From J. D. Hooker   [4 November 1853]1

Kew

Friday mg.

My dear Darwin

I hope that this may be acceptable news to one who is so high above working for a reward. The R.S. have voted you the Royal Medal for Natural Science—2 All along of the Barnacles!!!3 I am most intensely delighted, infinitely more than you can be, very much on the strength of the Lepadidae too; for you must know that I neither proposed you, nor seconded you; nor voted for you— I was base, perfide— Portlock4 proposed you for the Coral Islands & Lepadidae. Bell5 followed seconding, on the Lepadideae alone, & then, followed such a shout of pæans for the Barnacles that you would have [sunk] to hear. This took place months ago, & the enquiries into each candidate being followed up in the recess we met again twice to hear what each had got to say, especially from foreign evidence. You & your blessed Barnacles came out stronger than ever, & but one competitor had any votes except you i.e. Lindley—6 I proposed Lindley after you were proposed & Wallich7 seconded him, & I am so convinced of the good faith of my brother-counsellors, that the defeat of my man, by 23 of the votes (it would have been by more than 34 had all voters been present) is a source of sincere & impartial unqualified gratification. This you must know is the first year in which the Royal Medals have been thrown open to indiscriminate competition; the candidates not being obliged to have written papers in the Transactions.8

My wife recovers slowly Baby is strong & hearty. Both will I think accept Mrs Darwin’s kind invitation when Frances is quite off the sick list.9

Ever dear Darwin | Yrs affect | J D Hooker

2
The voting took place at the meeting of the council of the Royal Society on 3 November. The award was actually made to CD on 30 November (see ‘Journal’; Correspondence vol. 5, Appendix I).
3
When CD was first nominated on 2 June 1853, the works mentioned as the grounds for the award were Geology of ‘Beagle’ (the 1851 combined edition of Coral reefs, Volcanic islands, and South America), Fossil Cirripedia (1851), and Living Cirripedia (1851) (Royal Society council minutes). The citation of the award, printed in Abstracts of the papers communicated to the Royal Society of London 6 (1850–4): 355–6, briefly mentioned the geological work but primarily discussed the several points of interest in Living Cirripedia (1851), on the Lepadidae. See Correspondence vol. 4, pp. 405–7, for the text of this part of the citation.
4
Joseph Ellison Portlock, major general of the Royal Engineers, had made contributions to geology and natural history.
5
Thomas Bell, secretary of the Royal Society.
6
In addition to John Lindley, professor of botany at London University, other candidates for the Royal Medal in 1853 included: Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen, Arthur Cayley, Edward Frankland, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, and John Tyndall (Royal Society council minutes).
7
Nathaniel Wallich, formerly superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden, had returned to England in 1847 (DNB).
8
The Royal Medal had hitherto been awarded only for papers published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. In June 1850 this regulation was changed so that ‘the Royal Medals in each year should be awarded for the two most important contributions to the advancement of Natural Knowledge, published originally in Her Majesty’s dominions within a period of not more than ten years, and not less than one year of the date of the award, subject, of course, to Her Majesty’s approval.’ (Royal Society of London 1940, pp. 116–17). In 1853, however, only one Royal Medal was awarded because John Tyndall, who had been nominated for the second medal, declined it when he learned that some of the council had had second thoughts about the findings of the paper for which the award had been given (Hall 1984, p. 142).
9
Frances Harriet Hooker had given birth to her first child, William Henslow Hooker, on 24 January 1853.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1539,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1539