BEIAN HODGSON 249 



Experience of such friendship inspires him to write home 

 of * Hodgson, who shows me all the attachment and affection 

 of a brother, and whom I shall always regard as one of my 

 dearest friends on earth,' and later, hoping that his friend 

 would leave Darjiling, which did not agree with him, and 

 go to England in the autumn of 1849, exclaims, * I am 

 so anxious you should all know him.' He allows that 

 Hodgson was too proud and haughty, but never towards 

 himself. He had lived too long with the power of a prince 

 in his hand not to acquire something of a prince's out- 

 look. The sensitiveness of ill-health, added to absorption 

 in keen intellectual interests, helped to render him impa- 

 tient of the chatter of a small station, and thus he was not 

 disposed to suffer pettinesses gladly. 



He is said to quarrel with every one, and in truth is as 

 proud a man as I ever met, but we have always got on 

 comfortably, and as we live like brothers our quarrelling 

 would be absurd. We have a tiff now and then, but very 

 rarely. [And July 19 ]: He and I live like hermits, and 

 hardly ever see anybody but Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and the 

 Miiller brothers. 1 



But he opened out at once to a kindred spirit, forestalling 

 every wish before it could be uttered, and what is more, seeing 

 to it that every promised arrangement should be carried out, 

 to Hooker's great relief, during the privations of his journey in 

 Sikkim. Like a prince he gave ; with a prince's pride he shrank 

 from any appearance of a return for friendship's favours. In 

 this mood indeed at first he even declined to let Hooker name 

 after him the finest of the new rhododendrons discovered in 

 Sikkim. 



If the friendship with Lord Dalhousie provided the key that 

 opened official barriers and made Hooker's journeyings possible, 

 the friendship with Hodgson more than anything else made them 

 a practical success. 



i These bachelor brothers were here for their health ; one being the head of 

 the opium factory at Patna, and both interested in science. They gave Hooker 

 every help in their power, and in particular reduced all his meteorological 

 observations for him. 



