To Joseph Hooker   13 May 1880

13/5/80

Private 1

 

Since I wrote, dear Sir Joseph, I had a visit from Dr M'Gillivray from Sandhurst,2 and he tells me, that Dr Dickie of Aberdeen and Sir Wyville Thomson (are or) were personally acquainted with him, so as to join in the sponsorship for the Linnean Society.3

Meanwhile also an other kind letter has arrived from you.4

The most curious seed of Grevillea annulifera has germinated here on several places. It is a charming flowering plant of superb habit.

O! dear Sir Joseph, how I feel for you, when you speak of your Arboretum and your other cultural exploits!! Had such a letter reached me 7 or 8 years ago, it might have averted my disastrous fate. My persecutors here always with the greatest audacity asserted (knowing it to be untrue) that neither you nor Sir William did in any way share in the horticultural labours & responsibilities of Kew, and that you confined yourself only to the herbarium and in similar strain. I am sure, that I gave my excellent gardeners as much latitude as any other Director, but to make it a farce and to become a Director without giving Directions was too much for me.

I can well understand what you say about the Foreman of the Arboretum. The two best managed bot. Gardens of Germany were perhaps Leipzig & Breslau, because Mettenius & Goeppert turned practically their time to superintending the work themselves. How I envey you among your living floral treasures! while here I am run down from week to week in journals, to misguide the public in what I did as cultivator

And yet after the spending of £90,000 since I left the Garden, there is no comparison of the value of the plants there now (so I am assured) to what there was with slender means at my time. O God! how happy could I have been there, had I been allowed to do so, and how could I have served the colony in agriculture, pastorage,5 forestry & technology!

We might have had chests of teas in the forthcoming exhibition, Quinine & Peru Bark &c &c

But the Australian Ayrton6 had all along full sway for the benefit of his relative7 on my expense and to my oppression. But where will all this end? But be assured, the Garden here will never prosper under Gods blessings, and a resentful nemesis will be sure to over come those some day, who built up their fortune unscrupulously on my ruin.

Are you quite sure, that the Euc., which survived your frost, is really E. polyanthema;8 I do not know it here from any frosty regions; indeed it grows on the hottest parts of Riverina

Always your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Eucalyptus polyanthema

Grevillea annulifera

1
Private is also written at the head of each following sheet, but is not transcribed here.
2
Now Bendigo, Vic.
3
See M to J. Hooker, 6 May 1880 (in this edition as 80-05-06a). MacGillivray was elected FLS on 2 December 1880, supported by Joseph Hooker and Daniel Oliver.
4
See J. Hooker to M, 11 March 1880.
5
pasturage?
6
James Joseph Casey. For Ayrton’s attempt to exert control over Hooker at Kew, see MacLeod (1974).
7
William Guilfoyle.
8
E. polyanthemos? M used the spelling E. polyanthema in B79.13.11, Decade 3, citing Schauer's spelling E. polyanthemos.In the account of the species he wrote 'According to Mr J. Smith it is this species, which braved the severest winters at Kew-Garden near London, sheltered merely by a wall'.

Please cite as “FVM-80-05-13a,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/80-05-13a