To J. D. Hooker 4 August [1872]
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
Aug. 4th
My dear Hooker
I was very glad to see in the Times a sort of abstract of the minutes of the Lords of the Treasury;1 as I hope this will make your position more comfortable; but the Ministers have been immeasurably shabby in not having taken more active steps.2 Everyone seems to think so. What a wretched life you must have led of late, my dear old friend.
I cannot tell you how interested I have been in reading numberless articles on your case, & how indignant I have been with those wretched Lords.3 But after all, as far as I understand things, nothing equals Owen’s conduct.—4 I used to be ashamed of hating him so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred & contempt to the last day of my life.5
Farewell, excuse this rigmarole. Of course do not answer— Farewell | Your affectionate friend | Charles Darwin
P.S I received safely the boxes, forwarded, I presume from Kew.—6
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Drayton, Richard. 2000. Nature’s government: science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Endersby, Jim. 2008. Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
North, John S. 1997. The Waterloo directory of English newspapers and periodicals, 1800–1900. 10 vols. Waterloo, Ontario: North Waterloo Academic Press.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
[Owen, Richard.] 1860b. [Review of Origin & other works.] Edinburgh Review 111: 487–532.
Summary
CD hopes the Times abstract of minutes of Lords of the Treasury will make JDH’s position more comfortable.
The "wretched Lords" make CD indignant, but "nothing equals Owen’s conduct. – I used to be ashamed of hating him so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred & contempt to the last day of my life."
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8449
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Dalton Hooker
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 94: 225–6
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8449,” accessed on 13 December 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8449.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 20