Chapter VII: Travel in Europe and America (5)

MY DEAR DE CANDOLLE,--Though I have entered on the seventieth year of my age, I hold out well, and when other cares do not interrupt, I go on with the “Compositæ,” yet all too slowly. Before I print them I shall hope to have another inspection of some of the species of the “Prodromus” in your herbarium; perhaps before this year 1880 is out, yet it is rather doubtful. I get on slowly, and then Mr. Watson, who will have the “Flora of California” off his hands as soon as he can get the manuscript of the “Gramineæ” out of Professor Thurber’s hands, must have a vacation ramble, probably to Oregon. If he leaves here in the spring, I must wait his return here in the autumn, or at most cannot leave home until after midsummer; too late to render myself at Geneva, I suppose.

Much of my time of the last few months has been occupied with the details of building a small addition to our herbarium building to contain the botanical library. It is just finished, and the books will now be moved into it in a few days....

My health is excellent. Let us hope the same for you, and offer my best wishes for the year 1880.

* * * * *

Dr. Gray delivered in the winter of 1880 two lectures to the theological school of Yale College, on Natural Science and Religion.

They were long and carefully thought out, and he had great pleasure in speaking to an audience who followed him so closely, and evidently with such attentive sympathy.

He also enjoyed very much reading them, before delivery, to his friend Dr. O. W. Holmes, in Boston.

TO G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

CAMBRIDGE, January 17, 1880.

DEAR FRIEND,--We go Monday night on to Washington, leaving here at five P.M. My lectures are fixed for February 5 and 6, so that I shall return from Washington and go on specially to New Haven.

I expect to be at home the last week of the month, but perhaps not on Monday, and I should wish to see you and read my second lecture, which is dragging its slow length along!...

CAMBRIDGE, March 11, 1880.

I have this moment received and read from Newman Smyth a flattering note, and a copy of his article in the “Advance.” A very good one it is, and his own thoughts are noteworthy and to the point.

President Gilman of the Johns Hopkins sent me a very admiring letter, in which he urges a student’s edition, on thinner paper and paper covers, which he wants to subscribe for. I shall send it to the publisher before long.

April 11, 1880.

I am amused at Professor ----’s substitution of demiurgism for evolution, reprinted in the “Independent,” and at the coolness with which the professor proclaims that a hypothesis which he thinks is good for nothing else may be good to put against evolutionism.

Darwin has sent me advance sheets of his book on Advantage of Crosses (not moral but floral crosses, and not crosses made of flowers, but those made by insects and winds for the benefit of flowers), and I see much in it which you will enjoy. I am too full of work to use it next week, and if you tell me you will come Monday and take it, I will lend it to you for that week.

Professor Fisher has sent me an admirable sermon on “The Folly of Atheism.” Have you seen it?

... I would change a word in paragraph seven. If by proof you mean demonstration of its truth, I remark that rational explanation of the phenomena, so far as known, does not prove an hypothesis. Two different hypotheses may do that; and it may long be impossible to get a crucial test.

Sincerely yours, A. GRAY.

Dr. Gray was at work on another part of the “Synoptical Flora.” Asters had always been his especial study, and a great and puzzling labor, and these few lines tell of his difficulties.

TO GEORGE ENGELMANN.

April 17, 1880.

We heard only incidentally of your accident, and were very sorry. Do be careful. Don’t climb ladders. Leave that to young fellows like me!...

I am half dead with Aster. I got on very fairly till I got into the thick of the genus, among what I called Dumosi and Salicifolia. Here I work and work, but make no headway at all. I can’t tell what are species and how to define any of them, nor what the nomenclature is, i. e., what are original names.

I will take this group abroad, but it will be just as bad there, unless I can get some settled ideas before I start. I never was so boggled.

To-morrow I’ll sit down and study your Pinus paper, which I have not looked at yet, so absorbed have I been....

My old friend John Carey has died, in England, at eighty-three. Schimper, they say, is dead. They go one by one!

CAMBRIDGE, May 8.

First, thanks for your very lively letter of May 4,--auspicious day, being my wedding-day, thirty-second anniversary....

Yes, we mean to go abroad right after the meeting of American Association, say September 4, to finish Aster, etc.; to stay at least a year.

My wife sends best love to you, your daughter, and son, and I join.

TO JOHN H. REDFIELD.

CAMBRIDGE, April 21, 1880.

DEAR REDFIELD,--If you hear of my breaking down utterly, and being sent to an asylum, you may lay it to Aster, which is a slow and fatal poison.

Apparently it will take a year or more for me to finish it, with the greater chance that it finishes me before that time....

April 24.

Thanks for both specimen and sympathy. The former is here safely returned.

The A. glacialis I must seek in Nuttall’s herbarium, now at the British Museum.

The principal troubles in Aster are packed away, to try on again, in London, Paris, and Berlin.

TO R. W. CHURCH.

CAMBRIDGE, May 17, 1880.

MY HONORED AND DEAR FRIEND,--Is it possible (I fear it is) that your letter to me at the beginning of the winter (telling me who Balfour, M. P., is) has been all this while unacknowledged? I fear it is even so.

In the mean time much has happened, at least in your old world, on which interest centres; here not much, but constant and rather humdrum work for me. We have got through the winter, a mild one, in contrast to yours, so severe and trying, and our spring opens pleasantly; and Mrs. Gray and I are well and happy.

You have had a parliamentary election, the result of which we delight in, though it took us, and seemingly most of you, by surprise. I fancy you are pleased to see Gladstone again at the helm, and still more at the collapse of Jingoism,--not a moment too soon.

But let me hasten to tell you that Mrs. Gray and I contemplate crossing the Atlantic early in September, and of passing at least a full year in England and on the Continent. A busy year it must be, if my powers hold out; for I must do a deal of work, and I want to have a little play. I wish I could be more ready, by the finishing of my general study of the vast order Compositæ, so that I might know exactly what researches I must make in London, Paris, Berlin, etc. I have not got on as I expected; but, as I am to reach seventy if I live to near the end of the current year, I must no longer postpone my voyage. Indeed, I would leave at midsummer if I could get away. But the American Association for the Advancement of Science meets in Boston at the end of August, and has a day in Cambridge. And it would not do for me, an ex-president, to turn my back on it, and upon a houseful of friends whom we wish to entertain. But the moment it is over we shall hope to be off.

I think I must work at Aster, etc., at Kew for a few weeks; and I have a fancy for a run through the west and south of France and, perhaps, Spain!

You will be returning from some summer trip about the time we reach England. Cannot you and Mrs. Church get away from a dark and dull London November, and go with us to a summer region!

I sent you my Yale Lectures, which had to treat difficult and delicate matters. I find they have been useful to some on either side.

TO A. DE CANDOLLE.

CAMBRIDGE, June 8, 1880.

I have left your kind letter of March 11 too long unacknowledged. Now I have to thank you for a copy of the “Phytographie,” which interests me exceedingly. I have also to say that my plans for the year are so far settled that I have engaged passage for Mrs. Gray and myself in a Cunard steamer from Boston for Liverpool on the 4th of September, the earliest date on which we could leave home.

But, greatly as you tempt me, and much as I should like to see you early, we cannot reach Switzerland this autumn....

I should hope we might see you in early summer. So, pray, keep yourself well and strong till then.

About the “Phytographie:” I shall have much to write, when I read the book, which as yet I have only glanced at. About dextrorsum and sinistrorsum: I think it is not quite true that the innovators have not given any account of the grounds on which they rest. Mine are expressed, I believe, in two or three notes in “American Journal of Science,” and are summed up in my “Botanical Text-Book,” last edition, p. 516, referred to in the glossary and index. I think that the analogy of the right-handed screw indicates how the world in general regard it, ab extra. There is a sensible note on the question in the late Clerk-Maxwell’s “Treatise on Electricity,” vol. 1,--the reference is not at hand at this moment. It takes, essentially, our (my) view as it seems to me; but it refers to a similar confusion between the mathematicians and the physicists.

I wish you had gone on to illustrate more of the words which have been changed or confused in meaning; for example, “pistillum,” “cyme,” etc.

It is a pity that the terms of nomenclature had not been rearranged by Roeper[113] so as to conflict less with those of Linnæus and the general botanical use.

We have had our centennial of the American Academy; a pleasant reunion....

Mr. Winthrop gave a good public address.

I get only slowly on with the Compositæ; my interruptions and distractions are many and great. Fortunately I am in perfect health; am outliving my chronic catarrh. I hope you may do so also!

June 28, 1880.

Yours of the 15th is duly received, with your pleasant remarks on my lectures.[114] Professor Bourier is very welcome, and will please me by using any part of them he chooses. I should like to see how they would read in French.