To Joseph Hooker   4 November 1872

Melbourne

bot Garden,

4/11/72

 

I deeply sympathize with you, dear Dr Hooker, in your undeserved anxieties. The spirit of persecution against those, who have served their country well, will remain the same, I fear, so long as this world lasts.1 We have seen no changes in that spirit since Aristides's time,2 though we might have hoped for more tolerance at these enlightened days.

The most honorable way, in which your Minister could recede from his position towards you, would be to transfer you to the Department of an other Minister. That would reflect credit on him and solve the difficulty at once. I am striving here to obtain the same concession.

What will you think when I say that this once famed garden here is now reduced to two or the utmost three gardeners, whereas ten are the least number required, for all the conservatories, forcing pits, Victoria- and Orchid-House, very extensive nurseries for supply and the extensive outer ground.3 To add to my miseries the 5 months of terror are before me, Nov-March, when Sirocco's frequently blow, and yet every gallon of water has to be raised by a steam engine on my ground at great expense from the Yarra, none being obtained from the Yan Yean Water works by gravitation[.]

All this ruin to the Department has been largely brought about by two or three persons engaged on Edw. Wilson's papers as writers

By the Niagara (free of freight) you will get an other Todea, not a very large, still a good specimen.

Pray tell me, whether any of the Rev Mr Berkeleys children is likely soon to be married. If so, I will consider it a privilege to send a marriage present.

- Do kindly remember, that the Document which I wrote in my defense against the unjust report of the Board of Enquiry was never presented to our Parliament here, and can therefore be used by you only privately, but must not be published.

4 I am very very sorry that I ever accepted the position here 20 years ago, when I was in the elasticity of youth and when I had means enough to purchase a sheep station. We have trusted in the future at a time when we were well treated, and now late in our life advantage is taken of our inability to recede from our position and to commence the world anew. You at least have family; I have nothing, and the hopes of my life seem finally blighted.

That must after all be a very poor and miserable triumph to Edw. Wilson to have allowed my Department & my position to have been almost ruined

always your

Ferd von Mueller

 

I shall send a few things to the London Exhibition5 but the poverty of the Department allows not of much6

 

Todea

1
For Hooker’s disputes with Acton Ayrton, see notes to M to J. Hooker, 7 September 1872, and MacLeod (1974).
2
Aristides, a successful Athenian military commander and statesman, was nevertheless ostracized by the citizens of Athens in the fifth century BC.
3
See, for example, M to J. Casey, 4 September 1872 and 16 September 1872.
4
M to C. Duffy, 6 February 1872. A copy, marked ‘Private’, was sent to Hooker (RBG Kew, Misc. Reports Melbourne, Mueller, ff. 89-105). Despite M's stricture, Hooker apparently corresponded on the matter with Henry Barkly; see H. Barkly to M, 12 May 1872 (in this edition as 72-05-12a) and Argus, 12 July 1872, p. 7.
5
International Exhibition, London, 1872.
6
The postscript is in the margin of f. 67.

Please cite as “FVM-72-11-04,” 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 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/72-11-04