"Few, if indeed any, have ever known plants as he did."
--BOWER.
Joseph Dalton Hooker was born in 1817 and died in 1911; and of these
ninety-four years eighty-one included botanical work, for at thirteen
"Joseph" was "becoming a zealous botanist"; and Mr L. Huxley records
(ii., 480) that he kept at work till a little before his death on 10th
December 1911, and that although his physical strength began to fail in
August, yet "till the end he was keenly interested in current topics and
the latest contribution to natural science." So far as actual research
is concerned, it is remarkable that he should have continued to work at
the Balsams--a very difficult class of plants--at least till 1910. Mr
Huxley has wisely determined to make his book of a reasonable size, and
the task of compressing his gigantic mass of material into two volumes
must have been a difficult one. He has been thoroughly successful,
{115b} and no aspect of Sir Joseph's life is neglected, the whole being
admirably arranged and annotated, and treated throughout with conspicuous
judgment and skill.
In an "autobiographical fragment" (i., p. 3) Sir Joseph records that he
was born at Halesworth in Suffolk, "being the second child of William
Jackson Hooker and Maria Turner." He was not only the son of an eminent
botanist, but fate went so far as to give him a botanical godfather in
the person of Rev. J. Dalton, "a student of carices and mosses and
discoverer of _Scheuchzeria_ in England." It was after Mr Dalton that
Hooker was named, his first name, Joseph, commemorating his grandfather
Hooker. In 1821 the family moved to Glasgow, where Sir William Hooker
was appointed Professor of Botany. It was here that Sir Joseph, at the
age of five or six, showed his innate love of plants, for he records
{116}:--
"When I was still in petticoats, I was found grubbing in a wall in the
dirty suburbs of the dirty city of Glasgow, and . . . when asked what I
was about, I cried out that I had found _Bryum argenteum_ (which it was
not), a very pretty little moss which I had seen in my father's
collection, and to which I had taken a great fancy."
While still a child his father used to take him on excursions in the
Highlands, and on one occasion, on returning home, Joseph built up a heap
of stones to represent a mountain and "stuck upon it specimens of the
mosses I had collected on it, at heights relative to those at which I had
gathered them. This was the dawn of my love for geographical botany."
Sir Joseph records that his father gave him a scrap of a moss gathered by
Mungo Park when almost at the point of death. It excited in him a desire
of entering Africa by Morocco, and crossing the greater Atlas. That
childish dream, he says, "I never lost; I nursed it till, half a century
afterwards, . . . I did (with my friend Mr Ball, who is here by me, and
another friend Mr G. Maw) ascend to the summit of the previously
unconquered Atlas."
In 1820 William Hooker was appointed to the newly founded Professorship
of Botany at Glasgow. Of this his son Joseph writes, "It was a bold
venture for my father to undertake so responsible an office, for he had
never lectured, or even attended a course of lectures." With wonderful
energy he "published in time for use in his second course, the _Flora
Scotica_ in two volumes." Sir Joseph's mother was Maria, daughter of
Dawson Turner, banker, botanist and archaeologist, so that science was
provided on both sides of the pedigree.
It would seem that Sir Joseph's mother was somewhat of a martinet. When
Joseph came in from school he had to present himself to her, and "was not
allowed to sit down in her presence without permission."
In 1832, Joseph, then fifteen years of age, entered Glasgow University,
being already, in the words of his father, "a fair British botanist" with
"a tolerable herbarium very much of his own collecting"; he adds, "Had he
time for it, he would already be more useful to me than Mr Klotzsch" [his
assistant].
It was in 1838 that Hooker got his opportunity, for it chanced that James
Clerk Ross, the Arctic explorer, was in 1838 visiting at the Smiths of
Jordan Hill. In order that Joseph might meet Ross, both he and his
father were invited to breakfast. The meeting ended in Ross promising to
take him as surgeon and naturalist. There seems to have been a little
innocent jobbery with folks in high places, and it fortunately turned out
that the expedition was delayed so that Joseph had the opportunity of
spending some time at Haslar Hospital.
The expedition seems to have been fitted out with astonishing poverty.
Seventy years later he wrote, "Except some drying paper for plants, I had
not a single instrument or book supplied to me as a naturalist--all were
given to me by my father. I had, however, the use of Ross's library, and
you may hardly credit it, but it is fact that not a single glass bottle
was supplied for collecting purposes; empty pickle bottles were all we
had, and rum as a preservative from the ship's stores."
It is interesting to find Ross, in his preliminary talk with Hooker,
saying that he wanted a trained naturalist, "such a person as Mr
Darwin"--to which Hooker aptly retorted by asking what Mr Darwin was
before he went out.
I imagine that Hooker was lucky in being taken on Ross's voyage _as a
naturalist_, since the primary object of the expedition was to fill up
"the wide blanks in the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism in the
southern hemisphere."
It seems like a forecast of what was to be the chief friendship of his
life, that Darwin's _Naturalist's Voyage_ should have been one of the
books that inspired him to join in the voyage of the _Erebus_ and
_Terror_. Hooker "slept with the proofs under his pillow, and devoured
them eagerly the moment he woke in the morning." Much earlier he had
been stirred by Cook's voyages, and, like Darwin, was fired by Humboldt's
_Personal Narrative_. While at sea his work was largely zoological, and
the tow-net was kept busy. But on 24th August 1841, he writes to his
father of his great wish to devote himself "to collecting plants and
studying them . . . but we are comparatively seldom off the sea, and then
in the most unpropitious seasons for travelling or collecting." He
speaks, too, of his wish to see the end of the voyage, in order that he
might devote himself to botany.
The voyage had its dangers: in March 1842, during a storm, the _Terror_
collided with the _Erebus_, and for nearly ten minutes the interlocked
ships drifted towards a huge berg: the _Erebus_ remained rolling and
striking her masts against the berg, but managed by the "desperate
expedient" of "sailing stern first down wind" to escape destruction.
Hooker writes to his father, 25th November 1842: "The Barrier, the bergs
several hundred feet high and 1-6 miles long, and the Mts. of the great
Antarctic continent, are too grand to be imagined, and almost too
stupendous to be carried in the memory."
In a letter to his mother he describes seeing at Cape Horn "a little
cairn of stones raised by the officers of the _Beagle_." And again he
writes, "Clouds and fogs, rain and snow justified all Darwin's accurate
descriptions of a dreary Fuegian summer." He speaks of Darwin's
_Naturalist's Voyage_ as "not only indispensable but a delightful
companion and guide." There is plenty of interesting matter in the
account of Hooker's voyage, but the above fragments of detail must here
suffice. The _Erebus_ and _Terror_ reached Woolwich on 7th September
1843.
Having safely returned to England, the next problem was what was to be
Hooker's permanent occupation. Nothing, however, was fixed on, and in
the meantime he fulfilled "his intention of seeing the chief Continental
botanists, and comparing their gardens and collections with those of
Kew."
His first visit was to Humboldt, at Paris, who turned out "a punchy
little German," whereas he had expected "a fine fellow 6 feet without his
boots." Of the great man he says, "He certainly is still a most
wonderful man, with a sagacity and memory and capability for generalising
that are quite marvellous. I gave him my book [_Flora Antarctica_],
which delighted him much; he read through the first three numbers, and I
suppose noted down thirty or forty things which he asked me particulars
about." Humboldt was then seventy-six years of age. Hooker's impression
of the Paris botanists was not favourable; he speaks of their habit of
telling him of the magnitude of their own researches, "while of those of
their neighbours they seem to know very little indeed." Of Decaisne,
however, he speaks with warm appreciation. He would have been surprised
if a prophet had told him that he was to be instrumental in bringing out
an English version of Decaisne's well-known book.
In 1845 Hooker acted as a deputy for Graham, the Professor of Botany at
Edinburgh. In May he wrote to his father, "I am lecturing away like a
house on fire. I was not in the funk I expected, though I had every
reason to be in a far greater one." Finally, when Graham died, Balfour,
the father of the present holder of the office, was elected professor,
and Hooker was fortunately freed from a post that would have been a fatal
tie to his career.
But happier events followed; he became engaged to Frances, daughter of
Professor Henslow. Sir William spoke of the affair with a certain
pomposity: "I believe Miss Henslow to be an amiable and well-educated
person of most respectable though not high connections, and from all that
I have seen of her, well suited to Joseph's habits and pursuits." Their
engagement was a long one, and their marriage could not take place till
after his Indian journey, which was the next event of importance in his
career.
On the voyage out, he was fortunate in becoming known to Lord Dalhousie,
and the friendship built up in the course of the journey and afterwards
in India "showed itself in unstinted support of Hooker." It was,
however, "a personal appreciation of the man rather than of the
scientific investigator." Indeed, Lord Dalhousie, "a perfect specimen of
the miserable system of education pursued at Oxford," had a "lamentably
low opinion" of science.
At Darjiling began Hooker's "lifelong friendship with a very remarkable
character, Brian Hodgson," {122a} administrator and scholar, who had "won
equal fame as Resident at the court of Nepal and as a student of Oriental
lore." Mr L. Huxley points out that "if the friendship with Lord
Dalhousie provided the key that opened official barriers and made
Hooker's journeyings possible, the friendship with Hodgson more than
anything else made them a practical success."
I shall not attempt to follow Hooker through his wanderings--only a few
scattered references to them are possible. It is pleasant to read that
when Mr Elwes visited Sikkim twenty-two years after Hooker, he found that
the Lepchas almost worshipped him, and he was remembered as a learned
Hakim, an incarnation of wisdom and strength.
The most exciting adventure of Hooker and his fellow-traveller was their
imprisonment in Sikkim, where their lives were clearly in danger, and
they were only released when "troops were hurried up to Darjiling" and
"an ultimatum dispatched to the Rajah." {122b}
For the rest of his botanical journeyings he had the companionship of
Thomson, who had been his fellow-student, and, like himself, was the son
of a Glasgow professor. A letter to his father (undated) gives an idea
of the wonderful success of his Indian travels: "It is easy to talk of a
_Flora Indica_, and Thomson and I do talk of it, to imbecility! But
suppose that we even adopted the size, quality of paper, brevity of
description, etc., which characterise De Candolle's _Prodromus_, and we
should, even under these conditions, fill twelve such volumes at least."
The usual shabbiness {123} of governments towards science is well
illustrated (p. 344) in the case of Hooker:--"His total expenditure was
2200 pounds; the official allowances were 1200 pounds: the remainder was
contributed from his own and his father's purse."
In 1855 Joseph began his official life at Kew on being appointed
assistant to his father. And ten years later, on Sir William's death, he
succeeded as a matter of course to the Directorship.
Shortly before this, _i.e._ in 1854, he was the recipient of an honour
greatly coveted by men of science, namely the award of the Royal Medal.
He is characteristically pleased for the sake of the science of Botany
rather than for himself, and refers to the neglect that botany has
generally experienced at the hands of the Society in comparison with
zoological subjects. His own success characteristically reminds him of
what he considered a slight to his father, viz., that he had not received
the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. This, the highest honour which
men of science can aspire to, is open not merely to Britons but to all
the world, and I should doubt whether Sir William had ever been high in
the list of possible recipients.
We are now approaching the great change wrought in the scientific outlook
of the world by the _Origin of Species_. In November 1856, after reading
Darwin's MS. on geographical distribution, Hooker wrote that though
"never very stubborn about unalterability of specific type, I never felt
so shaky about species before." It must be remembered that throughout
the companionship of Hooker and Darwin the latter was a convinced
evolutionist. He writes in his autobiography that in 1838, after reading
Malthus on Population, he was convinced of the origin of new species by
means of natural selection. Throughout the close intercourse which
subsisted for so many years between Hooker and Darwin, in which the views
afterwards put forth in the _Origin of Species_ were discussed, Hooker
seems not to have been a convinced evolutionist. His conversion dates
apparently from 1858, when the papers by Darwin and Wallace were read at
the Linnean Society. This has always appeared to me remarkable, and T.
H. Huxley {124} has said with regard to his own position:--"My
reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the
'Origin' was, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'"
After the publication of the _Origin of Species_ Hooker wrote to Darwin,
{125} "I have not yet got half through the book, not from want of will,
but of time--for it is the very hardest book to read, to full profit,
that I ever tried--it is so cram-full of matter and reasoning. . . .
Somehow it reads very different from the MS., and I often fancy that I
must have been very stupid not to have more fully followed it in MS."
Whatever Hooker may have been he was not stupid, and though nowadays it
is easy to feel surprise that his long-continued familiarity with
Darwin's work had not earlier convinced him of the doctrine of evolution
by means of natural selection, we must ascribe it rather to his early
education in the sacrosanct meaning of the word _species_.
I think it must have been roughly about the time of the publication of
the _Origin of Species_ that my earliest memories of Sir Joseph Hooker
refer. I clearly remember his eating gooseberries with us as children,
in the kitchen garden at Down. The love of gooseberries was a bond
between us which had no existence in the case of our uncles, who either
ate no gooseberries or preferred to do so in solitude. By a process of
evolutionary change the word gooseberry took on a new meaning at Down.
Hooker used to send Darwin some especially fine bananas grown in the Kew
hothouses, and these were called Kew gooseberries. It was characteristic
of my father to feel doubts as to whether he ought to receive Royal
bananas from a Royal garden. I wish I could remember Hooker romping with
us as children, of which he somewhere speaks.
It was about this time that Darwin had a fancy to make out the names of
the English grasses, and Hooker wrote, "How on earth you have made out 30
grasses rightly is a mystery to me. You must have a marvellous tact for
appreciating diagnosis." It was at this time that one of Darwin's boys
remarked in regard to a grass he had found:--"I are an extraordinary
grass-finder, and must have it particularly by me all dinner." Strange
to say he did not grow into a botanist.
Hooker's letters at this time impress me with the difficulty he met with
in adapting his systematic work to the doctrines of evolution. He gives
the impression of working at species in a puzzled or discontented frame
of mind. Thus on 1st January 1859, he writes to a
fellow-botanist:--"What I shall try to do is, to harmonise the facts with
the newest doctrines, not because they are the truest, but because they
do give you room to reason and reflect at present, and hopes for the
future, whereas the old stick-in-the-mud doctrines of absolute creations,
multiple creations, and dispersion by actual causes under existing
circumstances, are all used up, they are so many stops to further
enquiry."
A few days later he continues to the same correspondent: "If the course
of migration does not agree with that of birds, winds, currents, etc., so
much the worse for the facts of migration!" On the whole it seems to me
a remarkable fact that Hooker's conversion to evolution was such a slow
affair. As Mr Huxley points out, "The partial light thrown on the
question in fragmentary discussions was not enough, and until 1858-59,
after the consolidation of Darwin's arguments in the famous Abstract
[_The Origin of Species_], Hooker . . . worked avowedly on the accepted
lines of the fixity of species, for which he had so far found no
convincing substitute."
It is pleasant to read Darwin's warm-hearted words: {127a} "You may say
what you like, but you will never convince me that I do not owe you ten
times as much as you can owe me" (30th Dec. 1858).
Hooker's importance in the world was ever on the increase, and this had
also its usual concomitant drawbacks. Huxley wrote to him {127b} on 19th
December 1860: "It is no use having any false modesty about the matter.
You and I, if we last ten years longer--and you by a long while
first--will be representatives of our respective lines in the country.
In that capacity we shall have certain duties to perform, to ourselves,
to the outside world, and to Science. We shall have to swallow praise,
which is no great pleasure, and to stand multitudinous bastings and
irritations." And this was doubtless a true prophecy for both the
friends.
Hooker's work--both his botanical research and duties of a more public
character--was ever on the increase.
In the first category comes the _Genera Plantarum_, a gigantic piece of
work begun with the co-operation of Bentham in the '60's, and continued
until 1883. The aim of this celebrated publication was no less than to
give a revised definition of every genus of flowering plants. If this
had been the only publication by the two friends, it had been enough to
found a high and permanent place in the botanical world. But as far as
Hooker was concerned, it may almost be said to have been carried out in
his spare moments. It should be remembered that for part of this period
he was aided in the management of the Gardens by Sir William
Thiselton-Dyer, who began as Hooker's Private Secretary and was then made
Assistant Director. {128a}
The Presidency of the Royal Society, which Hooker held 1873-78, was
clearly a great strain, but he carried out the work (which is in fact
that of a ministry of science) with conspicuous success.
In January 1873 he wrote to Darwin:--"I quite agree as to the awful
honour of P. R. S. . . . but, my dear fellow, I don't want to be crowned
head of science. I dread it--'Uneasy is the head, etc.'--and my beloved
Gen. Plant. will be grievously impeded." It gives some idea of the
strain of his work as a whole when we find him writing {128b} to Darwin
(Jan. 14, 1875): "I have 15 Committees of the R[oyal] S[ociety] to attend
to. I cannot tell you what a relief they are to me--matters are so ably
and quietly conducted by Stokes, Huxley, and Spottiswoode that to me they
are of the same sort of relaxation that metaphysics are to Huxley."
He speaks, {128c} too (1874), of the annual conversazione as "a
tremendous affair. . . . How I did pity the President of the United
States." I am reminded of an American caricature of the President of the
United States with red, swollen fingers, inscribed:--"The hand we have
shaken so often." With regard to other honours, he declined at once the
K.C.M.G.; he then began to dread a K.C.B.; finally he was trapped into
the K.C.S.I., an honour which most men would desire quite as much as
Hooker longed to decline it.
In 1873 Hooker made a series of experiments on the digestion and
absorption of food by certain insectivorous plants, notably Nepenthes,
with the object of helping Darwin in his work on that subject.
We must return a year or two to deal with a matter which, as Mr L. Huxley
remarks, "ravaged and embittered" the period 1870-72--namely, his
conflict with Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone's
Government. Mr L. Huxley, like a clever musician, gives a touch of
Ayrton's tone in the opening phrases of his composition. At a grand
festivity in honour of the Shah of Persia this sovereign was
unaccountably anxious to meet the Commissioner of Works. Ayrton was at
supper, and bluntly responded, with his mouth full of chicken, "I'll see
the old nigger in Jericho first!"
He began to show his quality by sending an "official reprimand to the
Director of Kew." This, the first received in twenty-nine years'
service, was based "on a misapprehension." Ayrton's aim seems to have
been to compel Hooker to resign and convert Kew Gardens into a public
park.
In 1871 Hooker casually discovered from a subordinate "that he himself
had been superseded . . . in one of his most important duties--namely,
the heating of the plant-houses." It would take too long to enumerate
the endless acts of insolence and folly which marked Ayrton's treatment
of Hooker. A full statement of the case was drawn up and signed by a
small body of the most distinguished scientific men of the day, and after
a debate in the House of Commons, Mr Ayrton was kicked upstairs "from the
Board of Works to the resuscitated office of Judge Advocate General." I
remember an anecdote which illustrates Ayrton's stupendous ignorance of
the great department over which he was called to rule. Hooker was taking
Ayrton round the Gardens when they met Mr Bentham, who happened to remark
that he had come from the Herbarium. "Oh," said Ayrton, "did you get
your feet wet?" For the official ruler of Kew there was no difference
between a Herbarium and an Aquarium.
This period has pleasanter memories, for it was in 1873 that Huxley, much
out of health and "heavily mulcted" by having to pay the costs of an
unsuccessful action brought against him by a man of straw, was persuaded
to accept from a group of personal friends a sum of 3000 pounds to clear
his financial position, Hooker wrote to Darwin, "I am charmed by Huxley's
noble-minded letter."
In 1874 Mrs Hooker died, leaving six children, of whom three still
required care. Hooker wrote later to Darwin from Nuneham (ii., p. 191):
"I am here on two days' visit to a place I had not seen since I was here
with Fanny Henslow [Mrs Hooker] in 1847. I cannot tell you how depressed
I feel at times. She, you, and Oxford are burnt into my memory." Here
occurs, in a letter from Mrs Bewicke, some account of Hooker's method of
dealing with his family. She gives the impression (though clearly not
intentionally) that Hooker rather worried his children. She speaks of
the many questions he asked them at meals and the pleasure he took in
their success in answering. She adds, "When we drove into London with
him, he would tell us the names of the big houses and their owners, and
then expect us to know them as we drove back." This confirms my
impression that Hooker was not quite judicious in his manner of educating
or enlightening his children. I have a general impression of having
sympathised with them in their difficulties.
In 1876, Hooker was happily married to Hyacinth, widow of Sir William
Jardine; and about the same time Sir William Thiselton-Dyer married Sir
Joseph's daughter.
The _Index Kewensis_, which unites the names of two friends, was carried
out at Kew, with funds supplied by Darwin. It was in fact a completion
of Steudel's _Nomenclator_, and was published in four quarto volumes in
1892-95. The MS. is said to have weighed more than a ton and comprised
about 375,000 entries. Hooker, with wonderful energy and devotion, read
and criticised it in detail. {131}
In 1885, Hooker resigned his position as Director at Kew, and
henceforward lived at the Camp, Sunningdale, his "Tusculum" among the
pine-woods as Mr Huxley puts it, where he remained, ever hard at work,
for twenty-six years.
He was still astonishingly vigorous; at eighty-two he was "younger than
ever," though at ninety-three he confessed to being lazy in his old age.
In 1885 and subsequent years he was, as I gratefully remember, employed
in helping me in the _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_. I could not
have had a kinder or wiser collaborator.
Hooker's unaffected modesty came out again about this period. In 1887 he
was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, an honour which is the
pinnacle of scientific ambition, and is open to foreigners as well as
British subjects. He wrote in regard to the award, "I never once thought
of myself as within the pale of it." And in a letter to W. E. Darwin,
"The success of my after-dinner homily at the R. S. is to me far more
wonderful than getting the Copley. You . . . can guess my condition of
two days' nausea before the dinner, and 2 days of illness after it. I am
not speaking figuratively."
We find Hooker here and there slashing at contemporary methods of
education. For instance, in regard to the mass of public school boys:
"Not one of them can now translate a simple paper in Latin or Greek, or
will look into a classical author, or listen to the talk about one."
Mathematicians fared no better. He wrote in 1893:--"What you say of A,
B, and C does not surprise me. They are _ne plus ultra_ mathematicians,
and have not a conception of biological science, and in fact are only
_half-intellects_ (I suppose I deserve to be burned)."
It is pleasant to find that Hooker allowed himself time to indulge his
love of art. He was especially fond of old Wedgwood ware, and
corresponded with William Darwin--a fellow amateur. In 1895, he allowed
the same friend to become the owner of some old Wedgwood ware; and when
the sale was completed Hooker speaks of its being a relief "to feel that
the crockery is going back where it should have gone by rights." {133}
Elsewhere (ii., p. 360) Hooker discourses pleasantly on the perfect
adaption to its end of the old Wedgwood ware. An old teapot, for
instance, avoids all the faults of the modern article, in lifting which
"you scald your knuckles against the body of the pot"; then the lid
shoots off and you scald your other hand in trying to save it; the tea
shoots out and splashes over the teacup; lastly the "spout dribbles when
you set the pot down." All these sins are provided against in the old
Wedgwood teapot.
The _Flora of British India_ having been finished, he was asked to
complete the handbook to the Flora of Ceylon, interrupted by the death of
Trimen, and this occupied him for three years. He was then led to what
was to be his final piece of work, namely, a study of the difficult group
of the Balsams (_Impatiens_), and he certainly was not coloured by what
he worked in, for the whole stock of his admirable patience was needed
for this difficult research. His perseverance was a by-product of his
noble enthusiasm. In 1906, when he was eighty-nine years of age, he
writes enthusiastically to a friend in the East expressing his longing
for more Balsams, and concluding, "I do love Indian Botany." And in 1909
he hears that the Paris Herbarium had overlooked forty sheets of
Indo-Chinese specimens--and writes, "This is like a stroke of paralysis
to a man approaching his ninety-third year, but it is no use grumbling,
my eyes are as good as ever, and my fingers are as agile as ever, and I
am indeed thankful."
The _Life_ of Hooker is enriched by a striking essay from the pen of
Professor Bower. He points out (ii., p. 412) that "few, if indeed any,
have ever known plants as he did. Such knowledge comes only from growing
up with them from earliest childhood." Professor Bower adds that Hooker
"shared with Darwin that wider outlook upon the field of Science that
gave a special value to the writings of both"; and he adds, "The
_Himalayan Journals_ ranks with Darwin's _Voyage of the_ '_Beagle_'."
When _More Letters of Charles Darwin_ was in preparation, Hooker was
appealed to for assistance, and wrote a characteristically kind letter
(1st Feb. 1899) to one of the editors:--
"I will gladly help you all I can; so have no scruples. . . . You are
right to make the book uncompromisingly scientific. It will be greatly
valued. I am getting so old and oblivious that I fear I may not be of
much use."