TO R. W. CHURCH.
September 10, 1871.
I have addressed the envelope for this letter before writing it, determined to use once more the familiar superscription. The official may bide its time.[89]
Only yesterday we learned of Gladstone’s doings by a newspaper slip sent us by a friend who knew of you through us on the Nile, Mrs. Howland. But I had a sort of premonition of it and was on the lookout....
I do not know where the Deanery is,—not in so attractive a situation as Whatley Rectory, one may safely say. But I suppose you are not expected to reside there in summer, that you will be fairly able to have some country quarters to your liking. And there is Switzerland always within reach. Happy mortals, who can reach the Alps within forty-eight hours, and with only a narrow, though proverbially nasty, bit of water to cross! But what we hope to gain from this upturning is to see you over here. When Mr. Horner returns (we have heard nothing since they vanished in the West) he will tell you it is no formidable matter even to cross the continent. At least you can come and see us, make us a long visit, and be as quiet here as in a Swiss wayside inn, and sally forth upon an excursion when you like.
Please thank Mrs. Church from me for thinking of us, and writing the very next day after this anxious matter was concluded. It is wonderful she could find time, with so much to do and to think of. And such a full account of the Swiss journey, too.
I owe you letters, too,—one at least lies reproachingly in a drawer of my table, where it was thrust a long while ago along with many others which could be postponed; but once postponed it is not easy to overtake them.
Say to Mrs. C. it is not a part of our house which was moved; that would not have been difficult, for it is of wood (though the herbarium, etc., adjacent is of brick). It must have been the Law School the moving of which Mrs. Gray was describing. Tell Mr. Horner that, like some other things, when once you have seen it done it ceases to be wonderful or even difficult.
As to my lecture-room, etc., all work stopped for near a month, including the fortnight or more when I was away; and now (September 11) all has been clatter and hurry for the last week or so, and they really seem determined to fulfill the terms of their contract, to finish by the 15th instant. They cannot do that; but I trust the workmen may go out with the month. These cares of building have sadly interferred with scientific work all summer. I have accomplished very little of what I intended. I attended, and, when the last year’s president retired on delivering his address, presided over, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, twentieth meeting, at Indianapolis, capital of the State of Indiana,—a journey of forty-eight hours, in very sultry summer weather, over long stretches of country. I broke the journey by a day in New York, to see two sons of Mr. Darwin just as they landed, and by a three days’ stay, including Sunday, with my old friend Mr. Sullivant, in Ohio. The meeting was a pleasant, though not especially interesting one. I met botanical correspondents of many years’ standing whom I had never seen. At the close we were invited to make an excursion to the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which I counted on seeing. But I found that the excursion was to be an overcrowded one.... So I hastened homeward, and was with Mrs. Gray at Beverly Farms, where she had been passing holidays at Mrs. Loring’s at the paternal homestead on the seashore,—a place that you have heard us talk of not a little. It is delightful. I know nothing to give you so good an idea of it as the Devonshire coast, there being plenty of wood quite down to the water. Were we there now, Miss K. and Charles Loring would, I know, charge me with messages.