From J. D. Hooker to Emma Darwin   15 September 1871

Royal Gardens Kew

Septr. 15/71

Dear Mrs Darwin

My Mother is so very ill at Torquay, that I cannot just now accept your kind invitation—much as I long for it—& to see you both again.1 She is suffering from another painful recurrence of the disease in her leg-bone, which weakens her much, & which I fear even her strong constitution may not resist.

Mrs Hooker returned the other day, after a charming tour in Bavaria & home by the Rhine—2 I have not seen the marriage in the paper—3 I hope all passed off with the least possible “putting about”— I am accused of once having uttered the horrid sentiment, that I would rather go to two burials than one marriage, any day—

I heard from Mr Huxley yesterday—threatening to “pin out” Mr Mivart, for his insolent attack on Mr Darwin, & adding that he was reading up Suarez & the Jesuit fathers & found that Mivart either misquoted or misunderstood him, & he (H.) proposed to vindicate the Catholic Fathers!—4 What an irony his life is becoming—I call him a “Polemician”5

Can Mr Darwin lend me Mivart?— & Buckle?— I am unhappy about the origin, (not source), of the wealth of Nations— apropos of something I am trying to write about Marocco, & I want immensly to have a talk with Charles about it.6

My Uncle Dawson took his School-masters holiday out, in a trip to the city of San Francisco & back— on the day his school reopened.7

Mrs Hooker sends best love & would have greatly liked a run to Down with me.

If my mothers state should admit of it, I shall offer myself for the first possible Sunday.

Ever sincerely Yours | Jos D Hooker

1
Hooker’s mother was Maria Hooker. She had been living at Torquay since 1870 to be near her daughter, Elizabeth Evans-Lombe (Allan 1967, p. 224).
3
Hooker refers to the marriage of Henrietta Emma Darwin and Richard Buckley Litchfield on 31 August 1871 (see ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
4
Hooker refers to Thomas Henry Huxley. St George Jackson Mivart attacked CD in his review of Descent in the Quarterly Review ([Mivart] 1871c). The anonymous review appeared in July 1871 and was correctly believed by CD to be by Mivart (see letter to A. R. Wallace, 12 July [1871] and n. 5). In his book On the genesis of species (Mivart 1871a), Mivart quoted a number of Catholic sources, including the Spanish theologian Francisco Suárez.
5
The word ‘polemician’ (polemicist) seems to have been coined by Hooker, presumably on the model of ‘politician’ (OED).
6
Hooker probably refers to Mivart 1871a and to Henry Thomas Buckle’s History of civilization in England (Buckle 1857–61); the second volume draws on the work of Adam Smith, the author of Wealth of nations (A. Smith 1776). Hooker was working on a book about his travels in Morocco, eventually published as Journal of a tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas (Hooker and Ball 1878); the book described it as a country economically destroyed by the excesses and corruption of its rulers.
7
Hooker’s uncle, Dawson William Turner, was headmaster of the Royal Institution School in Liverpool (ODNB s.v. Turner, Dawson).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7945,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7945