Letter from Jos. D. Hooker [Joseph Dalton Hooker] to George Maw
Information
Title
Letter from Jos. D. Hooker [Joseph Dalton Hooker] to George Maw
Record type
Archive
Original Reference
MAW/1/145
Date
26 May 1875
Scope & content
Written from Kew. Manuscript
He was glad to get Maw’s letter and the Draba fruit; Ball [John Ball, botanist] gave him a flourishing account of Maw’s garden and home; he and Strachey [Richard Strachey] went to Cannes and Nice, then back to Marseilles, Nimes and down to Collioure and Port Vendres, then to Toulouse, Bagneres de Luchon, Pierrefitte [Pierrefitte-Nestalas] and Lourdes, and via Pau to Bayonne, then to Bordeaux, Poitiers, Tours, Blois and Paris [all France], where Harriet [Harriet Anne Hooker, botanical artist, his daughter] met him and they returned home on Thursday; he is much better but was bothered for the first week with rheumatism and Strachey with gout; he enjoyed the ‘perfect idleness’ on the whole; he was tempted to collect in the Pyrenees but resisted; he would like to go there and stay at Luz [Luz-Saint-Sauveur, France] or Pierrefitte for May; he could board for 8 francs a day; Harriet is very well, and they are settled and hope to see the Maws at Kew when they come to town; his assistant is secured and it will be Dyer [William Turner Thiselton-Dyer]; this Treasury goes into administrative matters in a very different spirit from the last, and the reforms in his department are important; Kew has been made a separate department of the Office of Works under him, separate from the Parks and other departments; this Conservative government should do good in the working of the public establishments, though will not get credit from the public for it; he heard from Bennet [Alfred William Bennett, botanist] of Hunt’s[?] death, which shocked him; he remarks on what a dreadful year [for deaths] it has been