ENGAGEMENT 219 
society so much that on reaching Suez he took him into his 
suite. 
With this another early ambition was reahsed. It has 
aheady been told how Cook's Voyages, with the picture of 
Kerguelen's Land, was one of his earliest recollections in reading. 
The other was Turner's ' Travels in Tibet.' Here his imagina- 
tion was gripped by the description of Lama worship and the 
great mountain Chumalari. There he notes, * It is singular 
that K. Land should have been the first strange country I 
ever visited, and that in the first King's ship which has touched 
there since Cook's voyage,' and that later ' I have been nearly 
the first European who has approached Chumalari since Turner's 
embassy ' (in 1783). 
The disappointment at Edinburgh, despite the fatigue and 
momentary sense of failure, had never gone very deep. The 
years of steady work since returning from the Antarctic, 
though not bringing him an important appointment, had done 
more by preparing him for the new venture, which had un- 
expectedly created the long-desired link between his scientific 
work and official Kew. Now his second great scientific ambition 
was fulfilled, following but a few months after a more intimate 
felicity. No wonder that during these last days in England 
his father could write, * I think I never saw him so cheerful 
and happy.' For in the beginning of July he became engaged 
to Frances Henslow, eldest daughter of the Cambridge Professor 
of Botany, so widely beloved for his personal qualities, who is 
still remembered outside the circle of specialists as the man 
who first made nature study a living pursuit among the school 
children of his village, and the man who greatly helped to 
turn Charles Darwin to a scientific career. Frances was a 
close friend of his sister Elizabeth ; and now matters came 
to a head during the ' week's hohday and idleness,' as he 
called it, at Oxford during the meeting of the British Associa- 
tion, to the great joy of Elizabeth. 
It is characteristic of the strict family regime of the Hookers 
that in his announcement of this happy event to Dawson 
Turner ' no flowers ' were permissible — no approach even to 
' flowers.' Joseph opines that, ' as an affectionate grandfather 
