December 5, 1867.
Before the year closes I mean you shall have a note from me, to renew on my part an intercourse which has been interrupted through negligence of mine. I find I get more and more overloaded as I grow older, and I dare say you find it the same. Still we must exchange a word now and then.
I have to tell you of the severe loss we have had in the death, in October, of Mrs. Gray’s good and kind father, Mr. Loring. He and my wife were very much to each other, and in former years had been unusually intimate companions; and his death at seventy-three, quite unexpected till within a few weeks of the event, is very much felt. Mrs. Gray’s own health, too, is but poor, though on the whole I trust it is becoming firmer.
If you see your friend Mr. Fraser (whom I, unfortunately, did not) you may learn from him what manner of man Mr. Loring was. I wish I knew him, to say to him how highly we value a letter he lately addressed to Mrs. Loring, and which I read yesterday,—so full of sympathy and just appreciation.
Mr. Fraser, you may be sure, is very much thought of here.
I hope that Dr. Hooker, of Kew, has sent on to you the numbers of the “Nation,” which I have for a year or more regularly posted to him, originally requesting he should do so. But it is quite likely the busy man has forgotten all about it.
For myself, I have passed my fifty-seventh anniversary, in firm health, feeling my age only in a treacherous memory—as respects names, etc., not as to events or friends. The memory of our delightful visit to Oxford is ever fresh.
TO CHARLES DARWIN.
February 24, 1868.
The other evening here I discoursed at our private club, by giving them an abstract of the chapters on Inheritance and Pangenesis; the former for Professor Bowen’s benefit. He and Agassiz took it all very well; and pangenesis seemed to strike all of us as being as good an hypothesis as one can now make....