Ɛpsilon

From J. D. Hooker   22 December 1881

Royal Gardens Kew

Dec 22/81.

My dear Darwin

I have instructed Mr Daydon Jackson accordingly; & can only again on the part of Botanists present & future, thank you heartily for your munificent contribution to the Science.1

We go to Pendock for 10 days tomorrow.2

I hunted up Kirke White’s poems, for the gruesome ballad of which I spoke;— there it is, sure enough, called Gondoline; it haunted me as a child, & I have not read it since. I think still it is the most ghastly thing in the language.3

Ever aff yrs | Jos. D. Hooker.

1
CD was to provide £250 a year for Benjamin Daydon Jackson to produce a new catalogue of all known plants (Index Kewensis; see letter from J. D. Hooker, 17 December 1881).
2
Hooker and his wife, Hyacinth, were spending Christmas with her father, William Samuel Symonds, who was rector of Pendock, Worcestershire.
3
Henry Kirke White’s ballad described the torments of Gondoline, who feared for the fate of her lover, the young crusader Bertrand. Gondoline entered a dark cave, where she encountered a snake, trod on a bloated toad, and saw twelve withered witches, who recounted various gruesome deeds before revealing Bertrand’s severed head. Distraught, Gondoline drowned herself, and her ghost continued to appear at that place at midnight. See Southey ed. 1807, 2: 31–43. CD and Hooker probably met when CD was in London from 13 to 20 December 1881 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13577,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13577