Chapter VIII: Final Journeys and Work (1)

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....