154 THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PERSONAL 



be expected to exercise taste, when the parents have no 

 models to show them. My own taste on such subjects was 

 never formed ; though, Uke most persons, I knew what 

 pleased me, and was much soothed when I was told (on 

 regretting the circumstance) that Sir Joshua Reynolds never 

 could appreciate any part of a painting till he had seen it 

 several times. Sir Walter Scott, I think, in ' Paul's Letters 

 to his Kinsfolk,' says, when speaking of the Louvre in its 

 palmy days, that the beauties of the finest pictures do not 

 strike him at once. Without comparing myself to either 

 of these great men, I must say that next to the want of 

 Society, the want of music and painting is one of the most 

 irksome which a sea Voyager is bound to endure. When 

 I have been weary of work, even a tinkling musical-box has 

 sounded most charming ; but all the boxes have, at last, 

 been either broken or given away, and my sole consolation 

 remains in whistling those tunes which most recall pleasant 

 scenes to my memory, —though this is sorely to the annoy- 

 ance of my neighbours, who growl, like free-born Britons, 

 at the noise I make. 



Letters already quoted point to the smallness of his intimate 

 circle. It embraced his nearest relations, and beyond these 

 but . a few who could really be called friends. This inner 

 circle was grievously broken during his absence. First his 

 brother William died suddenly of yellow fever in Jamaica. 

 Then his two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Harriette, at school 

 in Kensington at Little Campden House, were threatened 

 with consumption and taken away for special treatment at 

 Leamington, afterwards wintering in Jersey. Elizabeth, the 

 first to give anxiety, gradually recovered ; Mary Harriette, 

 who fell ill later, faded away all too swiftly. Joseph had 

 expected to hear of his grandfather Hooker's death before 

 long ; but the octogenarian, with the vitality which he handed 

 on to his male descendants who passed much of their youth 

 in the open air, lived on and was happily moved from Glasgow 

 to Kew, a heavy journey in those days. 



The first bad news caught him cruelly at a moment of joyful 

 expectation. Save for a letter sent to Madeira, which had 

 overtaken him at the Cape, his first budget of news met him 



