1865.] CHILDREN AND PARENTS. 39 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, Thursday, 2;th [Sept. 1865]. 



MY DEAR HOOKER, I had intended writing this morning 

 to thank Mrs. Hooker most sincerely for her last and several 

 notes about you, and now your own note in your hand has 

 rejoiced me. To walk between five and six miles is splendid, 

 with a little patience you must soon be well. I knew you had 

 been very ill, but I hardly knew how ill, until yesterday, when 

 Bentham (from the Cranworths *) called here, and I was able 

 to see him for ten minutes. He told me also a little about 

 the last days of your father ; f I wish I had known your father 

 better, my impression is confined to his remarkably cordial, 

 courteous and frank bearing, I fully concur and understand 

 what you say about the difference of feeling in the loss of a 

 father and child. I do not think any one could love a father 

 much more than I did mine, and I do not believe three or four 

 days ever pass without my still thinking of him, but his death 

 at eighty-four caused me nothing of that insufferable grief % 

 which the loss of poor dear Annie caused. And this seems to 

 me perfectly natural, for one knows that for years previously 



* Robert Rolfe, Lord Cranworth, While, for the subsequent develop- 



and Lord Chancellor of England, ment of the gardens up to their 



lived at Holwood, near Down. present magnificent condition, the 



t Sir Wm. Hooker ; b. 1785, nation must thank Sir Joseph 



d. 1865. He took charge of the Hooker, in whom the same qualities 



Royal Gardens at Kew, in 1840, are so conspicuous, 

 when they ceased to be the private \ I may quote here a passage 



gardens of the Royal Family. In from a letter of November 1863. 



doing so, he gave up his professor- It was written to a friend who had 



ship at Glasgow and with it half lost his child : " How well I re- 



of his income. He founded the member your feeling, when we lost 



herbarium and library, and within Annie. It was my greatest comfort 



ten years he succeeded in making that I had never spoken a harsh 



the gardens the first in the world. word to her. Your grief has made 



It is, thus, not too much to say that me shed a few tears over our poor 



the creation of the establishment darling ; but believe me that these 



at Kew is due to the abilities and tears have lost that unutterable 



self-devotion of Sir William Hooker. bitterness of former days." 



