Chapter VIII: Final Journeys and Work (2)

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.