

DISRAELI AND THE VICTORIA REGIA 181 



and he would condemn them emphatically. 1 To give must 

 always be to give of the best. Judge of his horror when once 

 he found Crump, the Herbarium man, ' picking out the worst 

 specimens from the borders for von Mueller, and then ' — what 

 was almost worse than such misplaced parsimony — ' making 

 them up into shocking bad parcels,' for he himself was excellent 

 at making up parcels, and often sent away plants with his 

 own hands. This was how he was occupied when Prof. Daniel 

 Oliver first set eyes upon him in 1858, in the little room to the 

 right of the Herbarium door. 



Mean motives were even more hateful to him. To protect 

 the Gardens from the dust and dirt that came from the increased 

 traffic outside, it became necessary to raise the wall along the 

 Richmond Road. He would have preferred simple railings, 

 for they would have added to the amenities of the district, 

 only they would have ruined the Gardens. Thus he was 

 regretfully compelled to resist the local property owners, who 

 desired the railings so that a nice view might be opened up 

 for their houses overlooking the Gardens. But this regret 

 was mitigated when he found that the nice view thus obtained 

 was to be a ground for raising their tenants' rent. 



In general he was outspoken and downright, but he could 

 be beautifully diplomatic. Prof. Oliver was with him when 

 he interviewed Disraeli about a pension for Fitch, the admirable 

 botanical draughtsman. Disraeli was rather unwilling, but 

 Hooker played on his Imperialist feelings by showing him 

 drawings by Fitch of the Victoria Regia and suchlike high- 

 sounding names, and succeeded. The auditor was greatly 

 tickled. 



For young people he had a great liking ; an unquenchable 

 touch of boyishness kept his spirit from ageing. Prof. F. W. 

 Oliver tells how as a boy he had one day climbed up an oak 

 tree in the Gardens. Hooker at the same time was moved to 

 ascend the Pagoda close by, and spotting the boy by the move- 



1 In his last letter to the Secretary of the Linnean Society he begs to have 

 the leaves of their Journal cut, after the good example of the Geological, Royal, 

 and Statistical Societies. He wastes so much time and temper over cutting 

 the leaves of the books which must be read, that he fears they will be registered 

 against him aloft. It will be a mercy to him to have the pages cut. 



