27/7/79
Let me acknowledge your generous letter, dear Chevalier Archer, conveying your felicitation to the unexpected and high honor, bestowed on me from the British throne.1 If anything could add to the value of this great distinction, it is the disinterested participation in my joy, which I experience from so many erudite friends, and among those tokens of kindness I value your2 particularly highly.
I look myself on this royal gift, so graciously bestowed, rather as an encouragement to Australian science generally, than as a reward for my own labours in the fields of natural science awarded personally; I happened to be senior among those devoted to Natural science in her Majestys Australian territory, where I have toiled for ⅓ of a century, the Rev W B Clarke held formerly the seniority. When HRH.3 will honor us with a visit in Australia, I feel sure, many decorations & titles will be distributed, & a share of them will fall to the cultivators of science also. Permit me to congratulate you also on your well earned Fellowship of St Johns.4
No one of your former colleagues among Heads of establishments regretted more than myself your sufferings here of late. Let me hope that your position has become in every respect bright again.5 Mine has continued so humiliated & impeded that I am forced to leave the colony during the Exhibition,6 and I have not even the consoling love of a family to cheer me, such as you enjoy.
Regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller
The conferring of M's knighthood; see Queen Victoria to M, 24 May 1879.
yours?
Her Royal Highness? Queen Victoria never visited Australia.
After moving from Melbourne to Sydney, Archer was elected a lay fellow of St John's College, University of Sydney, and became a member of the College Council on 9 July 1879. As he failed to attend any of the three subsequent Council meetings, however, and 'now resided in Victoria' again, his seat was declared vacant at a special meeting on 30 June 1880.
Archer was among the Victorian civil servants dismissed on 'Black Wednesday', 8 January 1878, and unlike some others was not re-employed. During 1879 he was living in Sydney, where he operated a life assurance company.
The forthcoming 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.
Please cite as “FVM-79-07-27,” 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