From J. D. Hooker 7 September 1869
Royal Gardens Kew
Sept. 7. 69
Dear Darwin
At last I sit down to write to you—after a fortnight of the West country, one week of restless excitement at Exeter, & another of quiet in country houses, 1st. Sir Thos Acland, 2 Symonds of Pendock, 3d. Douglas Galtons Mothers near Droitwich—1
Exeter was a very good meeting & Stokes made a first rate President,—whereby he agreeably disappointed his friends.2 The “punctum saliens”3 of the whole meeting was decidedly Huxley’s answer to Dr McCann. he literally poured boiling oil over the bumptious man— you have read it of course.— McCann’s was the most conceited dogmatic sermon you ever heard preached, & was delivered with a sort of swagger that rendered it offensive to Huxley in the last degree.—4 Next in point of interest was Lubbock’s answer to the D. of Argyll, which I thought uncommonly good, but the bird was hardly worth the shot, & the discussion was singularly poor.5 & unsuggestive considering who the speaker was. Stokes address was very sound science for the most part; but no approach to novelty or originality in matter & very little in dealing with it— the last part was singularly weak—& mindless.6 All had expected an address on his own special pursuits in science.
Phillips lecture on Vesuvius I thought very poor, both in manner matter & style. Lockyers was far better, but he tried too much, & became obscure.7 There were few foreigners & fewer nobs. & the whole meeting was a very quiet one, except at the end, when the struggle between Edinburgh & Liverpool took place—a struggle which bodes no good to the Association, as showing how little the General Committee regards the matured opinion of the Council in grave matters that require calm & unprejudiced consideration8
I had hoped to have asked whether I could have spent a Sunday with you soon, but Prof Miquel of Utrecht is coming tomorrow to stay a fortnight with us, bringing 2 of his daughters—very nice (& pretty!) girls whose acquaintance we made in Holland— he is an old friend & has been twice in England before9
At Mr Galton’s I met your connections (or relations) Mrs & Miss Wheler, the latter of whom I met at your house last winter or Autumn I think.10
Do not bother to answer this, but by a line saying how you are.
Ever affec Yrs | J D Hooker
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
McCann, James. 1869. Anti-Darwinism. Glasgow: David Bryce & Co.
OED: The Oxford English dictionary. Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, et al. 12 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1970. A supplement to the Oxford English dictionary. 4 vols. Edited by R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972–86. The Oxford English dictionary. 2d edition. 20 vols. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. Oxford English dictionary additional series. 3 vols. Edited by John Simpson et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993–7.
Stokes, George Gabriel. 1869. Presidential address. Report of the thirty-ninth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Exeter in August 1869, lxxxix–cv.
Summary
Reports on events at Exeter [BAAS] meeting. G. G. Stokes made a first-rate President.
Huxley "poured boiling oil" over James McCann in answer to his "conceited dogmatic sermon".
F. A. W. Miquel is coming to stay.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6879
- From
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Kew
- Source of text
- DAR 103: 30–1
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6879,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6879.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17