To Joseph Hooker1    January 1872

[January 1872]2

 

I thank you very much, dear Dr Hooker, for your gratulation to my new rank.3 I attach particular value to it, as it can be shared by a Lady and thus may help me to build up, though late in life, my domestic happiness

It was under these circumstances particularly gratifying to me that you and Mr Bentham recognized the title.4

I think the British Government should by courtesy also recognize the rank. Remember that many of your Lords are not by strict legality entitled to the appellation; so it is with all the Governors of the many Colonies, only the Vice-Roy of India being by the strict letter of the law called Excellency, all others not so by the Government of England, though all by their local Governments.

Lord Clarendons regulations forbid only the acceptance of Orders and Medals. Thus a rank, like mine, comes not within the operations of the British Civil Service even if my Colonial Naturalisation; (which gives me no British Citizenship) could have full force.5

It would require an act of Parliament to give the Civil Service Regulations of the British offices legality over all British subjects in private life there and abroad. And any such new law could not be rendered retrospective.

The ferntrees, which were of such large size, as to render it worth while for you to select from them, went not by the Anglesey but by a later vessel.

Always your regardful

Ferd von Mueller

 

Do you want a really tall Alsophila & Dicksonia yet.

 

Alsophila

Dicksonia

 
 
1
MS annotated in an unknown hand: ‘1871’. The MS has, as a letterhead, an embossed version of the arms proposed by M in his letter to von Wächter, 8 October 1871 (in this edition as 71-10-08a; for M's proposal see 71-10-08a_image01.jpg). The arms differ substantially from those that were granted in Karl I, King of Württemberg to M, 6 July 1871 (see 71-07-06_image01.jpg).
2
Dated on the basis that M would not have received until January 1872 at the earliest the letter of congratulations from Hooker mentioned in the letter.
3
M was elevated to the hereditary rank of a Baron of the Kingdom of Würrtemberg on 6 July 1871; J. Hooker to M, 1 December 1871 (in this edition as 71-12-01a) contains Hookers congratulations.
4
G. Bentham to M, 23 November 1871 is addressed to 'Baron Ferdinand v. Mueller'.
5
For application to M of the rules concerning acceptance of foreign orders, see notes to M to G. Carey, 20 May 1866, and footnotes to R. Apponyi to M, 4 August 1863. A copy of Lord Clarendon's 1855 regulations was printed in Nature, 9 October 1873, p. 481, during a controversy about the propriety of British 'men of science' accepting foreign honours and wearing the insignia in ignorance of the regulations. See Lucas (2013a).

Please cite as “FVM-72-01-00,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/72-01-00