grand, ending in orange groves filling lovely dells

and valleys. Nothing to keep us long here, though picturesqueness is

not wanting. The days are hot. At Granada, to which we fly to-morrow

afternoon, we expect to find the _juste milieu_....

One bit of this sheet to tell you that Joey’s portrait has been painted

by Murillo, and a good likeness, hair, pose, and features. He is holding

a bird aloft, and a white little dog is looking up wistfully at it, to

Joey’s delight. It is in the Museum at Madrid, and is much admired....

TO R. W. CHURCH.

THE ALHAMBRA, GRANADA, November 2, 1880.

It is time that you should be thanked for the notes you kindly sent us.

They will come of use later. You will wish to know what we have been

doing for the past month, only a month by the almanac, for we left

England October 1, and Paris on the 6th, the latter being the date we

count from. So that there is not yet quite a month of travel, yet it

seems a long while, as if stored with a year’s memories. And the weather

throughout has been superb. One cold day in Paris, and some cool nights

between Bordeaux and Madrid; and then, even at Madrid, we had summer

rather than autumn weather, until, ascending from Malaga to this higher

region, the cool and fresh air which comes down from the snow-flecked

Sierra Nevada makes the sunshine pleasant and wraps desirable at

nightfall.

A few midday hours served for Orleans, and we went on to Blois. You know

how very charming that is, and you may imagine Mrs. Gray’s delight at

the castle, also at Chambord, to which we drove. Two nights there and

three at Tours. The cathedral charmed us; also the old houses and ruined

bits and towers. We passed Amboise, and went from Tours to Chenonceaux

and back by railway,--a bijou to be enjoyed; but the next day’s

excursion to Lôches had a much deeper and more varied interest. By

traveling over night to Bayonne and passing Biarritz at sunrise, a noble

sunrise and morning, with the Atlantic on one side and the Cantabrian

Pyrenees on the other, we gained the privilege of a daylight journey

from Irun to Burgos. It is far more picturesque and striking than I had

supposed. A day at Burgos was a treat, as you may suppose. Leon lay out

of our track and demanded night hours and night changes too severe and

too formidable for a couple ignorant of Spanish and impatient of

couriers. So we went on overnight to Madrid (night travel being

inevitable); and here we had a warm, sunny, busy, and most enjoyable

week, some pleasant home-friends for companions, as also a charming

Spanish family, M. and Mme. Riaño, whom we had met at our minister’s,

Lowell, at London. She is a daughter of Gayangos and had an English

mother; is a charming mixture of Spanish and English and everything that

is bright and good. Then there was a raree-show not to be matched out of

Spain: the royal family with the infanta going to church in state, the

grand procession kindly going and returning under our windows. The

Armeria and, still more, the Archeological Museum were full of the Old

World things we Americans dote on. And then the great picture-gallery,

supplemented not a little by the Academia San Fernando. Add to these

the pictures at Seville, and imagine the treat we have had. I shall

leave all this for Mrs. Gray to expatiate upon next winter.

We now know Murillo, and rank him next to Titian, and in feeling and

delicacy much above him. He could paint something besides Spanish-girl

Madonnas, lovely as they are, and Spanish beggars, where he had only to

copy from the streets; and whoever has not seen St. Elisabeth of

Hungary, the Roman Senator and his Wife, the Guardian Angel, Moses

striking the Rock, and its companion, the Loaves and Fishes, and the St.

Antony of Padua, down to whom the Infant Christ lightly floats,

encircled with child angels, has not yet seen the works of Murillo. Then

Velasquez, most noble, and Zurbaran and Ribera, and Cano, Morales, and

Moro, and others whom I never knew aught about before. At Toledo we

passed two days and three nights, well filled with sights of Old World

things hardly touched by the later ages; and there is the grandest of

cathedrals; and yet the interior of that of Seville is rather more

satisfying. These three, Burgos, Toledo, Seville, I should place in this

ascending order, or bracketing the latter two.

A journey overnight brought us at sunrise into Andalusia, at Cordova,

which we passed (to take on the way from Granada), and so to Seville for

breakfast, three happy, sunny, busy days there, and then to Malaga, two

days, and then on to this place, which we reached after dark, and are

now enjoying our second day in.

There are two hotels up here, under the Alhambra walls, and we are at

one of them. Yesterday the road which rises to the crown of the hill

was crowded with people of the town below, going up to the cemetery with

flowers and lamps and candles and drapery, to ornament the tombs and

graves of relatives, which here is done on All Saints’ Day, and we saw

the curious sight by day and walked up again in the evening, when all

was alight, and in a chapel a sort of requiem service performing. We

will not describe the Alhambra. I fancied I should think the work

finical; but you are carried away by it. But of most interest was our

visit to the Cathedral of Granada this morning and to the Capilla Real,

to see all the relics and contemporary memorials of Ferdinand and

Isabella, their effigies, sword, sceptre, etc., their noble tombs, more

rich and beautiful, I think, than those of the Constable and his wife at

Burgos, and then to descend into the vault and see their rude iron

coffins, which have not been desecrated nor molested, and also those of

Philip I. and his poor wife Joanna. (Let us tell you, some day, of a

modern Spanish picture, at Madrid, of her and her husband’s coffin,

which she wearily had carried with her.) All this, and what we see here

on the spot of the Moorish life, and what we saw at the cathedral, gives

a vivid reality that nothing else can.

And here my sheet is full and my gossip must be cut short, with short

space to add the kindest remembrances and love which my wife joins in

sending to you and yours and daughters.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, PARIS, November 14, 1880.

Here we are back at Paris (since twenty hours), and, this being Sunday,

having discharged my religious duty and ventilated my patriotism by

going in the morning to the American Chapel I am going to discharge upon

you a missive which may be of some size,--is sure to be so if I open all

my mind. Whence did I write you last? Malaga, I fancy, where I received

a letter from you ... which tells us of the conflagration of Charlie’s

dog and cat, and the narrow escape of the owner, of horrid weather,

while we have had only one rainy day, and that no great impediment

(though I did have to examine the Botanic Garden at Valencia under an

umbrella and in india-rubbers)....

A good day was occupied in going to Cordova, and the next morning did

the Mosque-Cathedral, which I expected to be disappointing, yet it was

not. Afternoon began the long journey which there was no escaping,

northeast to Valencia: a dull place made duller by rain. Next afternoon

to Tarragona, and a most charming day in that interesting old town and

its environs, the evening taking us on to Barcelona, of less interest.

The next day’s travel, long and delightful, was all by daylight, except

the last hour. It took us along either beautiful or picturesque country,

much of the way with the Mediterranean on one side and the Pyrenees on

the other, out of Spain and as far as Narbonne. A day’s excursion was

given to Carcassonne; perfect, and stranded on the shore of time, an

excellent example of a Middle Age fortified city, cathedral and all;

Visigoth walls and towers on Roman foundations, extended and modernized

by the father of St. Louis, and the finishing touches by St. Louis

himself.

Here endeth the epistle. The rest is simply getting back to Paris. I had

counted on returning by way of Nîmes, Clermont-Ferrand, and a little

détour to see the cathedral of Bourges. But the winds from the mountains

made Narbonne and Carcassonne cold, the few trains from Nîmes were

unseasonable, my wife declared she had so many cathedrals mixed up in

her head that she could not endure another, and so, leaving Narbonne in

early morning, we reached Cette ten minutes after the express train for

Paris had left, and we came on in omnibus train in unbroken journey,

through Montpellier, Nîmes, and Avignon (which we had visited, in former

years), and via Lyons to Paris. And here we are.

Two months of play, delicious play, are up: we landed two months ago

to-morrow. We have had our share, and I have now an appetite for work. I

can be usefully busy in Paris for a fortnight, hardly longer. Then what?

Much depends on what you can see your way to. The traditional “three

courses” seem to be before us, each with its advantages and

disadvantages; and we are so balanced that we shall be likely to incline

as you push the scale....

Course 3. Bear the English winter, if we can’t avoid it, on the

principle that “what can’t be cured must be endured.” And with your good

fires and snugness it is not so bad. Secure our lodgings, and we will

come over to you about the first of the coming month; and I get a solid

piece of work done.

If I can utilize the long evenings nothing can be better. Then in March

or early April, when England is apt to be raw and rough, but Italy is

smiling, we will rush to meet the spring, and return to England when

that, too, is delightful and its days long and sunny. Note also, that

even an Italian winter may be chilly and damp, and when it is so, there

is no seeing galleries and churches without teeth-chattering and

cold-taking, and it is not easy to get warm lodgings and decent fires.

This course 3 would suit me best of all; for then we, lingering longer

than you might be able to take time for, should return to England via

Vienna and Berlin, which Mrs. Gray has never seen, and in the latter I

have Willdenow’s herbarium to potter over.

Now, my dear old friend, perpend my words (if you can read them; I write

on an awkward bit of table), and then have your say.

HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, November 21, 1880.

The correspondence of late has naturally been conducted by our

respective better halves. I have at length (after giving Cosson two or

three days to name up his American and Mexican plants) got fairly at

work at the Jardin des Plantes, and have found (mainly in the herbarium

Jussieu) the originals of several of Lamarck’s asters, which gives me

happiness. They take every pains to accommodate and assist one at the

herbarium. I see old Decaisne at his house; he is not strong.

I think we shall need two weeks more here, and we hope for better

weather than we have yet had. Colds one always takes at Paris, and Mrs.

Gray now has her share. It took a long while to be clear of the one

presented to me on our arrival here in October. But in the south of

Spain my throat was as clear as a whistle. We are not bad just now, and

are hopeful.

I was perfectly sincere in writing that I should prefer returning to Kew

for two or three months and to reserve Italy for the early spring. I

shall get more work out of it so. At the same time I was confident that

it would suit you best, and I am glad that you jump at it. It may enable

us to get off the fag end (and best part) of Hayden’s report, if ever he

sends over the portion in type. I am surprised that it has not before

this come to hand.

TO MISS A. A. GRAY.

HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, PARIS, December 3, 1880.

MY DEAR A.,--I cannot tell you how much I was touched by your letter of

the 18th of November, following the round-robin, the letter of Mrs. J.

and that of Charley. And what could have possessed my brothers and

sisters, and nieces, and “their cousins and your aunts” to club together

a contribution on the occasion, as if nobody in the family had ever got

to have a seventieth birthday, or ever expected to! Well, it was indeed

truly good and thoughtful of you all, and it gratified me beyond

measure. As you were the organ of the family, upon the occasion, let me

ask you to be the medium for conveying to one and all my acknowledgments

and most hearty thanks for their words and deeds and kind thoughts of me

at this interesting time.

And now what I am to do with the presents that have poured in, that is,

what am I to present to myself in your name, and keep as a

souvenir,--that is the question which is exercising my mind. It must be

something personal to myself, and I am not much given to personal

adornment, and have few personal wants beyond daily food and clothing,

of which I always say that “the old is better.” But I have got an

idea,--which I will not put on paper yet, because I may change my mind

and not carry it out. You shall see in time.

“Aunt J.” and I are having a nice time here in Paris, in spite of the

short and dark days. But we have been very, very busy, each in our way,

and now and then busy in company, as we have been to-day. And then at

evening we come back to our little room, and have the nicest little

dinner together in the little _salle-à-manger_ of our little nice hotel;

or rarely we go out, but never to fare better; and we have been invited

to three dinner parties, each notable and enjoyable in its way. And now

I have to-morrow one more day of botanical work, and then we expect to

go back on Monday to Kew, and to the lodgings which we occupied a dozen

years ago. You can write to your aunty directly there: Mrs. Shepherd’s,

“Charlton House,” Kew. Don’t suppose that because it has a name, the

house is a grand one. Not a bit of it. But in England, houses, like

babies, have names given them when they are little.

Good-by. With dear love to all, along with thanks, I am

Your affectionate

ASA GRAY.

TO MESSRS. REDFIELD AND CANBY.

KEW, December 12, 1880.

MY DEAR BRETHREN, REDFIELD AND CANBY,--I think I had a letter from each

of you, and that you had some response from me of some sort (and one or

two papers, etc., have come from Redfield), but that was so far back in

memory when we were staying in Kew before, that it seems to belong to

that early phase in my existence when I was living on the other side of

the ocean; and that seems as widely distant in time as the ocean is wide

in space! It is only by the almanac that we know that we left Cambridge

less than three and a half months ago.

I have not done very much for botany in all that time; but Mrs. Gray and

I have laid in a stock of health and vigor, corporeally, and have filled

our heads with such interesting memories! This and such constant changes

of scene have produced the illusion I refer to, through which, as

through a haze, I dimly discern last summer. But out of that haze your

bright and kindly faces look undimmed.

Did I tell you (I think I did) of the pleasant fortnight here in

September, when guests at Hooker’s; when for botany I worked up

Oxytropis; when De Candolle and wife were here, and Bentham--serene old

man--dined with us almost every day; of our crossing one bright day to

Paris, and all that?... Thence, abandoning, from lateness of the season,

the plan of returning through Auvergne, we came on quick via Nîmes,

Lyons, etc., to Paris.

There Mrs. Gray and I passed three very busy and very charming weeks;

also doing some good botanical work, and having a good time with

Decaisne and the other botanists at the garden, with Dr. Cosson and M.

Lavallée.[115] Then, as the Hookers could not carry out their promise of

joining us and going together to Italy now, we agreed to defer that till

early spring, and back we came here for work. We are settled in our old

lodgings on Kew Green, where we feel quite at home, and are near the

Hookers and the herbarium; and here I am to polish off the

Asteroideæ,--some very rough surfaces in Aster yet to grind down. We

should be pleased to hear from you.

It was at Cordova that I spelled out in Spanish the welcome news that

the Republicans had carried the election, and grandly.

And now, with Mrs. Gray’s love joined to mine to your good wives and

children, I am

Cordially yours,

ASA GRAY.

Dr. Gray settled down at Kew for hard work, but as the days were very

short, and of course the herbarium was closed at dusk, he had long

evenings. There were many pleasant dinners, among others at Mr. John

Ball’s, where he met Robert Browning; and a charming visit to Lord Ducie

at Tortworth, where he was much interested in the fine and rare trees,

and had an afternoon’s visit to see Berkeley Castle, one of the oldest,

if not the oldest, of inhabited castles in England. He paid another

interesting visit to Cambridge, to Professor Babington, where he had not

been since his visit in 1851, and where among others he met again Dr.

Thompson, then Master of Trinity, who had so kindly received him in

1851. Mr. Lowell was then minister to England, and there were pleasant

meetings with him.

In early March he crossed to Paris, were he was joined by Sir Joseph and

Lady Hooker for a journey by Mt. Cenis to Italy, going as far south as

Castellamare and to Amalfi and Pæstum, and returning; short stays in

Rome, Florence, and so to Venice, where the party divided, Dr. Gray

going to Geneva.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

KEW, December 26, 1880.

... I am making slow progress with the Asters. The original types of all

the older species I shall certainly make out; but the limitation of the

species presents great, if not insuperable difficulties.

I have read nearly all of Darwin’s “Power of Movement in Plants.” It is

a veritable research, with the details all recorded; and so it is dull

reading. I think it will give the impression to most readers that the

terms “geotropism,” “epinasty,” is “hyponasty,” etc., contain more of

explanation than in fact they do. Yet now and then a remark should

prevent this, as on page 569, and notably on page 545, at the close of

the chapter, intimating,--I suppose with reason--that the term “gravity”

or “gravitation” is quite misapplied.

I have just taken up Wallace’s “Island Life,” and find the earlier

chapters most clear and excellent, but without novelty. The idea of the

persistence of continents is most commonplace in America since Dana’s

address in (I think) 1845, and I should have thought Wallace would have

known of the entire prevalence of that view, at least in the western

world.

Rely on me, dear De Candolle, to keep you _au courant_ with all that

concerns your friends here, among which always remember your devoted,

ASA GRAY.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

KEW, February 19, 1881.

MY DEAR ENGELMANN,--A few days, or say a week ago, we were gratified by

receiving your pleasant letter of the 31st January. I hasten to reply

before we get afloat again, when writing becomes precarious. Just now

Mrs. Gray and I have our evenings together in our quiet lodgings, that

is, whenever we are not dining out or the like, which is pretty often.

You know of our movements, then, up to our return here. The Spanish trip

was very pleasant and successful, and the three weeks afterward in Paris

both useful and enjoyable. As to botany, it was all given to Aster and

Solidago, at the Jardin des Plantes, and at Cosson’s, who has the

herbarium of Schultz,[116] Bip., which abounds with pickings from many

an herbarium.

We got over here early in December, and here I have worked almost every

week day till now, excepting one short visit down to Gloucestershire,

and a recent trip to Cambridge, where, however, a good piece of three

mornings was devoted to Lindley’s asters. I know the types now of all

the older species of North American aster, Linnæan, Lamarckian,

Altonian, Willdenovian,[117]--excepting one of Lamarck’s, which I could

not trace in the old materials at Paris; and Röper writes me that it is

not in herbarium Lamarck. As to Nees’s asters, most of them are plenty,

as named by him directly or indirectly. But where, on the dispersion of

his herbarium, the Compositæ went to nobody seems to know, though I have

tried hard to find out. Have you any idea? But he made horrid work with

the asters, and the Gardens all along, from the very first, have made

confusion worse confounded. No cultivated specimen, of the older or the

present time, is _per se_ of any authority whatever. I am deeply

mortified to tell you that, with some little exception, all my botanical

work for autumn and winter has been given to Aster (after five or six

months at home), and they are not done yet! Never was there so rascally

a genus! I know at length what the types of the old species are. But how

to settle limits of species, I think I never shall know. There are no

characters to go by in the group of Vulgar Asters; the other groups go

very well. I give to them one more day; not so much to make up my mind

how to treat a set or two, as how to lay them aside, with some

memoranda, to try at again on getting home, before beginning to print.

The group now left to puzzle me is of Western Pacific Rocky Mountain

species. The specimens you have collected for me last summer, when I get

them, may help me; or may reduce me to blank despair!

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

VENICE, May 1, 1881, Sunday.

As we propose to leave Venice to-morrow, I think I may say that within

ten days you may look to see us in Geneva. The Hookers, with whom we

have journeyed thus far, will proceed more directly home, after a day or

two at the Italian lakes. We propose to follow more leisurely, and, if

the road is fairly practicable, to cross the Simplon, and so to Geneva,

where, according to your suggestion, we will go to the Hôtel des

Bergues....

We have now been two months in travel, without respite, and for my part

I am fairly sated. I need the change and rest which a week of botanical

research in your herbarium, and of intercourse with its owner, will

afford me.

We have been as far south as Amalfi and Pæstum. We have attended to the

proper sight-seeing of Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice, and have

gained novelty by seeing also Orvieto, Cortona, and Siena, likewise

Ravenna. We have escaped a disagreeable spring in England, but at the

expense of being everywhere at least a fortnight too early for the

various parts of Italy; and I suppose we shall be all the more sensible

of this at the lakes and in crossing the Alps. But the weather has never

been unfavorable, and we have enjoyed much and worked hard. A week near

you in comparative rest will make an agreeable finale. Our companions

have added much to the enjoyment, and we are sorry to part with them.

They would, I know, send their best regards and remembrances, but at

this moment they are both out; but Mrs. Gray, who is writing by my side,

desires me to add her own to Madame De Candolle and yourself; and I am

always most sincerely yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

LUGANO, May 8, 1881.

... Mrs. Gray was able to see little of Padua, beyond the Giotto

frescoes and a look into San Antonio, the interior of which looked

richer than ever. I kept moving; took a turn in the pleasant old Botanic

Garden; found Saccardo;[118] saw two plants of Amorphophallus Rivieri in

blossom; was taken up, by Saccardo’s aid, by Dr. Penzig[119] of Breslau,

a gentlemanly young fellow, and of good promise, who took me in hand at

the garden, university, etc.

HÔTEL ST. ROMAIN, PARIS, May 22, 1881.

If I write you a letter this evening, having nothing else to do till

bedtime, mind, you, who have everything to do, are not bound to do more

than to read it. Mrs. Gray and Lady Hooker seem to manage correspondence

very well, and we may take it easy. But I want to tell you what a

pleasant and restful week we had at Geneva. The De Candolles were

delightful. He comes in from Vallon every day at ten, and stays till

half past four, and I passed much of the time in the herbarium, where I

had various old dropped stitches to take up, which I happily

accomplished. As to sociabilities, De Candolle had made a dinner party

for the very day we arrived (Friday), which I had barely time to get to.

I met there Edouard Naville and his wife, the latter new to me, and a

Pourtalès, cousin of our Count Pourtalès, who died last summer, and who,

as a young man, followed Agassiz to the United States, and was a very

important man to Alexander Agassiz. His death was severely felt by all

of us. Naville, who is a capital Egyptologist, we knew in Egypt twelve

years ago, where he was exploring Edfou and monographing one of its

acres of wall sculpture and hieroglyphics, and we met him at De

Candolle’s the next summer. We went out last week to his place at

Marigny, on the north side of the lake, charmingly placed, with a

full-length view of Mont Blanc in front; the lake in the foreground.

Casimir and wife are in England; Lucien off at some baths for

rheumatics. But Lucien’s wife was at De Candolle’s, and is a pleasant

lady. On Sunday De Candolle sent in his coupé, and took Mrs. Gray and me

to dinner en famille at Vallon,--only Madame Lucien and some

grandchildren. Vallon is a very pretty place and the house charming.

Madame De Candolle is lively, even sprightly in her own house, and, I

may as well tell you, is greatly in love with Lady Hooker. We were sent

home in the coupé in great style; as also we were on Friday evening

last, when De Candolle gave us, for parting, a small dinner

party,--Professors Wartmann and Saussure, and the banker

Lombard,--Plantamour, the astronomer, being detained by the stars; his

wife came, however. All these Genevese speak English well, except Madame

De Candolle, who gets off a little, and what with this and their

pleasant ways, we were quite at home with them.

Boissier had written to us to come down to Valeyres, but he had expected

us earlier. As he was to be off in less than a week, and Mrs. Gray well

used up, on reaching Geneva, we declined, and begged him to come to

Geneva, which he did on Monday, and stayed well into Tuesday. He took me

to his herbarium, which is large and well kept, and I looked up some old

things of Lagasca’s, which I could find no trace of at Madrid. Barbey I

regretted not to see. He goes with his father-in-law to the Balearic

Isles,--goes, indeed, because he is concerned for Boissier’s health, and

well he may be.

Argovian Müller I saw something of; busy and happy in the care of the

garden, the Delessert herbarium, and the professorship in the new

university, built up with the late Duke of Brunswick’s money. The death

of his only son was a great blow to him; but he seems cheerful and is

very busy. De Candolle is working over Cultivated Plants and their

origin....

I see I must go home this autumn, and, indeed, that seems best on almost

all accounts. So I should be at Kew soon, and once there I must set

myself to work most diligently, and make the most of what time remains.

I hear nothing as yet of Bentham. I hope he is going on well, and the

Gramineæ nearly finished, and that he will next take up Liliaceæ....

AIX LA CHAPELLE, June 8, 1881.

... Then we took train on the road down the Moselle (which we had

followed from Metz). From Trèves halfway down to Coblentz the country

had a decidedly American river look; that is, it constantly reminded

one of the Mohawk or the Unadilla,--small rivers of my native State and

district, and with just such rounded wooded hills and smooth, well

cultivated slopes, and wide stretches of meadow and grain fields. Then

came the picturesque portion with precipitous hillsides and crags

covered with vines wherever a bit of soil could be found to hold them,

extending down to Coblentz. We went on by the railroad down the left

bank of the Rhine to Cologne, which we reached late in the afternoon and

left at three this P.M.; reached this place at half past four; and while

Mrs. Gray rested, I have explored till our half past six dinner hour.

Trèves was an interesting place, though it need not detain one long.

Cologne we were glad to see again, and were as much interested in its

old Romanesque churches as in its cathedral,[120] which certainly is

much bettered by the completion of the nave and the west front and

towers,--I may say towers and spires,--for they make nearly all the west

front. It does not compare with Reims, so far as façade goes....

* * * * *

On reaching Paris in June Dr. Gray met again his old friend Decaisne and

many others, and there was much pleasant hospitality at the hands of

friends new and old. He especially enjoyed a day at Verrières, seeing,

in the old home of M. and Mme. de Vilmorin, the dear friends of thirty

years before, the oldest son Henri with his wife and children, the

grandchildren of M. and Mme. V. of the corresponding ages and number as

the family of young people whom he met in the first visit in 1851.

On returning to Kew, though the time until leaving late in October was

busy with steady work, there were pleasant breaks with visits and

excursions. He had the pleasure of meeting Dean Stanley, first at the

christening of a daughter of Professor Flower’s, and was to have dined

with him, but the dinner was postponed on account of a slight

indisposition of the Dean, which developed into his fatal illness.

There were many pleasant visits and excursions, some delightful stays in

Devonshire and Somersetshire, when pleasant acquaintances were renewed.

He spent a few days again at Down with Mr. Darwin, and in August he went

to York for the meeting of the British Association. He stayed with Mr.

Backhouse, the well-known horticulturist, and saw his wonderful

underground caves of ferns, and his successful alpine garden, and

enjoyed the social as well as the scientific meetings.

At Kew he was surrounded with friends, renewing the close intimacy with

his old and lifelong friend Sir Joseph Hooker; was near his friends at

the Deanery at St. Paul’s and at Broom House; and he rested now and then

with a day’s sight-seeing. The days passed all too quickly until the

time came for breaking up for the return to America. There was a short

stay at Oxford, with Sir Henry Acland, most interesting days, and again

at Manchester at Professor and Mrs. Williamson’s hospitable home, and

then the voyage to America, when he landed early in November.

TO MESSRS. CANBY AND REDFIELD.

KEW, July 15, 1881.

MY DEAR OLD FRIENDS, CANBY AND REDFIELD,--How very long it is since you

have heard, at least directly, from your Old World wanderers! How long

and from whence, is more than I can tell. I use now an enforced half

hour before an engagement, and when it is, would you believe it for

England? too hot to go across the Green to use the half hour at the

herbarium, where I have sweltered all the morning, regular Philadelphia

heat, and this is the third day of this the second heated term.

I wrote you from Italy, I think.

... It is hopeless now to try to give any narration of our doings. The

flavor would have all evaporated in the attempt to recall and review the

past spring.

I think you know our routes, from Paris in March to Turin, to Genoa,

Pisa, Rome, Naples, and the country around, Amalfi and Pæstum our most

southern points; then Rome again and a twelve days’ stay, then a run to

Orvieto and Cortona on the route to Florence, a visit to Siena from

Florence, a detour from Bologna to Ravenna, most old-world of towns,

thence to Venice, a week only. And as we left it, the Hookers, whose

furlough was running out, dropped us at Padua, whence, passing Verona,

where we had been before, we had a day at Brescia, thence to Milan, Como

and up the lake, and over to Lugano, and back to Milan. Thence to Arona

at foot of Lake Maggiore, and a drive all the way up to Domo d’Ossola,

and then diligence over the Simplon pass and through the snow, and down

to Brieg, and on to Martigny to sleep, and then on to Geneva, where we

passed a delicious week, with De Candolle and other friends to enjoy,

and a little botany to attend to in the herbarium. And then in one day

we went to Paris, and stayed three weeks, while Mrs. Gray did her

feminine matters, and I a deal of botany work, and both a little

sight-seeing. Thence, sending our luggage before to London, we swung off

for Soissons and the old castle of Coucy, and Reims, and Trèves, and

down the Moselle to Coblentz, and the Rhine (that is, by rail) to

Cologne, to enjoy the finished cathedral; thence to Aix la Chapelle, to

Bruxelles, and then, with a fine day and smooth water, over to England;

and here at Kew we have been settled ever since, engaging in a deal of

botanical work and a deal of society in a most agreeable way, and a

little (thus far only a little) sight-seeing. As we come towards the

end, we grow busier every day, and count the time closer. For we expect

to return in October, to reach home (_Deo favente_) either at the end of

that month or before the middle of November; the day and vessel not yet

quite fixed....

There are lots of things to write about, but the sheet is full, and I

must only say I am

Yours affectionately,

ASA GRAY.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

RICHMOND HOUSE, KEW.

... It is really serious, this leaving England, and choice friends in

it, when one considers that, whatever I may fondly say, I cannot expect

to see it again,--I do not say _them_.

Affectionately yours,

ASA GRAY.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., November 14, 1881.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Dr. Holmes is a good soul, and has just sent me the

inclosed for the autograph which I promised H. I wish she, and

especially that M., could be here now, to enjoy our exquisite dry and

stimulating air, which, with American oysters, should set her up

completely.

I have missed Freeman. He had gout and some other engagements, which

took him from Boston the day before we landed. My critical friends at

Cambridge say that his lectures were disappointing. They say he took no

pains in preparation, or at least fell into the common habit of your

countrymen when they come here, that is, of giving lectures and water.

The Bostonians prefer, and appreciate, something more concentrated and

higher proof.

I do hope you will promise Mr. Lowell a course of lectures, few or more,

next October.

The foundation of the Lowell lectures requires that courses shall be

delivered, as often as possible, on subjects pertaining to Christianity,

natural religion, etc., which may come as near to sermons as you like.

Pray do not decline the invitation offhand. You would have a most

appreciative audience. You see we are counting upon you, with two

daughters at least, for the next summer and autumn. In haste to save the

post,

Affectionately yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

CAMBRIDGE, December 13, 1881.

MY DEAR OLD FRIEND,--It is shabby of me to wait so long in response to

your kindly greetings, which were dated on my birthday, November 18.

But I was very busy when it came, and hardly less so since, and so I let

it get out of sight.

Well, here we are once more, leaving dear friends on the other side, and

now among our own kith and kin.

Glad to hear of your pleasant summer, and pretty good health now.

We had a favorable voyage home, which is more than those just before

could say, and far more than any since....

Nees’s asters, of his own herbarium, I can nowhere find or hear of. But

I don’t believe his herbarium (which was sold piecemeal) would have

helped me much, considering how he has named asters for other

herbaria....

Accumulated collections, of Lemmon, Parish,[121] Cusick,[122] etc.,

especially have taken all my time up to now, after getting my home in

order, a deal of trouble. And now I can think of getting at my “Flora”

work again.

First of all, I am to make complete as I can my manuscript for Solidago

and Aster. Solidago I always find rather hopeful. Aster, as to the

_Asteres genuini_, is my utter despair! Still I can work my way through

except for the Rocky Mountain Pacific species.

I will try them once more, though I see not how to limit species, and to

describe specimens is endless and hopeless. So send on your things. But

first I am to print, _pari passu_ with my final elaboration, an article,

“Studies in Solidago and Aster,”--taking the former first, giving an

account of what I have made out in the old herbaria, stating

investigations which I can only give the condensed result of in the

“Flora,” etc. Considerable change as to some old species.

When I have done the Solidago, then Aster in that way....

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, December 29, 1881.

I am doubtful if I have written to you since our return, and my New Year

greetings will reach you somewhat late, but are very hearty. I could

hardly have neglected to send you word of the satisfaction with which we

look upon the fine bust of your father, which stands at one end of our

herbarium; Robert Brown and William J. Hooker at the other, and your

lithographic portrait overhead is replaced by the more striking

photograph you gave us.

At length we are settled in our home; have had for the twenty-fifth time

the annual Christmas family gathering, for which my study, being the

largest room in the house, is always upturned and emptied, and I should

be quietly at work upon the Compositæ, were it not for an attack of

lumbago, that uncomfortable attendant of old age, which just now

interferes with my activity, without actually laying me up.... We, Mr.

Watson and I, are still much occupied with the distribution, and

therefore in good part the study, of the recent collections which have

accumulated here and are still coming in. Much valuable time do they

consume. The most interesting are from Arizona, etc., near the Mexican

frontier, among which those we have most to do with are by Lemmon and by

Pringle.[123] The former, I know,--and I shall soon know as to the

latter,--has sets to dispose of, and I think you would like to have

them. We formerly have taken a deal of trouble in assisting such

collectors in the disposal of their plants offered for sale, but we are

obliged now to leave aside such affairs, as they consume too much time.

I have no other botanical news for you. Dr. Engelmann, who of late has

roamed a good deal, is now at home, and busy with botanical work, of

various sorts, Isoetes, Cupressus, etc. It is quite probable that he

will cross the ocean again next spring, in which case you will probably

see him. Professor Sargent is busy with his forest reports in connection

with the United States Census of 1880. Mr. Watson in this service made a

long journey through our northwest region, while I was in Europe, at too

late a season for much ordinary botany; and he has been otherwise too

busy since his return even to look over his collections.

My colleague, Professor Goodale, giving over to Professor Farlow the

university lectures, etc., is now abroad with his whole family, to

recruit health and acquire information. You will see him at Geneva in

spring or summer, and I commend him to you as a dear friend and a very

valuable man. My wife joins me in kind remembrances and best New Year

wishes to Madame De Candolle and yourself, and I am always your devoted

ASA GRAY.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, December 25, 1881.

... I am kept indoors this pleasant Christmas Sunday, which is here as

fine and bright a day as was the Christmas of last year, which we

passed with you, and which comes up fresh to our memories....

I have just cleared off the portion of accessions to herbarium which had

accumulated here and which I had myself to see to, and am settling down

to my Compositous work. And now I am taking an oath that when I do get

about them I will hold on to the bitter end, that is, I suppose till I

reach the Wormwoods. And now I must go to Washington on the 18th prox.

for meeting of Smithsonian regents....

Sargent has got his arboretum at length on to the hands of the city of

Boston to make the roads for, to repair and to light and police. He

seems to have made a mark in his Census forestry work. He has developed

not only a power of doing work, but of getting work done for him by

other people, and so can accomplish something.

January 27, 1882.

... My whole soul is in the “Flora of North America,” but the new things

that come in, owing to opening of Arizona and other railways, and which

have to be seen to, keep Watson and myself so busy. So our movement is

like marking time four days to going ahead one....

Engelmann promises to make us a visit in the spring. How I shall make

him work! No other news just now.

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

CAMBRIDGE, February 26, 1882.

MY DEAR SIR EDWARD,--It is high time that I thanked you for a very

pleasant letter which at the beginning of the year you kindly wrote me

from Failand House, a place which is very green in our memories. It

reached us at Washington, where, with Mrs. Gray as my inseparable

companion, I went to attend the annual meeting of the regents of the

Smithsonian Institution. We were away from home little more than a week,

and even in that time we managed to bring in a little visit to friends

in Philadelphia.

This miserable trial of Guiteau, of which you already knew unpleasant

particulars, was still in progress; but I did not go near the

court-room, and could not readily have been induced to do so. The day

after I received your letter I met an acquaintance, one of the judges of

the Court of Claims (a court for trying claims against the United States

government preferred by citizens or others, and much is it to be wished

that a mass of claims presented to Congress and cumbering its committees

could be passed over to this court), and I drew him into conversation

upon the scandal which the trial was causing. He spoke of Judge Cox as a

man of ability and high character, referred to the impossibility of

shutting the prisoner’s mouth, the expectation that the man’s prolonged

revelation of himself before the jury would throw more light upon the

case than any amount of expert testimony, which I think was expected to

be more contradictory than it actually was, and of the determination to

leave no ground for the ordering of a new trial. My friend told me he

had been twice in the courtroom, thought the judge might and should have

exercised more control, yet that what he saw and heard did not appear to

him at the time so indecorous and offensive as it appeared when

presented in the newspapers. Indeed, this sensational newspaper

reporting is a huge nuisance, and in respect to these matters our

highest-class daily papers are little better than the lowest. I suppose

the telegraph reporting for the press is all done by one set of men, and

the more sensational the reports the more welcome to the papers, which,

with few exceptions, print without any selection or discrimination.

I have settled down to my work with enjoyment, but with a growing sense

of discouragement growing out of an _embarras de richesses_. It was

natural to find here a great accumulation of collections of North

American plants, all needing examination; but unfortunately, they

continue to come in faster than I can study and dispose of them. This

comes from the increasing number of botanical explorers, and the new

facilities offered to them by new railroads along our southwestern

frontiers and other out-of-the-way regions. The consequence is, that

while new and interesting things are pouring in, which one must attend

to, and which are very enjoyable, I do not get ahead with the steady and

formidable work of the “North American Flora.” I begin to think it were

a happier lot to have the comparatively completed botany of an old

country to study, in which your work “were done when ’twere done,” and

in which, even if it were not done quickly, you were not called on to do

it over and over, to bring the new into shape and symmetry with the old.

By the way, I finally wrote out an article on a question which you once

treated, and upon which we more than once conversed, taking for my text

a paragraph in Lubbock’s address at York last summer. I had partly

promised Mr. Walter Browne to write it, so I sent it to him; and as a

proof from the “Contemporary Review” has come back to me, I suppose it

may be printed before long.[124] I shall be curious to know what you

think of it.

I sent you a portion of a New York religious newspaper containing a sort

of review of two books with which I beguiled the voyage last October or

November. It is of no great consequence. But I sometimes write such

reviews or articles to papers of this kind, which are endeavoring to do

their best in bridging over the gap between the thoughts of a former

generation, or of our younger days, and of the present day. I believe

such articles are now and then helpful.

You supposed that I had seen the “Lyell’s Life and Letters” sooner than

I had. To my surprise the volumes are not reprinted in America; and I

have only just succeeded in procuring a copy from England.

I have read a good deal of it, and with much interest. The allusion to

me, which you referred to, was of course very pleasant. The last chapter

of the “Antiquity of Man” had apprised me (for I never had any direct

correspondence with Lyell) that we thought much alike on such matters;

and we are apt to approve views which agree with our own. I always

thought Lyell a very level-headed man,--one with a very judicial turn of

mind; and his letters and journal bring this out well, as they do the

whole life and the charming character of the man. It is interesting to

see how early he took the line which he followed in his whole life’s

work, and which has changed the face of geology and philosophical

natural history. For, indeed, Lyell is as much the father of the new

mode of thought which now prevails as is Darwin. I have said a word

about this, which I will try to send you.

That is a noble letter to Mr. Spedding, about the American war. We knew

that was in him. During the time of trouble, our then minister in

London, Mr. Adams, and Mrs. Adams used to say that Sir Charles and Lady

Lyell were almost their only, and their very stanch and efficient

supporters.

If you happen to know who the author of “The New Analogy,” by Cellarius,

is, I beg you will let me know. Although as a whole it may not amount to

much, there are some capital hits in it.

I have been writing you a monstrously long letter. I have only space to

ask you to give my kind remembrances to Lady Fry and the young people,

of all whom we have such happy memories.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

March 16, 1882.

... Your letter of the 25th of February tells me of the will of dear

Decaisne, whom we shall miss greatly. The main disadvantage of our years

is in these losses, which to us are never made up. He was a very true

friend....

I am glad you will make a supplement to the “Lois.” When you have it in

hand I wish you would communicate to me, in letter, your main points on

the critical questions. You, Bentham, and I are most in accord; and we

ought to agree, essentially. Upon any critical points, I had much rather

make my comments, for whatever they may be worth, before you print than

afterwards. I have kept phænogamous botany essentially orthodox in the

United States....

May 15.

... It is now all but a year since Mrs. Gray and I had that charming

week at Geneva!

Much has happened since then. We have lost dear old Decaisne; and now

Darwin! We hardly should have thought, twenty-five years ago, that he

would have made such an impression upon the great world, as well as on

the scientific world!

I do not know if you ever saw much of him. He was a very charming man.

Here we have lost, at a good age, both Longfellow and Emerson.

I have been anxious about Bentham, from whom there were discouraging

accounts; but his last letters are hopeful, and he is steadily at work.

Let me hope, and let me know, that you are quite well; also Madame De

Candolle.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, September 17, 1882.

... At Montreal we were guests of Dawson, who wanted to return some

hospitality we had afforded him and his daughter.... Dawson has toiled

for a lifetime at Montreal, under many discouragements, has accomplished

a deal, and deserves great credit.

... We had a pleasant time, and this fortnight in Canada was my only

vacation. I went to visit the grave of Pursh, who died at forty-six.

They have put his bones in their pretty cemetery, and put a neat stone

over them....

Glad you are to send me scraps of one or more species of Dyer. It should

have been a tinctorial genus....

TO R. W. CHURCH.

October 8, 1882.

It is probable that I have not responded by a line to your letter of

April 13, yet I think my wife has written more than once to the

Deanery, and we have had good accounts of the visit to Italy, which

appears to have been a great enjoyment to all of you. And now we have

the news of H.’s engagement, which must give you a novel sensation. How

time flies and events develop! It seems but a little while since she and

her sisters were little girls at Whatley. And now, when this reaches

you, a year will have gone round since we said goodby in London.

I have not much to say nor to show for this year. Though I have never

worked more steadily, and never with so much concentration, there seems

to be little to show for it. At times I am disheartened, but a hope as

irrepressible as I suppose it is unreasonable and extravagant bears me

up and on. There is, indeed, a good pile of manuscript to show, but I

will not begin printing until I have gone through with the vast order of

Compositæ. That may be at Christmas,--I may say I expect it,--but I

never yet came up to any such expectation. To give you some idea of what

my task is, I hope to send you soon a copy of an exhortation which I

read to the botanists at the recent meeting of our American Association

for Advancement of Science at Montreal (in the Queen’s dominions!) This

journey to Canada was my only holiday this past summer; though Mrs. Gray

got as much more, with her brothers and sisters at Beverly, on the

coast; a bit of country and of country life we are longing to have you

see.

The gathering at Montreal was most pleasant, and we were happily placed

as the guests of the president of the year, Dr. Dawson, principal of

McGill College, at which the sessions were held. Among the foreign

savants, we had ... Rev. and also M. D. Professor Haughton, of Trinity

College, Dublin, a man of very varied knowledge, ... a somewhat

rollicking companion, which, however, did not hinder his preaching a

goodly and serious sermon in the Cathedral on Sunday; I believe rather

eminent in mathematics, and who has done a good piece of

physico-physiological work on muscular power. But what took me by

surprise was his intense, truly Irish hatred of England, and of

Gladstone in particular. Probably he did not like the disestablishment

of the Irish church.

And as to Ireland,--what a year you have had, and only dim hopes that

the next will be better; I do hope Gladstone will hold on and hold out.

The Egyptian affair, as it turns out, must strengthen his administration

not a little. Ever since we were in Egypt, I have been longing to have

England take the control of that country, as the only hope of the

fellahs and Copts,--the only people there for whom one has any sympathy.

I was to write you about the great brimming St. Lawrence, and of our

trip down it to the Saguenay. But Mrs. Gray will be writing all that,

and also giving my hearty good wishes to H., dear soul. But I have not

left room even to say how sincerely I remain,

Yours affectionately and truly,

ASA GRAY.

December 11.

You ought to have heard from me before this, but you have probably got

information indirectly of my little mishap, which may account for not

writing with my own hand. Not a quite sufficient excuse; for at much

inconvenience I managed very soon to do some writing, in awkward

fashion, as well as to turn over specimens; otherwise I should have been

unhappy.

Well, hard upon six weeks ago, I managed to break the top of my right

shoulder-blade. It was done by a bit of carelessness, not to say

foolhardiness, by continuing to do at seventy-two what I have done in

former years, relying too much on my quickness and sureness of foot in

stepping off a horse-car (_anglice_, tram) when in motion. In the

darkness I supposed it had slowed up, which in fact it had not, and so a

bad fall. Well, the bone is thought to be well mended, and I use the arm

for certain purposes almost as well as ever, but cannot yet get my

clothes on and off without assistance. My wife, as you will believe, has

been a capital nurse, and she credits me with a most unexpected amount

of patience....

But if you don’t come soon I shall despair of you. And Gladstone, I

know, will be tempting you; but I doubt if you will budge, except he

would place you in more sunny quarters than the Deanery,--a place which

corporeally I know is not at all good for you, nor for Mrs. Church.

I read that you have preached a sermon in commemoration of Dr. Pusey, at

Oxford, which I hope you will print, and I count on receiving a copy. I

prize very much a copy of a discourse by Dr. Pusey, given me through

Acland when we were there a year and a quarter ago, addressed to me in a

very flattering way.

By the telegraph we learn you are having a very severe snowstorm,

attended with suffering. We are now having our sixth of this winter; but

we do not mind it.

I rejoice with you at Gladstone’s success. He and Dufferin have earned

laurels. Let us hope he will hold out several years yet, and continue at

the helm. But how cordially he is hated!

Here we get on, prosper, indeed, quite without wisdom, or with very

little of it. One of these days we shall need it. There are things I

should like to write about. But my arm is not up to continued use.

Mrs. Gray will send messages _propria manu_. So, with my kindest regards

to Mrs. Church and all your happy family, I am affectionately,

Yours,

ASA GRAY.

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

BEVERLY FARMS, December 1, 1882.

We were very sorry to read in the telegraphic news a few days ago of the

destruction of Clevedon Court by fire, a most sad and unexpected thing,

but we hope not so bad as the brief announcement portends. It brought

back to our memory the delightful afternoon which Mrs. Gray and I passed

there a year and some months ago. A modern house can be replaced, but

not an old hall like this. It makes us sad to think of it. Perhaps you

can tell us that the loss was exaggerated in the telegraphic account.

I am writing from the house of Mrs. Gray’s brother, on the seashore,

where we are passing the “Thanksgiving” holiday. “Thanksgiving Day” is a

Puritan institution, was formerly confined to New England and the

districts settled by New Englanders, and has been kept from the time of

the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and is annually appointed by

the governors of these States by proclamation. But within the last

fifteen or twenty years it has become national, and the day, the fourth

or the last Thursday in November, is announced by a proclamation by the

President. In New England it long took the place of Christmas, for which

you know the Puritans had no liking, and was the chief family

gathering-day as well as a day of religious service, or at least of

political sermonizing. But Christmas is completely restored even in New

England, though the other holiday is not dropped.

The north shore of Massachusetts Bay is very pretty, the shore backed

with woods and rocks, and sheltered against the northeast bleak winds;

and the situation where we are is one of the choicest. It is near the

mouth of Salem Bay, Salem at the head, three or four miles above, and

the hills beyond close the view at the west; the peninsula of Marblehead

lies opposite on the south, dividing this water from that of Boston Bay;

southeast the sea-line is broken only by three or four low islands. When

my good father-in-law bought the land here, then waste wood and

sheep-pasture, forty years and more ago, it was two or three hours from

Boston. Now a railway brings it within an hour, and now the whole coast

down to Cape Ann is occupied with what you would call villa residences,

the grounds of all the most desirable ones reaching to the water, partly

with rocky shores wooded with pine-trees and junipers, partly with sandy

beaches, good for bathing-grounds. This place combines the two, and is

well wooded at the back, and commands the most beautiful views. Most of

the houses are used only for summer residences; but this is occupied the

year round. I have never been here in the winter before. Winter we are

here in the midst of already, unusually early, and the ground is white

with snow, of which there is usually little before Christmas. But our

winter differs from yours in its sunshine, the brilliancy and cheer of

which is a good offset for the colder weather, or at least the lower

thermometer.

A good number of our English acquaintances have been over this autumn.

Dr. and Mrs. Carpenter are among the last to return. He has just closed

a popular course of Lowell lectures, and they go back a week or two

hence. One hardly knows what brought Herbert Spencer. He seems most to

have enjoyed Niagara, where he stayed a week. I do not think the dinner

demonstration for him at New York amounted to very much; nor do I take

stock in the statement, the truth of which he took for granted, that the

hair turns gray in the United States ten years earlier than in England.

I should say the only difference is, that there is more hair remaining

here to turn gray at middle age or later. Spencer also told us of a

discovery he had made, that all Americans had the outer corners of their

eyes lower than the inner, the opposite of our antipodes, the Mongols.

I have just returned from a “sleigh ride.” Snow, though a nuisance in

towns, is a convenience in the country, greatly facilitating travel, and

a drive upon runners instead of wheels, well wrapped in furs and with

buffalo robes, is much enjoyed.

At the end of August, Mrs. Gray and I went to Montreal, to the meeting

of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where we

were guests of the president, Dr. Dawson. We made an excursion to

Ottawa, the new seat of government, and another down the noble St.

Lawrence and up its picturesque tributary, the Saguenay. Otherwise we

have been at home all the summer and autumn. And so we expect to be all

winter, save perhaps a week in Washington.

... I think I have long owed your son Portsmouth a letter, but, though I

should be glad to hear from him, and to know how he is getting on at

Oxford, I cannot pay my debt to him to-day. And some twinges tell me

that it is time to spare you.

I will just add that what we hear prepares us to expect that before this

reaches you, or even leaves this country, we may hear that the good and

wise Archbishop of Canterbury will have gone to his rest; and Gladstone

will have a most responsible as well as the most dignified position to

fill.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

CAMBRIDGE, December 17, 1882.

I must not let the New Year come to you without repairing my delay in

the way of letter-writing, and sending you greeting and good wishes for

the season. Especially I may congratulate you and felicitate ourselves,

that is, we botanists, that you have, or will have, brought your _opus

magnum_ to a completion!--proof-reading excepted. A great thing to have

done. I did not make reply to your last of October 14, because I really

could say nothing about the Eriocauloneæ....

Yes, I have De Candolle on Cultivated Plants, and am well pleased with

it, so far as I have looked it over.

Thanks for your complimentary mention of my notice of Darwin. I have

since sent you another brochure, an exhortation to my botanical

compatriots to have more consideration for my time, considering how

little is left, and what a deal of use I have for it. I can hope only to

palliate the evil a little.

Your life has been a most enviable one, in being able so to arrange and

control your time, and with your indomitable industry, perseverance, and

judgment, you have turned your opportunities to full account, winning

no end of gratitude and admiration. Now, do take the relaxation and

repose which you have so completely earned; and take, as you may, great

satisfaction and pride in all you have accomplished. At least your many

friends will do so....

I did hope to have got to the end of the Compositæ with the end of 1882;

but I shall hardly do more than finish the Helenioideæ. As I go on, I

study all Mexican border things, at least these of our North American

collectors.

My health is excellent; so I may fairly hope to get the North American

Compositæ off my hands and in print, barring accidents, and I shall be

careful of my bones, and other contingencies....

TO J. D. HOOKER.

May 1, 1883.

... I have not read Carlyle’s Life, by Froude, but many articles, in

which of course the points are mostly given. All seem to agree that

Froude has blackened the memory of Carlyle irrecoverably, or rather with

rude hand wiped off the whitewash which covered the blackness. He was a

rude, unkempt soul. From the extracts I have seen, I fancy that Mrs.

Carlyle’s letters beat Carlyle’s all out for raciness and pith.

I am content with the Romane correspondence as R. leaves it, and pleased

with Romane’s tone, which I will try to tell him.

I think his first reply was a “beating of the air.” And for that reason

I returned to the charge. His second is to the purpose. And he seems to

feel that mine was to the purpose also.

... As to dear Bentham, his life is the very ideal of a naturalist’s

life, and I have always regarded it one of the happiest possible and one

of the most successful.... His administration of the Linnæan, his series

of addresses, etc., will be looked back to as an oasis in the desert.

Our spring is late; the winter, or rather the drought of the previous

autumn, has been deadly on perennials, herbs and shrubs....

TO R. W. CHURCH.

May 22, 1883.

... I wish to condole with you over a hardship which you write of, that

of having to write a book on Lord Bacon. I quite understand that you

should bemoan your fate at being drawn into that undertaking. I cannot

think it at all to your liking. Bacon, of all people, if the best is to

be made of him, I fancy, should be written of by a worldly-wise, if not

a worldly-minded man. Moreover, I must confess to a heretical opinion as

to another side of Bacon, that in which English, and all

English-speaking, people glory. To blab it out: I have an ugly notion

that he was rather a sciologist than a man of science, and that he

really did nothing of real consequence for the furtherance of science;

nothing to be compared with Galileo, a real father of “inductive

philosophy” and scientific investigation--and Pascal. By the way, taking

the two men all round, do you not think a taking parallel could be run

with Bacon and Pascal?

Now, to change the subject,--what a noble old man Gladstone is, and what

a great name he is going to leave as a high-minded statesman! I could

envy you, if it were in my way, the privilege of his friendship.

H. was so good as to write me a charming letter from her new home, for

which please give her my thanks.

By the way, if you see our observatory director, Pickering, you will

find him an unaffected man, wise in science above his years.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, September 3, 1883.

MY DEAR HOOKER,--A letter of yours of July 24 has been on my table a

good while, and now to-day comes yours of August 22. So I am to write

you at once, urged thereto mainly by your quandary about subspecies,

varieties, and how to manage them in a popular flora like the British,

in which forms need to be distinguished more than in outlandish floras.

I have a decided opinion as to the form of treatment, and from your

letter, as well as I can gather, I coincide with Ball. At least, I would

not have subspecies. They are, as the saying goes, “neither flesh, fowl,

nor good red herring.”

Some you would accept as species; make of the rest varieties, with

names.

In characterizing species having marked varieties, should the specific

character comprehend the forms or varieties, and then there be a “var.

a” or type, or “typical form?”

I thought over this when I began my “Synoptical Flora,” and concluded

that it was best to characterize the species on its genuine

representatives only. Of course as far as practicable, and indeed for

all but some special points, the characters will, and should, cover the

whole. And at the end of the character, you have only to add, the type

of the species has so and so; then the variety or varieties with the

special differentia.

From pretty large practice I find this works best, and probably your

experience will have brought you to the same conclusion....

“Liberavi animum meum,” and it may go for what you find it worth.... I

did not know that “Americans,” i. e., good Americans, did say, “so and

so intermarried with so and so.” I see Ravenel, a Carolinian, says so.

TO GEORGE BENTHAM.

CAMBRIDGE, September 25, 1883.

MY DEAR BENTHAM,--I am so glad to receive a letter giving so comfortable

an account of yourself; glad also that you would like to hear from me;

glad to announce that, though there are still some genera to revise, I

can tell you that I am about to begin the printing of the “Synoptical

Flora,” containing Caprifoliaceæ-Compositæ,--which when done, I shall

feel something of the relief you must have had when the “Genera” was off

your hands. That done, I look, with only that mitigated confidence that

becomes an old man, for a bit of holiday, such as is always

reinvigorating to Mrs. Gray and myself. I am so sorry you had to take up

with a sick-room instead. But as you are now picking up finely, could

you not be made comfortable and get rid of an English November and

December by revisiting the scenes of your youth in the south of

France?...

I think I sent you Trumbull’s[125] (mostly) and my annotations on De

Candolle’s “L’Origine des Plantes Cultivées.” If not, let me know, for

you have leisure to read now.

I am busy with an article on De Candolle’s “Nouvelles Remarques sur la

Nomenclature.” As it may be my last say on the subject, I am going to

make a rather elaborate article on nomenclatural and phytographical

points, mostly small points, some of which I should have liked to confer

with you about. I would have done so, but I feared, in the reported

state of your health, to trouble you.

There are two or three small points, about name-citation and

name-making, upon which I shall venture to criticise the “Genera

Plantarum.” But in almost everything we are in full accord, as you know,

and I wish to impress the accordance upon the younger botanists of the

United States. Nowadays, more than formerly, they get hold of many

books, German and other--books, many of them, better for substance than

for form; and so our botanists need guidance and some show of authority.

Engelmann has come home, looking far better than we expected, or than he

thought to be; is visiting Sargent, and will soon come to us....

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

November 10, 1883.

In a line which I remember adding to Mrs. Gray’s last letter to Lady Fry

I expressed a hope and confident expectation that we should have done

with General Butler as governor of Massachusetts. The election occurred

last Tuesday; an extraordinarily large vote was cast: Butler was

defeated by 10,000, and an excellent man, a member of Congress from the

central part of the State, a lawyer, who makes considerable sacrifice in

taking the governorship, is chosen in his place, and there is a majority

of two thirds in both branches of the legislature to support him. We

hope that this makes an end of Butler’s power for harm, or at least

cripples it. He is a desperate demagogue....

I doubt if either of the friends you mentioned came to Cambridge at all.

My friend Agassiz had the pleasure of meeting them at Newport, and was

greatly taken with them....

I am beginning to print the Compositæ for my “Flora of North America;”

and am revising for the last time some of the more difficult and more

unsatisfactory portions. My wife now excuses me to her friends for

outbreaks of ill-humor, the excuse being that I am at present “in the

valley of the shadow of the Asters.” This is “sic itur ad astra,” with a

vengeance. If only I can have done with the printer by the close of the

winter months, with any life left in me, then we will go in for a

holiday.

I am very well, and Mrs. Gray passably so. We have seen just a little of

Matthew Arnold, with wife and daughter; shall probably see more of them.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

November 12, 1883.

... I have just seen the first proof of the portion of “Flora of North

America” that I have been moiling over for so long; and over them and

the ever-renewed touches to the ever-growing Compositæ, I may expect a

toilsome winter. That done, I hope about the time that the clear and

biting, but rather enjoyable, winter subsides into the inclemencies of

our early spring, we hope, if we live and thrive, to take a holiday.

Just how and where is not yet clear, but I hope to have something to say

of it before I am done with this letter. Meanwhile I am curious to know

if you have disposed of Bacon. If your essay pleases me as much as your

remarks in your letter to me, I shall enjoy it. I recant all I wrote you

long ago, begging you would drop him and take up a more congenial

subject....

I am just back this evening from hearing Matthew Arnold read some of his

poems to a great hallful of undergraduates and others, in place of a

lecture which he was to give, but, poor man! was prevented by his agent,

who seems to be rather his master. He was well received; but one cannot

say that he is a very graceful or a good reader to an audience of eight

hundred or a thousand people.

He tells me you offered him an introduction to me, which he thought he

hardly needed, as we had met him and Mrs. Arnold at a lunch given by

Miss North. We are sorry to hear of the determining reason of his visit

and lecturing tour.... He will succeed in this, no doubt; but it is a

sort of dog’s life, this lecturing all over the country, four times a

week, at the beck of an agent, who controls all his movements, often to

audiences that will not appreciate him, the more as what he tells me is

true, that he has no gift as a speaker. But he is pleasant, and will be

most kindly received.

Your Lord Chief Justice was most kindly cared for and made a most

pleasant impression. But in Boston, besides coming when every one was

away who should have attended to him, he fell, unwisely, into the hands

of ... Governor Butler, and saw a side of American life and manners

which may be well enough for him to see, though we should desire the

contrary, and will add to his rich repertory of stories, which they say

he can tell so well. The day he was shown over our university he called

here, and took a cup of tea with us. He had recently been visiting our

good friend Lord Justice Fry at Failand, and spoke of Lord Blachford as

his friend and neighbor....

March 31, 1884.

... I have, moreover, another reason for sending you this line, to thank

you for the proof-sheets of the “Bacon.” I read it at a sitting, one day

when I was too ill for my daily task. I enjoyed the book greatly, all

the more, probably, from my freshness, not having read anything upon the

subject that I now recall since Macaulay’s essay, ages ago. It is like

reading a tragedy.

What a great failure Bacon was, whenever he was tried! Poor Essex,

hunted to death merely for “getting up a row,” and Bacon sacrificing him

without compunction, and without seeing that he was probably made a tool

of, merely to serve his personal advantage! Then the poetical justice,

as they call it,--very prosaic justice,--of his own destruction, by a

bolt out of a clear sky, which an enemy was adroit enough to direct to

his ruin. And poor Bacon with conscience enough to feel that he deserved

it, but not spirit enough to make a fight. No, if Pope’s fling was

undeserved, as you say, it was because of the mean and ignoble set

around him.

Almost as pitiable and tragic in its way, pitiable in its true sense,

was the upshot of Bacon’s higher and nobler life, conceiving vaguely and

laboring all his days over that which he was unable and incompetent to

bring to the birth. His memory reaping a great reward of fame for a

century or so, and then the conclusion reluctantly reached that nothing

tangible in the advancement of Natural Science can be attributed to him.

Altogether, what a solemn sermon! It might be preached from the pulpit

of St. Paul’s.

Well, I seem to have attempted sermonizing myself, and it is time I

stopped.

We join in the thanksgivings you are devoutly rendering,[126] and I am

always,

Yours affectionately,

ASA GRAY.

As this is the last letter from Dr. Gray to Dean Church, to be printed,

the occasion is taken to introduce a letter written by Dean Church to

Mrs. Gray some time after the death of his friend, when acknowledging

the receipt of a copy of the “Scientific Papers.”

DEAN CHURCH TO MRS. GRAY.

I have to thank you for two volumes of most interesting reading. Besides

the interest of the subject discussed, there is a special _cachet_ in

all Dr. Gray’s papers, great and small, which is his own, and which

seems to me to distinguish him from even his more famous contemporaries.

There is the scientific spirit in it, but firm, imaginative, fearless,

cautious, with large horizons, and very attentive and careful to

objections and qualifications; and there is besides, what is so often

wanting in scientific writing, the human spirit, always remembering

that, besides facts and laws, however wonderful or minute, there are

souls and characters over against them, of as great account as they, in

whose mirrors they are reflected, whom they excite and delight, and

without whose interest they would be blanks. This combination comes out

in his great generalizations, in the bold and yet considerate way in

which he deals with Darwin’s ideas, and in the notices of so many of his

scientific friends, whom we feel that he was interested in as men, and

not only as scientific inquirers. The sweetness and charity, which we

remember so well in living converse, is always on the lookout for some

pleasant feature in the people of whom he writes, and to give kindliness

and equity to his judgment.

And what a life of labors it was! I am perfectly aghast at the amount of

grinding work of which these papers are the indirect evidence....

For they [his religious views] were a most characteristic part of the

man, and the seriousness and earnest conviction with which he let them

be known had, I am convinced, a most wholesome effect on the development

of the great scientific theory in which he was so much interested. It

took off a great deal of the theological edge, which was its danger,

both to those who upheld and those who opposed it. I am sure things

would have gone more crossly and unreasonably, if his combination of

fearless religion and clearness of mind, and wise love of truth, had not

told on the controversy.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

CAMBRIDGE, June 9, 1884.

Your last is of May 24th from the Camp, and gives us on the whole better

accounts of your invalids. Bentham at Boultibrooke! I wonder if he would

care to have letters from me, or from Mrs. Gray, to whom he wrote a

treasure of a note on the New Year. We had an idea it might only worry

him....

I wish we could see you at the Camp and among the heather, and I wish I

could form a clear conception of just how you are placed, taking the

Rotherys’ house as a point of departure.

We give you up as to America this year. I would not have you and Lady

Hooker just run over here for a call; it would be too provoking. Well,

let us plan for January or February next, and Mexico, Arizona, and

southern California.

“Man never is, but always to be blest.”

The Joad herbarium was a real bonanza....

I must tell of our two weeks’ run, Mrs. Gray and I. We left the too

tardy spring here, one evening; were the next noon in Washington, where

the spring was in full force and beauty. After two days, left Washington

one morning, followed up the Potomac River to its very rise in the

Alleghanies, and down on to Mississippi waters before dark; woke near

Cincinnati, had a pleasant day’s journey to St. Louis, which we reached

before sunset. There had five days, rather busy ones; thence a journey

of thirty-six hours, over prairies of Illinois and Indiana to Buffalo,

and to New York city; there two days, and then home.[127] Mrs. Gray,

thus away from household cares and a rough air, dropped her cough

altogether; and what you would think a tiresome piece of journeying

brought us both home much refreshed....

You remember Henry Shaw, his park and Missouri botanic garden. The old

fellow is now eighty-four. Something induced him to ask my advice, and

to let me know the very ample fortune with which he is to endow the

garden, when he dies. I was in doubt whether all this was likely to be

quite wasted, or was in condition to be turned to good account for

botany and horticulture when Mr. Shaw leaves it and his trust comes to

be executed. I wished also to see that dear old Engelmann’s herbarium

should be properly and permanently preserved. So I went on to St. Louis.

Mr. Shaw took me into his counsel and, without going here into details,

without seeing a chance for doing much while Mr. Shaw lives, which

cannot be very long, I see there is a grand opportunity coming, and I

think that none of the provisions he has made will hinder the right

development of the Mississippian Kew, which will hardly be “Kew in a

corner.” And if he follows my advice and mends some matters, there will

be a grand foundation laid.

We are expecting Ball toward the end of the month. He will have time to

travel and botanize before the Montreal meeting. But I can’t go with

him, nor, perhaps, could I much help him....

* * * * *

Dr. Gray’s friend of many years, George Engelmann, M. D., died in

February, 1884. He was a student at Heidelberg with Schimper and

Alexander Braun in 1827, and again in Paris, in 1832, with Agassiz and

Braun. He came to America in 1834, made some journeys on horseback in

the West, and settled as a physician in St. Louis, then a frontier

trading-post, in 1835. He lived to see it become a metropolis of over

four hundred thousand inhabitants. Dr. Gray says in his memoirs of him,

“In the consideration of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical work it should be

remembered that his life was that of an eminent and trusted physician;

... that he devoted only the residual hours, which most men use for rest

or recreation, to scientific pursuits.... Nothing escaped his attention;

he drew with facility; and he methodically secured his observations by

notes and sketches. The lasting impression which he has made upon North

American botany is due to his habit of studying his subjects in their

systematic relations, and devoting himself to a particular genus of

plants until he had elucidated it as completely as lay within his power.

In this way all his work was made to tell effectively.... It shows how

much may be done for science in a busy physician’s horæ subsecivæ, and

in his occasional vacations. Personally he was one of the most affable

and kindly of men, and was as much beloved as respected by those who

knew him.”

TO SIR EDWARD FRY.

October 10, 1884.

It is quite time that I responded to your kind and welcome letters.

First, let me congratulate myself upon having you as a colleague in the

Royal Society, in which I think you need not owe your fellowship to

official dignity. I believe you took honors in science at the

university, along with our friend Professor Flower.

You mentioned your approaching visit, with Lady Fry, to Lord

Coleridge.... Lord C., referring to your visit, sent us very cordial

messages in a letter to my colleague Professor Thayer. He will know that

his host in Boston, General Butler, is one of the candidates for the

Presidency.

I am, as you may suppose, a bolter from the Republican presidential

nomination. We even hope to give the electoral vote of Massachusetts,

stanchest of Republican States, to the Democratic candidate. But I need

not bore you with American politics.

Let me say how sorry we were not to see Miss Fox at our home. It might

have been, except for a little journey we made from Philadelphia, of

which I must tell you more.

I had a mere glimpse of Miss Fox at Montreal, and a little more of her

cousin. She came late to Philadelphia, where Mrs. Gray (who was not at

Montreal) and I had a most pleasant chat with her at a garden reception.

The next day I went out to the suburban place where she was visiting,

and came near to winning her for our expedition, at least as far as to

Luray cave, and the Natural Bridge in the Valley of Virginia. But the

engagements she had made could not be reconciled. Her hostess was to

take her to this neighborhood, but too early for us to receive her here.

All good people in this country think so much of Caroline Fox that they

wished to know her sister.

I have not seen the book by Mr. Arthur on difference between physical

and moral laws, and am not sure that I ever heard of it or of the

author. Who is the publisher? I might find it at the university library.

No, I never had the fortune to see, much less to know Maurice. Of course

I have always known a good deal about him and of the remarkable

influence he exerted, both in person and in his writings, “in which were

some things hard to understand,” such as his liking for the Athanasian

creed, but nothing that was not most excellent in spirit.

Of course I well remember Miss Wedgewood; and we had occasional

correspondence up to the time when Darwin died, and she, on the part of

the family, announced it to me. I am glad to know that she wrote the

sketch of Maurice in the “British Quarterly.”

And now about ourselves. I got the Compositæ off my mind late in the

spring, but not off my hands until sometime in August. At the end of

August and of the pleasant part of the summer here (for it was

delightful in Cambridge, so cool and quiet, and Mrs. Gray away only for

three weeks with her friends on the coast) I went to the meeting of the

British Association at Montreal; enjoyed it much; read a paper,[128] a

sort of address, to the botanists coming over to North America, which

the Section seemed to like and voted to print in extenso. (I will first

print it here, and send you a copy. Not that there is much novelty in

it, but it may be readable.) I had to leave the meeting after three or

four days, and return here; sorry to leave our friend Mr. Walter Browne

ill at the hospital with typhoid fever. He and his poor wife received

every kind attention, but he died in a few days.

It is agreed that the British meeting was a distinguished success. It

brought over a throng of English people, and the American savants (I

cannot abide the word “scientists”) were in good force. We were repaid

by the large attendance of British Association members at Philadelphia,

where they contributed to make our meeting large and notable.

Up to this time the weather was all that could be wished, cooler, I

suppose, than in England at the time. But that week at Philadelphia was

raging. Mrs. Gray and I were there for the whole week, domiciled with

friends in the heart of the city,--a city which never cools at night, as

it does hereabouts. I bore the heat well, as my manner is; Mrs. Gray,

fairly, by keeping quiet through the mornings and giving herself rather

to the evening receptions, which were fine and most admirably managed.

It grew cooler the moment the week was over and the session ended.

Besides, we moved at once into a cooler region. It was arranged that I

should lead any British botanists that cared to go on an excursion into

the mountains of Virginia and Carolina. But they were otherways bound,

so that I could take only my friend Mr. John Ball of London, your fellow

F. R. S., taking also another American botanist, with whom we had

visited these regions more than once before, and, to make it pleasanter,

we added three ladies, wives and daughters of botanists, Mrs. Gray being

one.

Our first day’s journey was to Luray, in the Valley of Virginia, between

the Blue Ridge and the proper Alleghanies. The next day we visited the

Cavern, which I think is the finest in the world, not forgetting that of

Adelsberg in Styria. It is newly discovered, with wonderful wealth and

beauty of stalactical formations, and is lighted up for visitors with

electrical lights in all the larger chambers. That day we went on to the

Natural Bridge, which we had not seen for many years. It was grander

than I had remembered; indeed, it and the scenery around is worth a

voyage and a journey to see. Then we went on to our favorite Roan

Mountain, on the borders of North Carolina and Tennessee, one of the

highest in the Atlantic United States, and the finest; the base and

sides richly wooded with large deciduous forest trees in unusual variety

even for this country, the ample grassy top (of several square miles)

fringed with dark firs and spruces, and the open part adorned with

thousands of clumps of Rhododendron Catawbiense, which when there last

before, late in June, we saw all loaded with blossoms, while the sides

were glorious with three species of Azalea, not to speak of many other

botanical treasures. There, at top and at base, we passed four busy

days. A narrow-gauge railway recently built, and new to us, reaches to

the base of the mountain, up the Doe River, through most picturesque

scenery, showing to most advantage in the descent. On our way back we

diverged to visit some striking rock scenery on the upper Kanawha River,

and thence to a mountain-top lower than Roan, but with the advantage of

a charming little lake, with banks all fringed with Rhododendron maximum

and Kalmia, hanging over the water for a rod or two, except on the side

where the little hotel stands. Well, I have written a deal here, little

as I have managed to tell you. I think you and Lady Fry should come over

and see for yourselves, just a pleasant summer vacation, if you can

leave Failand for so long.

TO J. D. HOOKER.

September 26, 1884.

So dear Bentham has gone,--not quite filled out his eighty-fourth year.

Well, we could have wished this year of infirmity and suffering had been

avoided. One would like to say good-evening promptly at the close of the

working-day. But this we cannot order, so we must accept what comes. We

shall miss him greatly. We have nobody left to look up to. He seems to

have made a wise and good disposition of his effects.

Your two letters reached us at Philadelphia, on our return from North

Carolina and Virginia....

Yesterday we had Sir William and Lady Thomson.[129] To-day Traill and

wife (young and bright) of Aberdeen looked in and lunched.

I come home to a heap of letters and parcels and affairs, to keep me

busy awhile....

Well, the meeting at Montreal was a success, and made a pleasant

occasion. The influx of visitors from British Association to

Philadelphia made that meeting very good too. George Darwin I just saw

for a moment at Montreal, and Mrs. Darwin also at Philadelphia, one

evening,--handsome and winning.

I hope you have got the copy of “Synoptical Flora II.” for your own

shelf, through Wesley. Slips and omissions are already revealing,

especially in the index.

I am wonderfully strong and well. Mrs. G. well up to average, both much

set up by holiday, of which mine has now lasted a month....

What a deal you have fished out of Bentham’s earlier life! I thought you

meant Toulouse, not Tours. Bentham used to speak of Toulouse and that

part of France....

Among the inventive feats of his father was one I have somewhere heard

or read of, that he made a fleet of articulated transport boats for

descending the crooked channels of the Russian rivers.

I think you might have specified De Morgan’s discovery of Bentham’s

contribution to logic, and his able defense of the reclamation, to which

Herbert Spencer’s “Verdict” in 1873 was not particularly needed for the

establishment of the fact. De Morgan was not a man to leave his work

half done, especially as against Hamilton.

I only regret that the length to which these most interesting matters

extended stood in the way of your giving a more detailed account of

Bentham’s botanical work, on which another article would be timely.

I must now, before long, attempt something of this, for the American

Academy’s éloge. And I pray you, if you are not doing it yourself, to

send me hints and suggestions. Sheet full, and I will not begin another

to-day, but add only my wife’s love to you and Lady Hooker.

January 9, 1885.

The souvenir of dear Bentham has come to hand, is in its place on my

table, and the first use I make of it, now in position, is to write to

you this letter of thanks,--to you for awarding it to me, and to dear

Lady Hooker for so promptly forwarding it. The stand is a beautiful

piece of marble, bearing its two inkstands.[130] Was there ever anything

to occupy the sunken area between them?...

Of myself I have not much to write. The prospect of getting off for the

latter part of winter has just prevented my settling down to the

“Flora,” and I have found plenty else to keep me actively employed,

mainly with a revision of some boraginaceous genera, now in printer’s

hands, which I hope, while it unsettles old work, will settle it better

and permanently, as far as anything we do can be said to be lasting.

I am well,--can hardly be said to need the holiday we have determined

on.... We shall benefit much, I think probable, by getting off to meet

the spring, avoiding February-April here, which are the only drawbacks

to a climate of the best: for you know I do not at all dislike summer

heat.

We have not troubled ourselves much as to where we would go. But now it

does seem that we will go to the southern part of California, if

possible by the southern Arizona route, which is near the Mexican

boundary, and must be best for winter, and to return by the route

through the northern part of Arizona, which should be pleasant in the

latter part of April. Oh, that you and Lady Hooker could be with us....

And we shall be lonely without you on our travels, and feel that “that

great principle of the survival of the fittest” has been woefully

violated....

CITY OF MEXICO, Sunday, February 22, 1885.

Your letter of January 20, forwarded from Cambridge, overtook us at San

Antonio, Bexar. We left home February 3, in bitter cold, for St. Louis,

where I had an interview with old Shaw, and heard him read his

rearranged will, which is satisfactory, as it will allow his trustees,

and the corporation of Washington University there, to turn his bequests

to good account for botany; will be an endowment quite large enough for

the purpose.

Thence, rail--two nights and a day--to Mobile, where it was warm and

springlike, but no flowers out, barring an early violet. Thence to New

Orleans, which has a great exposition and a crowd, and where, in a

sudden change to cold, I caught a dreadful cold. It began with such a

hoarseness that, going, Mrs. G. and I, to dine with Dr. Richardson

(son-in-law of Short), where we met your and Dyer’s friends, Mr. and

Mrs. Morris[131] of Jamaica, I was taken speechless. I was only for a

few hours at the Exposition (I hate such), but Mrs. Gray went a second

time to see Mexican things. Dr. Farlow, joining us at New Orleans,

brought, to our surprise, passes for us to go by the Mexican Central

Road to the city of Mexico and back to El Paso (the junction with the

road to California), and we decided to undertake it. One day and a night

took us to San Antonio, Texas, where we stayed Saturday, Sunday, and

Monday, till evening, trying to recover from our colds, driving over the

country through chaparral of mesquite bushes (Prosopis) and opuntias.

When we awoke next morning we were coursing along the rocky banks of the

Rio Grande del Norte, mounting into a high region more arid still, if

possible, the only flowers out a Vesicaria; and descending into a great

cattle ranch region we reached El Paso at 3.30 A.M.; got to bed again;

had the day there and on the other side of the river, at El Paso del

Norte, in the Mexican State of Chihuahua, whence at evening we took our

Pullman for three nights and two days’ journey to this place, through

Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Aguas-Caliente, Leon, etc., reaching here

yesterday morning at 8.30. We are comfortably placed in the Hotel

Iturbide. Farlow and I have looked about somewhat, though I am still

suffering from catarrh and cough; Mrs. Gray laid up with hers. This

afternoon a Mexican gentleman to whom we took letters called and drove

Farlow and me out to Chapultepec, whence a most magnificent view of the

whole Valley of Mexico and the surrounding mountains, including

Popocatapetl and its more broadly snowy companion,--with its more

difficult name, meaning White Lady,--at this season always with

cloudless tops. The cypresses of Chapultepec are glorious trees, plenty

of them, full of character, and of a port which should help to

distinguish the Mexican species from the North American. I wish you

could see them. And such old trees of Schinus molle, the handsomest of

trees either old or young, the old trunks wonderfully bossed. Is it a

native of Mexico? I thought only of Chili. But it is well at home here.

Such yucca trees as we have seen on the way here, with trunks at base

two or three feet in diameter, weirdly branched, looking like doum

palms. Opuntias of two or three arborescent species, some huge, and

other cacti not a few.

I have still to compare Arizona with the plateau of northern Mexico. But

I see they are all pretty much one thing....

ORIZABA, February 27, 1885.

Since my former sheet, Farlow and I have been mousing about the city of

Mexico, I coughing most of the time, in a clear, dry air and nearly

cloudless sky, weather which should be most delightful, but somehow it

is bad for the throat (for the natives as well as for us), and the

rarefied air puts one out of breath at a little exertion; mornings and

evenings cool and fresh, the midday warm, in the sun trying.... Called

in a physician, a sort of medical man to American embassy, who came here

with Maximilian, and stayed. Very intelligent. Ordered us to come here

as soon as Mrs. Gray could travel. Here only 4,028 feet and a warmer

damp air. Well, we tried it yesterday; had to leave city of Mexico at

6.15 A.M., our hotel at 5.30 cold, no breakfast; had to travel till ten

or nearly before we could get even a decent cup of coffee, at junction

of road to Vera Cruz and Puebla, and after rising to 8,333 feet in

getting out of the Valley of Mexico; but at 1 P.M., at Esperanza, in the

Tierra Frias, had a capital dinner, and met train from Vera Cruz. Here

pine-trees on the hills all round us, two species. Soon begins the

descent and a complete change of air, the other side all dry and horrid

dust, making our catarrh worse than ever; now the moisture from the Gulf

of Mexico makes all green; the road by skillful engineering pitches down

4,000 feet to this, the greater part of the descent all in eight or nine

miles of straight line as the bird flies. In all the Valley of Mexico

and to the north of it really nothing in blossom yet, all so dry, except

Senecio salignus, if I rightly remember the name, a shrub of 1-4 feet,

just becoming golden with blossoms. But the moment we began the descent

all was flowery, two species of Baccharis, Eupatoria, Erigeron

mucronatum (so much cultivated under the false name of Vittadenia

triloba), Lœseliæ species, Arbutus, (Xalapensis) in bud, and many

things of which we shall know more when we return over the route....

Very comfortable hotel here. Botteri[132] left an élêve here who knows

something of botany, but lives out of reach on a hacienda. We found a

garden combined with a small coffee plantation. The proprietor thereof,

speaking a little French, has filled his ground with a lot of things

that will stand here. It is just in _medias res_, two hours below Tierra

Frias, two above (or at Cordoba, only seventeen miles, but 2,000 feet

lower) true tropical. Papaya fruits here, also Persea gratissima, etc.

And the oranges are delicious. I have passed the whole morning with the

garden man, while Farlow went up a small steep mountain, and brought

back various things. We shall drive this afternoon to the Cascade of

Rincon Grande (cascades are most rare in Mexico).

The air here suits us; shall try to leave our coughs here and at Cordoba

below.

On the way here had views of Popocatapetl and the more beautiful and

diversified Iztaccihuatl from the sides, and wound round the base of Mt.

Orizaba. A true Mexican town this. Mrs. Gray enjoying sights from the

window; will be able to drive out this afternoon, though the clouds are

sinking too much and mist gathering, a great contrast to the city of

Mexico.

P. M.--We went, but saw the falls (very picturesque) in a wet mist, and

for botany got a lot of subtropical Mexican plants, the like of which I

never saw growing before: among Compositæ, Lagascea (large heads), Tree

Vernonias of the Scorpioides set, Calea, Andromachia, etc., etc.

CORDOBA, March 2, 1885.

... To continue. On Saturday, a fine and sunny morning, Farlow and I

drove off for the Cascade of Barrio Nuevo, almost as beautiful as the

other, and had a long morning in clambering and collecting. In the

grounds on the way are planted trees of a Bombacea, in flower before the

leaf, probably Pachira. The peak of Orizaba shows as a narrow streak of

white over a near mountain, from the windows of our room; but by going

half a mile east the whole comes out splendidly.

Sunday morning we were comparatively quiet, but at 3.50 P.M. we were off

for Cordoba, less than an hour distant by rail, and 2,000 feet lower. A

queer little town, with only a poor, truly Mexican inn, a set of rooms

in the single story, all round a patio, into which the country diligence

drives, and on rear side the stables back against the rooms, as Farlow

found to his discomfort, only a thin wall between his room and the

horse’s mangers. Tile floors, cot-beds, but clean, and the food

certainly better than was to be expected.

Fine view of Orizaba. An American, Dr. Russell, here, whom I looked up.

And he took us to an American German, Mr. Fink, who collects Orchids,

etc., commercially. He took us to a garden, and we were going to the

river bank and ravine, but, though out of season, rain set in, and we

came home rather wet.

I fear our afternoon excursion may be lost, but it now looks like

clearing. The way from Orizaba here is magnificent, for mountains,

railroad-engineering, and culture vegetation. I hope we can get into

some wild tropical vegetation, but uncertain; can stay here only

to-morrow at most. We are cut off from news of all the world; little

could we get in Mexico city; less since....

You would be amused, as I have known you to be in Italy, at my knack of

explaining myself by gesture, and so getting on....

LATHROP, CALIFORNIA, May 1, 1885.

We have only this morning left Rancho Chico and have set our faces

eastward. Waiting for our train I improve the rare bit of leisure to

write a line.

First of all, we are both well. No cough, however obstinate, could abide

this charming climate. And having no excuse for further stay we enter

upon the “beginning of the end” of a holiday which now only lacks ten

days of three months. What a pity to turn our backs on all the fruits we

see growing around us, having enjoyed only the cherries, which are just

coming in. Well, we have a basket of them, as big as plums, and so good!

to solace the first days of the desert part of our journey. We shall

have desert enough on the way home, as we cross Arizona and New Mexico

by the Atlantic and Pacific railway, through the northern part of those

Territories (having come out by the southern), a country quite new to

us. How often we have wished for you and Lady Hooker!

When and whence did I write you last? I think from Los Angeles and

before our trip to San Diego.

Instead of a short journey by sea (which my wife detests) we made a long

circumbendibus by rail to the southernmost town in California; declined

an invitation to go over the border into Mexican California; was, in

fact, too unwell to do anything in the field, and so, finding the coast

too cool and damp, returned, stopping two nights with Parish and wife,

at their little ranch at San Bernardino, in a dry and warm region, a

charming valley girt with high mountains, on the eastern side still

snow-topped,--indeed they are so most of the summer. Back thence to Los

Angeles we soon went, down to the port San Pedro, and took steamer for

Santa Barbara, the very paradise of California in the eyes of its

inhabitants, and indeed of most others. Our cruise of only eight hours

on the Pacific was pleasant, and most of it in daylight.

Arriving after dark, we found, to our surprise, the mayor of the little

town on the wharf with a carriage for our party (wife, Farlow, and

self), who drove us to the fine watering-place kind of hotel, and on

being shown at once to our rooms we found them all alight and embowered

in roses, in variety and superbness such as you never saw the beat of,

not to speak of Bougainvilleas, Tacsonias, and passion-flowers,

Cape-bulbs in variety, etc., etc., and a full assortment of the wild

flowers of the season. Mrs. Gray was fairly taken off her feet. During

the ten or eleven days we stayed, there were few in which we were not

taken on drives, the most pleasant and various. The views, even from our

windows, of sea and mountain and green hills (for California is now

verdant, except where Eschscholtzia and Bahias and Layia, etc., and

Lupines turn it golden or blue) were just enchanting; and on leaving we

were by good management allowed to pay our hotel bill.... Had you been

of the party I believe the good people would have come out with oxen and

garlands, and would hardly have been restrained.

Here we were driven out fifteen miles to one of the great ranches,--a

visit of two nights and a day,--that of Mr. Cooper, a very refined

family; the whole ranch flanked on the windward sides by eucalyptus

groves, apricots, almond, peach-trees, etc., by the dozens of acres; but

the produce on which the enthusiastic owner has set his heart is that of

the olive, and he makes the best of olive oil, and in a large way.

Hollister’s ranch is still larger, miles long every way; both reach from

mountain-top to sea, and have fine drives up cañons, in these fine oaks

and plane-trees, occasionally an Acer macrophyllum and an Alder.

Avoiding the sea, which gives a short route, we reached San Francisco by

a lovely drive, in a hired wagon, over a pass in the Santa Inez

Mountains to the coast (south) at Ventura, and so up the broad and long

Santa Clara Valley to Newhall, on the Southern Pacific railway, not very

far above Los Angeles (two days’ drive, most pleasant), then by rail

overnight and to this place to breakfast, and on to San Francisco.

We stopped this time at the Lick House, where we had, European-wise, a

room, not quite so good as we had at the Palace Hotel eight years ago,

and fed at the restaurant, very nice and reasonable, when we were not

visiting or invited out, which was most of the time. So it was not

expensive, our room (parlor, bedroom shutting off, and a bathroom)

costing only about 12 shillings for us both. Harkness looks the same,

but older; is absorbed in fungology. Here again we were made much of for

twelve days, most busy ones. General McDowell, who you remember dined us

at the “Palace,” is ill; we saw him twice, and he has since so failed

that we daily expect to hear of the end.

May 4. In Farlie’s Chalet hotel in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.

Dr. Brigham, you remember, who took us to the Chinese theatre, is now

married, and has three children by a bright wife, with a rich father,

and a handsome house, above Presidio,--a fine site, and filled with fine

things from all countries, and such a rose-garden; gave us a handsome

dinner. Alvord and wife (president now of Bank of California), noble

people, did wonders for us, and a dinner and drives. A lunch over at the

university; and another by General (commanding the Western Department

in place of McDowell, and in the choice house the latter built) and Mrs.

Pope (she an old acquaintance); then we went over to San Rafael, a night

with the Barbers, and next day a drive up behind Mount Tamalpais to the

cañon reservoir of water-works, and saw, at length (having failed on all

former visits), that huge Madroña (Arbutus Menziesii), like one of those

great and wide-spreading oaks you used to admire. Next day to Monterey,

which we saw nothing of on that hurried visit eight years ago, when our

single day was sacrificed to Hayden’s insane desire to see a coal mine

on a bare hill! Now there are eighteen miles of good drive around all

Point Pinos and through it, and Cupressus macrocarpa on the seaside

verge, noble and picturesque old trees, and no lack of young ones, a

little back, and grand sea and shore views.

On the other side of the town, in a grove of great live oaks and Pinus

insignis mixed, made into a beautiful park and park gardens, with a

separate railway station in the grounds, is the crack hotel of the

Western coast, the work of the Pacific Railway Company, which has also

bought and appended the whole of the pine grove, five or six miles long

and two or three wide, thus preserving Pinus insignis and the cypress,

the latter much needing it.

Mr. and Mrs. Alvord, knowing our visit was to be, had telegraphed for

best rooms, and joined us unexpectedly; took us on the long drive the

next day, with four fine horses.... They showed us no end of kind

attention.

At length we got off for a visit to Chico (leaving Farlow to apologize

at Santa Cruz, etc.), a quicker way than before, a steam-ferry across

Suisin Bay helping. And there we had a nice time indeed, from Saturday

evening to Friday morning, every day, drives and picnics, and

botanizing, and feeding on (besides strawberries) such cherries, just

coming in in acres of cherry-orchards, the only fruits yet in season.

That big fig-tree, in the branches of which I used to hide and feast, or

rather cram, is bigger than ever, but the figs green, to my sorrow. And

we cannot wait for them. General Bidwell[133] and wife have aged little

in the eight years, are as good as ever, full of all noble and good

works, as well as of generous hospitality; have taken wonderfully to

botany; remember you most affectionately and long for a real visit. His

great ambition is to make drives, good roads, through the ranch, for

pleasure as well as use; he has now over a hundred miles of them. That

big oak[134] is finer than ever; not a dead branch.

Well, off at length; at Lathrop joined our eastward train at evening; up

the San Joaquin valley all night, and had early morning for the

wonderful Tahachapi Pass. Breakfast at Mohave. (I must send you a

railroad map.) There took the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, over the

sandy desert to the Great Colorado at supper, to Peach Spring station at

two A.M., and next morning in an easy “buckboard wagon” twenty-two miles

and 4,000 feet descent into this wonderful cañon, a piece of it, which

its explorer, Major Powell, has made famous.

This afternoon and evening we are to get up and back, and on in the

night and morning to Flagstaff, and the ancient cliff dwellings.

IN THE CARS, KANSAS CITY, May 8, 1885.

Let me finish up these mems. We have now only a run of eleven hours to

St. Louis, where we stay three or four days with Dr. Engelmann (Jr.),

and then home.

The cañon trip well repaid the journey and its rough accessories. Some

of the views are of those depicted by Powell. We find that Tylor and

Moseley were here last year. As the man whom we had introductions to at

Flagstaff was absent for a day or two, though we found he had left

substitutes, and as we wanted to get home as soon as we could, we gave

up the visit to the cave and cliff dwellings. I dare say the models in

clay, made at Washington, are as good as the originals. So we came on,

one and a half nights and two days, and to-night we shall sleep in beds

at St. Louis. We bear this sort of travel quite well. From Mohave to the

Colorado is very sandy and complete desert, descending eastward many

hundred feet. Near Mohave lots of tree yuccas, looking very like those

in northern part of Mexico. From the Colorado to Peach Spring we passed

in the dark, but had risen to about 6,000 feet, and we kept on an

elevation of 4,000 to nearly 8,000 feet all across the rest of Arizona

and New Mexico, the higher parts wooded with conifers, that is, Pinus

ponderosa of the Rocky Mountains form and Juniperus. At Las Vegas, New

Mexico, we laid over one train, to rest and visit the Hot Springs; no

great to see, except a spick and span new hotel, too fine for the place,

and some very hot water.

Well, this trip, which will nearly round out to three and a half months,

has been long and enjoyable indeed.

At St. Louis will be letters, perhaps one from you.

Ever yours,

A. GRAY.

Part of yesterday and last night was down along the Arkansas, the

reverse of our journey eight years ago. Country much settled up.

CAMBRIDGE, August 26, 1885.

... Charles Wright is dead, at seventy-three and a half; had been

suffering of heart-disease, went out to his barn, was missed as the

evening drew on, was found dead. So they go, one by one....

The summer is almost gone,--one hardly knows how,--but, then, we have a

longer and finer autumn than you have in England.

The five hundred copies which I printed in 1878 are gone. And, as I have

to print new copies, I take the opportunity to correct on the stereotype

plates when I can,--a great lot of wrong references to volume, page,

plates,--that is, such as we have found out. What a bother they are, and

how impossible to make correct in the first place, and to keep so

through the printer’s hands! Then there are lots of important

corrections to make, and new species and genera galore.

So,--in an evil moment, you will say--I set about a supplement to this

new issue,--also of the other part. For, as I have now brought out in

the two parts all the Gamopetalæ, and as I begin to doubt if I shall

hold out to accomplish much more, I thought it best to leave behind at

least these in good state. But it is no small job. And this, with the

great amount of herbarium work that goes along with it, or beside it,

just uses up the summer; for I dare guess it will keep me occupied all

September....

The last news of you is a letter from your dear wife to mine,--giving

such a pleasant picture of the two boys, and of your enjoyment of them.

You say you are quite well, and Lady Hooker much the same,--which is

comforting. But you are naturally growing older, like myself. I tire

sooner than I used to do, and have not so sure a touch nor so good a

memory. The daily grind we both find more wearing....

We should like to come over to you once more,--but it seems less and

less practicable; unless I become actually unfit for work, and then I

shall not be worth seeing....

Your affectionate old friend,

A. GRAY.

Old, indeed; the president of the Naturæ Curiosorum wrote me on August 3

that I have been one of the _curious_ for fifty years.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray wrote a notice of Charles Wright for the “American Journal of

Science,” in which he says that “Charles Wright was born at

Wethersfield, Connecticut; graduated at Yale in 1835. Had an early love

for botany, which may have taken him to the South as a teacher in

Mississippi, whence he went to Texas, joining the early immigration, and

occupied himself botanizing and surveying, and then again in teaching.

He accompanied various expeditions, and no name is more largely

commemorated in the botany of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona than

Charles Wright. It is an acanthaceous genus of this district, of his own

discovery, that bears the name of Carlowrightia. Surely no botanist ever

better earned such scientific remembrance by entire devotion, acute

observation, severe exertion, and perseverance under hardship and

privation.” He was engaged later for several years “in his prolific

exploration of Cuba.”

“Mr. Wright was a person of low stature and well-knit frame, hardy

rather than strong, scrupulously temperate, a man of simple ways, always

modest and unpretending, but direct and downright in expression, most

amiable, trusty, and religious. He accomplished a great amount of useful

and excellent work for botany in the pure and simple love of it; and his

memory is held in honorable and grateful remembrance by his surviving

associates.”[135]

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

CAMBRIDGE, November 3, 1885.

MY DEAR REDFIELD,--I was interested in your Corema Con.

I have a remark to make on the last sentence of it; I would ask, How

could the plant have an introduction following the glacial period? And

where could it have come from?

Of course my idea is that it existed at the higher north before the

glacial period--that is my fad.

But one sees that this is one of a few plants that may be appealed to in

behalf of an Atlantis theory,--as coming across the Atlantic, making

this Corema a derivation from C. alba, of Portugal, or of _its_

ancestor. But the Atlantic is thought to be too deep for an Atlantis;

and we do not need it much.

What induces me to refer to your paragraph is to ask whether your

“following the glacial period,” that is, recent introduction, means in

your thought that our species is a direct descendant of Corema alba,

which by some chance got wafted across the Atlantic.

That is the most probable notion, next to my theory.

For consider, we know the genus only on these two opposite shores.