From J. D. Hooker   [20 August 1868]1

Norwich

Thursday Mg

Dear old Darwin

It is all well over, though I broke down in what I least expected—voice— the place was atrocious to speak in, & the desk so badly placed, that I could with difficulty read—so about the middle I got husky but recovered towards the end & am said to have done the agony bits & the poetry very well—2 I modified 2 or 3 things, left out the allusions to Gray’s being superseded. & something else.3

All is going off well— Huxley spoke nicely after it of our seafaring life, & Tyndall warmly of you & I being types of “unconscious merit”!!!!4

Fanny is here, & wonderfully well & strong, we were up till 212 this morning correcting the address.— the Journalists worried an imperfect copy out of me at the last moment—with several hideous blunders5

I will send copy as soon as possible.6

With Wife’s love to all | Ever yours | J D Hooker

CD annotations7

Top of letter: ‘Times Bad | Tyndall | Old newspapers | splendid QQQQ | I was searching for faults | Eulogium | Photographs | Astronomy | Lyell & Wallace’ pencil
1
The date is established by the references to Hooker’s presidential address at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Norwich; the address was given on Wednesday 19 August 1868 (Report of the 38th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, p. lvii).
2
Hooker delivered his presidential address in the Drill Hall in Norwich (J. D. Hooker 1868; see n. 1, above). He concluded the address with three stanzas of a poem, ‘The reign of law’, by Francis Turner Palgrave.
3
In his address (J. D. Hooker 1868, p. lxiv), Hooker referred to John Edward Gray’s ‘singleness of purpose, liberality, and zeal’ in developing the Zoological Department at the British Museum. Gray had been criticised for introducing an unnecessary number of genera and species (see Correspondence vol. 14, letter to Fritz Müller, 23 May 1866 and nn. 9 and 11, and ODNB).
4
Thomas Henry Huxley gave the vote of thanks after Hooker’s address, seconded by John Tyndall (The Times, 20 August 1868, p. 6).
5
Hooker refers to his wife, Frances Harriet Hooker. Hooker’s address was printed in The Times, 20 August 1868, p. 6. The version in The Times contained a large number of errors, for example ‘menares’, ‘menhies’, and ‘macuhyr’ for ‘menhirs’ and ‘menhir’; ‘Amerne’ for ‘America’; ‘grapes’ for ‘grasses’; ‘geminules’ for ‘gemmules’; ‘provincial’ for ‘provisional’; ‘revolution’ for ‘evolution’; and ‘physicians’ for ‘physicists’.
6
There is an offprint of Hooker’s address in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL; it is postmarked on the back cover, ‘Norwich | Au 24 | 68’.
7
CD’s annotations are notes for his reply to Hooker of 23 August [1868].

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6326,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6326