AN ASSISTANT NEEDED AT KEW 345 



Thomson * a regular Planchon for acuteness.' But, with all 

 his cleverness, he was, it seems, flighty and unstable, and he 

 had unaccountably broken with Kew and the friends to whom 

 he had expressed such gratitude and devotion. 



An assistant [writes Hooker to his father on Feb. 1, 1849] 

 is now your chief requisite, and I wish I were at home to 

 help you in this and other matters. It is the only draw- 

 back to ray thorough enjoyment during my journeyings, 

 that you should miss me in some cases where two pairs 

 of eyes and hands, nay two whole heads and bodies are 

 wanted. 



And he urges his father to engage at once a man who seems 

 suitable, using his Navy half-pay to secure him rather than 

 lose the chance of an honest, careful, industrious man. 



Soon after his return to England a long standing anomaly 

 in Sir William's position at Kew was remedied. Though 

 Director he had had no official residence in the grounds ; the 

 great herbarium, which was one of the scientific mainstays 

 of the Gardens, was his private property. He had brought 

 it with him from Glasgow ; it was the one valuable inheritance 

 he could leave to his son, and at his death was liable to be 

 removed or dispersed if that son had not the means of main- 

 taining it at Kew or elsewhere. Until 1853, for all its public 

 utility, it was housed and maintained at his private expense 

 in the * three-storied, many -roomed ' house at West Park, 

 two-thirds of a mile from the Gardens, 1 ' a very pretty, genteel 

 and comfortable residence ' (in Dawson Turner's Johnsonian 

 phrase), which, exclaims Hooker, ' has always been an incubus 

 to me, so large in itself, while still your collections and Her- 

 barium are outgrowing it ! ' These, with the study and 

 artist's room, occupied thirteen rooms, while Sir William's 

 expenses all along far exceeded his official salary. 



At length, however, a change came about. First, the 

 house in the Gardens belonging to Aiton, the late super- 

 intendent, fell vacant at his death in October 1849. It now 



1 The grounds of West Park, 7 acres ia extent, are now occupied by the 

 Kew and Richmond Sewage Works. 



