To Joseph Hooker   18 May 1878

Private

18/5/78.

It is so long, dear Sir Joseph, since I was honored with a letter from yourself, that I feel (after the arrival of your kind lines of 20 March), I ought to answer at once, the American mail, which brought your & Mr Dyers letter¹ leaving tomorrow. It is needless to reiterate, that as a discarded Director I have no courage to write to any of my former colleagues. To Thwaites I have not written since (5 years ago) I was cast adrift, and I felt keenly the utter want of support from him in my Directorial position, after unknown to him at my spontaneous (I might say generous) impulse I procured for him his Doctor-degree gratuitously.² I see a great difference in my former Colleagues; some countenance me just as before, others are indifferent, others have abandoned me. — of course the Gov. Botanist out of the bot Garden is as powerless as a General without an Armee. The latter might still write some works on warfare (if he pays for it himself) but could not take the field. But why repeat to you, what I so often urged, what every professional Director can see at a glance!³

This Ministry seems not unfriendly to me, altho' Mr Casey (the cousin of the Nurseryman at the Garden) has hitherto frustrated, that anything is done for the resuscitation of my once celebrated Department. The Estimates are now for the new finance-year (commencing 1 July) under consideration, and I sought the influence of Sir Sam. Wilson with the Governor⁴ to reinstate me, and to place the present Curator on the far more extensive parks & reserves, as his proper place. But, alas!, also this hope was crushed, because his Exc. told me last week in the presense of Signor D'Albertis ⁵(the New Guinea Explorer) that you told him, you wished to be treated like myself! I pointed out that there must be a misapprehension on the subject, that you could not possibly have said so, that you must have imperfectly informed (though I wrote so fully on the sad changes which overcame me) It was to no purpose! and I fear much that this assertion of your view, will hinder my being restored to my position, without which my temporary ruin becomes one permanency. I thought of marriying, as soon as my Directorship, my garden, my votes, my staff, buildings &c were restored to me, but of course, I could not think of it now, and become now grey and the hopes of life blighted! That is the tanks⁶ for my work, after working all my life for others. The Governor mentions that my income was 20,000 francs annually; nominally it is £800, actually not more than £300 in one of the most expensive places of the globe. I am certain, that one can live in England as well for £100 as here for three times that amount. Remember kindly that I have to defray officerent, office furniture, books, journals, instruments, laboratory means &c out of my salary, the few hundred extra left me providing merely for the Museum Clerk & some Museum material and some minor daily expenses. When I compare that £[7]0, 000 have been spent in my bot. Garden in the 5 years since I left, that distribution of plants 'en gross' ceased and so all scientific work there and that not £15,000 permanent improvement can be shown, while an enormous number of my valuable plants is lost or destroyed, I feel inexpressibly embittered. All this deep grief and financial loss to me and stoppage of work could have been saved me by a few demonstrative words kindly from Kew. And now even, you and others might do something yet for me, altho' the time has long passed, when the Governor or men in power here could have been directly adressed. See, my dear Sir Joseph, how your lamented father kept in his correspondence with Sir Henry Barkly my interest awake.

All that can be now done, is to adress a memorandum to myself, setting forth the necessity that any Gov. Botanist (wherever it may be) wants his bot. Garden (and that in a clime like that of Victoria on an extensive scale), that he is helpless without such an institution to do justice to the requirements for industry & particularly in a new country, that I require proper staff and working votes & buildings & laboratory just like the observatory & any other institution. The Casey Ministry withheld almost anything except the Salary, to force me to leave the country. I gladly would have left this ungrateful colony, but my Museum collections are only partly my own, and I have no leisure to separate from 300,000 specimens what is my own; the library is also only partly my private property; so my leaving the colony (of course without pension and after spending £10,000 of my own means & 31 years of my life in Australia) means to stop my work literary also. You may have always thought, that in my many appeals to you for the aid of your influence as the head of bot Affairs in the whole British Empire, I have exaggerated the ruin, into which by envy, jealousy, ignorance indifference & finally nepotism & vulgar usurpation I have drifted. You never gave me any support as a horticulturist though I know as a traveller more of the treatment of plants then⁷ the best of Gardeners & did wonders in culture & scenic planting also with small means, as demonstrated by my departmental reports. Remember I was even the first in Australia to have the Victoria regia,⁸ and my collection of plants was far ahead of Sydney & Adelaide so long as I was not crippled[.]⁹

What use is it to praise me up as a Botanist, when I have neither means to keep a collector in the field for new materials, nor fund to bring out the Eucalyptus Atlas nor almost anything else. This month I have to sign bills for £200 (the first time since my early orphanage that I incur debts) to pay for the printing of the english Edition of Wittstein,¹⁰ which of course will not sell to bring back half the outlay. Will you believe that Baron von Mueller, a fellow of the R S of London & C.M.G. has sunk into such abject poverty, that he cannot keep even a single servant and lives in an unfurnished rented house, where he does his office work! My meal (an only one a day) is sent me from a cheep rest[ua]rant. I do not think, that it is your wish, nor that of any other man of science that this should be my fate. My School flora cannot be printed for want of fund, & what little I had of additional means, was absorbed by the "select plants",¹¹ not one single friendly expression on it has reached me from any one in England thereon (unique as the work is) except Dr Masters.¹² It may have been favorably reviewed for all I know in Nature,¹³ but I am far too poor to subscribe for such a periodical now. What little cash I had, was spent in my last journey to West Australia to get away from the scenes of my grief for a while.

Private

Remember kindly, that here the colonists do not care for Museum work or for describing new plants; much distress prevails in the colony; I am looked to as Gov Botanist mainly to foster or create new industries of vegetable origin; that I cannot do either at the University (where they tried to force me to) nor without my Garden. I said always, 25 years ago! to go to the University, which is more over fully provided by Prof. M'Coy & Dr Bird,¹⁴ would be like placing Hooker in addition to Bentley.¹⁵ You gave me support in this, and I showed your letter against an University position,¹⁶ and it may have helped me hitherto to avoid that cliff. Of course at the University for want of ground, votes & appliances I should simply be extinguished as an independent worker. I was long eager to visit Europe, but as a discarded Director I cannot meet my former Colleagues with self-respect, and indeed a journey to Europe would have thus no meaning, as it could be turned hardly to any account for a Department, which is no longer under my control & which has been mainly changed to a Cremorne.

To ask me to make a new garden, means 20 yearswork again, with the prospect of an other Cousin of a Minister taking it away again from me. At my age & after my health & strenght become so impaired by my "struggle for existence" I cannot form a new bot. Garden. Where are the votes? How am I to compeat? To conclude thus far my last appeal to you for aid, which would have been far more powerful had I not been required to ask for it, whatever memorandum is sent (if any) pray forward it to me direct not to the Governor or the Ministry.

Now let me congratulate you, dear Sir Joseph, to your renewed family happiness, of which I envy you from the depth of my feelings. May your young son¹⁷ become the Hooker nepos!

Turning to the pages of your letter you speak of my and Bentham's Flora. My God! Is it ever quoted as such? What a ruinous arrangement, into which I entered, even in this respect. Thus a main object also of my life is lost! to me. No, I ought at least to have been a cooperator (as in reality I am) but now I am also in this respect nothing!, and my adversaries here use this false position into [wh]ich I was placed [...]¹⁸ Bentham also to oppress me.

Perhaps a sound Statesmanship will prevail here in my affairs, though Mr Casey is already on his backway;¹⁹ if so I shall be able to write once more with renewed hopes of life and increased means for work & prospects in a more cheerful spirit. If any expressions of mine in this or former letters (it may be my last in my fluctuating health) may be regarded by you as not right, then kindly excuse it, because I combat not merely for the continuance of my own work, but as a scientific man for a scientific position on scientific principles.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller