I don’t know when you would get a response to your welcome letter of August 22, which reached us here in due course, so long as things went on in the ordinary way,—I working at botany as much as possible, but presiding here over a considerable household, some sight-seeing and much intermittent visiting. But now that I am all alone, and my wife with the rest of them girareing over the north of England, sober reflection has its hour, and I remember the friends that are far away, perhaps on the shores of Italian lakes, and long to know how they get on and what they are about. To attain which knowledge and put myself en rapport I should first, I know, give you some account of ourselves and our doings.
But where to begin? I think we wrote you from Paris. We had three weeks there, I mostly at the Jardin des Plantes till near dinner-time....
For ourselves, after cool weather in Paris we came in for a piece of very sultry weather in London, where we had to stay awhile, our lodgings here not being available till about 15th September. So after staying to the Harvard boat-race,—which I saw from the umpire’s boat, and Mrs. Gray, with good Miss S., from some grounds above Fulham,—we set off on a little round of visits, first to the Darwins’, near Bromley, then to the Churches’ in Somersetshire, a pleasant country rectory and a delightful couple. You remember the university sermons we had up the Nile were his. Next we passed a day with an old bachelor botanical acquaintance near Taunton, who makes a capital squire; then to Torquay for three days (with a daughter of Sir William Hooker, and her husband, Dr. Lombe), one of which I devoted to an excursion down the river Dart from Totness to Dartmouth (which the English think much of, but you dwellers on the Hudson would not), and to a view of that quaint little town. On our way back we had an hour at Exeter to see the cathedral; a night and morning at Salisbury, the cathedral as to exterior, site, and all, and beautiful spire, one of the most satisfactory in England; took a glance at Wilton, a peep into old George Herbert’s little church of Bemerton and into his house and garden; stopped over a train at Romsey to see the fine Norman abbey church, and to Winchester, most interesting cathedral as to the interior, Winchester school and the old Hospital of St. Cross. Then, on returning to London, we settled down here, and after a few days were joined by the rest of our party from France.
... No one in England recognized me with my venerable white beard!
Ever, dear Howland, your affectionate
Asa Gray.
The winter Dr. Gray spent in Egypt, in 1869, he raised a full beard, which so changed his appearance that, though eyes and voice were there, his oldest friends did not know him on his return, and he had great glee in imposing himself on his old friend Dr. Torrey, when he went to the station to meet him in Boston, as a persistent hack-driver. Even when he declared himself, Dr. Torrey would scarcely believe him; he and Professor Henry always maintained a man had no lawful right so to change his outward appearance after middle age.
TO R. W. CHURCH.
Kew, October 6, 1869.
... A week ago Saturday Mrs. G. and I went down via Warwick to Stratford-on-Avon, where we had never been, with Professor Flower,[82] to visit his father and mother, whose house (almost always thronged by Americans), a short mile out of Stratford, commands one of the most charming and wholly English views (that of English landscape-painters). On Monday morning Loring and the girls, who had passed the Sunday at Warwick, drove down and took us up, and we saw the Shakespeare memorials, even to Anne Hathaway’s cottage (all but myself, who studied brewing instead), and back to “The Hill” for a lunch-dinner. Then they took my wife and departed to pass night and next day at Warwick. At evening I went by a direct train to Oxford to sleep, seeing first Professor Rolleston[83] for a moment. And, breakfasting with him and his agreeable wife next morning early (his windows command a lovely view), set about seeing all the structures, etc., that have sprung up since the almost twenty years that have passed: the Museum and its workings, the Ratcliffe turned into an admirable reading-room, chapel of Exeter, also Balliol, new buildings of Christ Church, etc. I did not fail to look in upon the quadrangle of Oriel, also, to ask for Mr. Burgon, but he was in France. After lunch I took train, and was in Kew soon after sunset. Since then I have been away one day and one night, with Mr. Rivers of Orchard-house fame, at Sawbridgeworth, Herts....