68 1860-1865: PEESONAL 



talked of commissioning him to do the Flora Indica, he writes 

 to Darwin (October ?) : 



Pay would tempt me, but only because it would hold 

 out a prospect of early retirement from the struggle of 

 scientific work for one's livelihood, and shaking the dust 

 off my feet at the Govt, and Kew Gardens — but for God's 

 sake let this go no further. I regard succession to my father 

 with horror. Not that a better scientific place exists in the 

 world, except my own. I am beginning too to hate the ol 

 ttoXXol of science. Huxley, Lubbock and half a dozen others; 

 are enough for me of the workers, outside my own imme- 

 diate pale, which includes only yourself, Bentham, Oliver and 

 Thomson. As to Murchisonian science and all that sort 

 of thing, like K.C.B 's, it makes me sick to read his science at 

 the Newcastle Meeting. 



Still, when it came, Sir William's death, the dividing point 

 between the two eras in his son's life, came as a sudden blow. 

 To the last he had been wonderfully active. Though now past 

 eighty, on the Monday he had escorted Queen Emma of the 

 Sandwich Islands and her party over the Gardens — ' I never 

 saw him more lively and active.' Next day he was out and 

 about both morning and afternoon, first walking over to see 

 the subtropical plants in Battersea Park, then taking friends 

 over Kew. On the Wednesday he developed what we to-day 

 should call a septic throat with utter prostration, which was 

 epidemic in Kew, and on Saturday the 12th died very quietly 

 and almost without pain. ' He never realised his danger, 

 nd altogether his illness and end were unspeakably peaceful 

 and happy for himself and those around him.' 



For the first two days his son and his faithful servant nursed 

 him. The other members of the family were away at Yarmouth, 

 owing to the domestic exigencies of house-painting. Lady 

 Hooker returned on the Thursday, but Mrs. Hooker and the 

 children were forbidden to come for the next fortnight, owing 

 to the epidemic. But at this critical moment Joseph Hooker 

 himself, to his intense grief, was himself stricken down. On 

 the Wednesday night he had slept on the floor of a dressing-room 

 by which he was airing his father's room. As he slept, the wind 



