268 KEW : 1879-1885 



me, or the public, or both, and I feel inclined to say to the 

 world, like the vain actor when applauded : ' Bless you 

 my people." 



As for myself, I have nothing but vainglories to detail. 

 Lord Iddesleigh has written me really a beautiful private 

 note, regretting my resignation and adding that Kew will 

 be to me what St. Paul's is to Wren ! I have thanked in 

 my family's name (as including my Father). 



The Secretaries of the Colonies and India have both 

 addressed the Treasury officially, deploring their loss of 

 me, and hoping that my services to them will procure me 

 a good pension ! — (We shall see. My 'opes are not 'igh !). 

 I make out that they owe me £930 as pension ; perhaps 

 they won't see it. I feel very keenly the cutting adrift 

 from my official relations with so many Public Offices, but 

 I guess I have not seen the end of them, for visions of 

 Treasury Committees float before me. I shall cut London 

 Society generally, except perhaps that we may take lodgings 

 in Town for a month in the Season, that is when our friends 

 will be too busy to care for us ! Meanwhile I have taken a 

 little house at Kew for Willy, and shall keep two rooms for 

 ourselves. 



Compliments, however, issue from public offices more 

 speedily than cash, and the long delay of the Treasury in 

 deciding the amount of his retiring pension was a serious 

 inconvenience. Four months after his retirement he writes to 

 Huxley (March 27, 1886) : 



I have just had a very handsome acknowledgement of 

 service in a despatch from the Government of India — but 

 1 fine words butter no parsnips/ and I am £—600 at my 

 Bankers and don't want to sell out if I can help it. I think 

 I must poke up the Treasury. 



It took the full year, to November 1886, before the Treasury 

 informed him that his pension would be paid on a certain scale, 

 and Christmas before the proportions allotted for his various 

 services were finally decided. It is well for the public adminis- 

 tration to practise economy, but to haggle over the retiring 

 allowance of distinguished public servants is not the happiest 

 exertion of this public virtue, nor the most encouraging to those 



