Joseph Dalton Hooker to Faraday   8 February 1854¹

Kew | Feby 8th / 54

My dear Sir

I have to thank you for the very kind letter which you have written me, in your own name & that of the Managers of the Rl. Institution². I assure you that I not only feel most deeply the warm interest expressed in myself, but the flattering opinion formed of my capabilities. It is with sincere regret that I definitely decline the proposals made in your letter, & not without the most earnest consideration of the whole matter. My reasons are very numerous, & I feel that several of them are conclusive in themselves.

In the first-place I have always felt very strongly (& often expressed myself so) that when officers in a public service undertake scientific duties that should engross their whole attention, & receive salaries for the same, it becomes their duty to devote themselves to the accomplishment of their tasks. I have been twice abroad, on Government employ, & have collected materials on both, that are not half worked out; & that will not be for years to come, & for the prosecution of which, I have received many years’ salary & continue to receive it.

On my return from the Antarctic Voyage, the Treasury voted me £1000 to be spent on illustrating a Flora of the Southern ocean³, & the Admiralty kept me on the full pay list (of Asst. surgeons) for my own salary;- that work is not completed nor can it be for 2 years to come. The materials of all succeeding voyages have been sent to me for the purpose of incorporation, & my pay was increased by the Admiralty two years ago mainly on this account. The Tasmanian Flora⁴ is to form one part, & the colonists of that Island only last week, sent me the announcement that they had voted me £350 in the Legislative Council, which they beg of my acceptance, in the hope that I will allow no consideration to interfere with the speedy performance of the work, which has been announced for now 9 years. This little matter alone, for which I was wholly unprepared (I do not know a single member of the council & never had any communication with them) renders it my first duty to go on with that work.

My Indian collections stand next in order, these alone cannot be arranged & distributed (as I have engaged that they shall be) within three years more, & until they are gone over & catalogued I can make no satisfactory progress in the development of those laws that have governed the distribution of the Plants of the Asiatic continent upon whose investigation I have long been engaged, nor can I proceed with the “Flora Indica”, upon which Dr Thomson⁵ & I are at work⁶, & which our fellow-Botanists consider the most important that can be undertaken.

There are personal considerations, at present pressing upon me, but there are others in prospect. Had I any time at my disposal, it should be given to my Father⁷, who has neither the leisure nor the means to devote the necessary attention to his Library & Herbarium. This latter is the finest in Europe, it is maintained at considerable private cost, much more for my use than his own, it is absolutely essential to my daily work that it should be kept in scientific order, but owing to its rapid increase & the want of the means of providing a scientific curator, it is rapidly deteriorating in some respects.

Added to this my father’s public duties are increasing with his years, & being allowed no assistant of any kind, it becomes the more incumbent upon me to allow of no consideration interfering with my duty to him. At present the whole charge of Library, Herbarium, & Scientific correspondence devolve entirely upon himself in a private capacity, though all maintained as essential to his public position; the correspondence for the Museum, Garden & aboretum besides the superintendence of the whole, equally devolves upon himself, & except myself he has no assistant in any one capacity. With his advancing age these duties very shortly become ostensibly too onerous for one man, they are so already in reality; & this constitutes the third reason I have for declining the invitation from the Royal Institution, (& your most kind offer of an application to Lord John Russell⁸) - that there is no possible prospect of my being able to continue my duties at the Rl. Institution, were I to commence them. It has been for some time the unanimous opinion of my (Botanical) friends that I should be attached to the Garden, applications to that effect have indeed been laid before the Government, now two years ago, when Lord John Russell⁹ gave me the temporary salary of £400, for 3 years in lieu, as the means of enabling me to publish my Indian materials, & keeping me at Kew till circumstances should favor my permanent attachment to the Gardens. Had I the materials for lecturing prepared, the case would be somewhat altered, but having performed the duties of the Botanical Professor in Edinburgh University, I know from experience that lectures in this department of science beyond all others, require copious illustrations by diagrams. I had then 400 diagrams (of my Father’s) which have since been parted with, together with my lectures, so that I should have to start afresh, with the certain prospect of not being able to continue long at my post. My distance from Town (where I have no other business) is another objection, for though we have a rail-road, I cannot make the journey without losing 3 hours in the transit.

I fear I have trespassed upon your patience with these details, but I most truly feel the responsibility of declining an invitation couched in such terms as that you forward, & backed by considerations involving the progress of Botanical Science (however little I should prove capable of forwarding it by the means at my disposal.)

I need hardly say that the position of Lecturer at the Royal Institution, is one of which I should be very proud, & should (as is very possible) the government desire me to lecture at Kew, in connection with any position they may appoint me to, I would feel it a privilege to be allowed to offer my services, for an occasional lecture, to the Managers of the Institution. As it is, the opinion of all my friends so entirely coincides with my own, as to the inexpediency of my undertaking any such duty, that I must definitely decline¹⁰.

Believe me Ever | most respectfully yours | Jos. D. Hooker