Ɛpsilon

From J. D. Hooker   [23 October 1881]1

Joldwynds, | Dorking. | Rail & Tel. | Gomshall, | S.E.R.

Sunday

Dear old friend

I take shame to myself for not having earlier thanked you for the diet of Worms—which I have read through with great interest.—2 I must own I had always looked on worms as amongst the most helpless & unintelligent members of the creation; & am amazed to find that they have a domestic life & public duties! I shall now respect them, even in our garden pots; & regard them as something better than food for fishes.— I am interested in observing how they shun some soils at Kew apparently from the want of vegetable matter in them.

We are here staying for the Sunday with Mr. Bowman & his pleasant family.3

I have been very busy for the last 6 weeks owing to Dyer & my daughter being on the continent:— They returned last week:—4 I have been busy too negotiating for the purchase of a plot of land near Sunningdale whereon to build a “Tusculum”.—& am on the point of closing with an offer of 6 acres of “Bagshot sand”, including a hill of 300 ft commanding superb views, & in a country of Scotch fir & heather.— Another year I shall hope to be able to build a cottage; an awful undertaking for me.5 The situation, 112 miles from the station, from which I can reach Kew in 1 to 112 hours, will be very convenient.—

As to work, the Genera Plantarum engrosses all my spare time— I have been 3 years nearly at the Palms & am finishing these at last.— There will be near 120 genera! many very imperfectly known— when the Gen. Plant. is off my hands I shall be a happy man—I hope—6

The Grays left yesterday.7

Ever affy yrs | J D Hooker

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from J. D. Hooker, 27 October 1881. The Sunday before 27 October 1881 was 23 October.
2
Hooker’s name is on CD’s presentation list for Earthworms (see Appendix IV). Hooker’s joking reference to the book as ‘the diet of Worms’ is an allusion to the imperial diet or assembly held at Worms in the Holy Roman Empire in 1521, which resulted in the excommunication of Martin Luther from the Roman Catholic Church.
3
Hooker and his wife Hyacinth Hooker were guests of William Bowman, whose house, Joldwynds, was designed by Philip Speakman Webb and completed in 1875 (ODNB s.v. Webb, Philip Speakman).
4
Hooker’s son-in-law, William Turner Thiselton-Dyer, and his daughter Harriet Anne Thiselton-Dyer had gone on a six-week holiday to the continent on 7 September 1881 (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 7 September 1881).
5
Tusculum was a Roman city, known for having many patrician country villas; the site was a comfortable distance from Rome. Sunningdale in Berkshire is located on land that is the western part of a geological formation known as the Bagshot beds, a series of Eocene sands and clays. Hooker built his retirement home, ‘The Camp’, there.
6
Genera plantarum (Bentham and Hooker 1862–83) was a systematic work undertaken by Hooker and George Bentham in 1860 (see Stearn 1956). Hooker was working on palms (Palmae, a synonym of Arecaceae); see Bentham and Hooker 1862–83, 3 (part II): 870–948.
7
Asa and Jane Loring Gray had been staying at Kew since their return from a visit to the Continent, part of which had been in company with the Hookers (see letter from J. D. Hooker, 24 February [1881] and n. 3).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13424,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13424