22/3/78
Strictly Private
I need not assure you, dear Mr Ramsay, that I will be happy to support your candidature at the R.S.,1 but this months mail is gone. So perhaps you will advise me to whom to write. I will gladly write to our venerable friend Prof. Owen, who will likely be the next president, and if Lord Lewis' adress is given me, I will readily communicate with him also.
There is plenty of time till next mail. Can you confidentially give me some clue to the real feelings of Moore towards me? How is it, that he instead of bravely supporting my Directorship so eagerly recommends that I should accept the change, when I had nothing to accept, but was simply deprived homeless of my whole Department and thus thrown into abject poverty? How is that Mr Francis,2 after seeing mere lawns and not even a glass-house (for £8000 a year there) at your Garden, so soon as he came back in 1873 from the Sydney conference, resolved, that there "must be here a change".3 I never shall forget that! Mr M. has promised me plants from Lord Howes Isl; but none have come for months;4 he also tells me, that I shall have a set of his N. Guinea plants; perhaps his collector is not yet back.
My own impression is, that at least cautiously & indirectly he has contributed after all my generosity to him as much to my ruin & deep sadness & distress, as the man in Adelaide.5 Is jealousy the spring of this like at Kew? Hooker gives [me pur]posely6 & studiously no support though (except Owen) all men of science rallied round him against Ayrton.7 H. wants merely collectors at the Colonial establishments & Kew is to monopolize all of British wri[ting]8
Please cite as “FVM-78-03-22,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/78-03-22