THE PATEONAGE OF KEW 215 



Flora were for the moment visionary. Indeed, it did not appear 

 until 1859. 



During the autumn of 1846 Sir William made another effort 

 to secure his son's future. The Woods and Forests Depart- 

 ment being unwilling to take over the cost of housing and 

 increasing the Herbarium, the notable addition brought to 

 Kew by the elder Hooker, on the ground that his plants could 

 not be marked, as were his books in the Library, to keep them 

 distinct from later additions, Sir William offered to present 

 the Herbarium to the nation, on condition that Joseph should 

 be appointed his assistant and successor at £800 a year. Lord 

 Morpeth was friendly, but would not guarantee the succes- 

 sion with the salary proposed. Future arrangements were 

 uncertain. 



Kew was still too much a mere object of aristocratic patron- 

 age. Joseph Hooker was too proud to press his claims on 

 any but scientific grounds. He was revolted by the sugges- 

 tion that he should make friends with the Mammon of Society, 

 by helping his father to pay the required attentions to aristo- 

 cratic sight-seers. It was all very well to meet old friends or 

 officials or scientific persons, high or low ; but when his father 

 would introduce him to these others, he knew himself to be 

 in a false position, to which he could not submit, officiously 

 thrust forward and wasting his valuable time to boot. His 

 father was used to making use of patronage in the days when 

 patronage was the road to progress ; but even so. Hooker 

 writes bitterly to his grandfather (July 25, 1847) : 



My Mother and Sister will tell you that of the hundreds 

 of aristocrats who detain my father at the Garden for hours 

 waiting their arrival, and then drag him through every 

 house and acre, there are not half a dozen whom he could 

 ask to back even an application for himself or for me, or 

 who have shown him the smallest politeness in return. 



Meantime Hooker himself was growing more and more 

 eager for another Botanical journey, this time to the mountains 

 of the tropics, either the Andes or the Himalayas. His father 

 would have been content for him to stay in England, filling 

 up the time till some satisfactory post offered with his botanical 



