“Man never is, but always to be blest.”
The Joad herbarium was a real bonanza....
I must tell of our two weeks’ run, Mrs. Gray and I. We left the too tardy spring here, one evening; were the next noon in Washington, where the spring was in full force and beauty. After two days, left Washington one morning, followed up the Potomac River to its very rise in the Alleghanies, and down on to Mississippi waters before dark; woke near Cincinnati, had a pleasant day’s journey to St. Louis, which we reached before sunset. There had five days, rather busy ones; thence a journey of thirty-six hours, over prairies of Illinois and Indiana to Buffalo, and to New York city; there two days, and then home.[127] Mrs. Gray, thus away from household cares and a rough air, dropped her cough altogether; and what you would think a tiresome piece of journeying brought us both home much refreshed....
You remember Henry Shaw, his park and Missouri botanic garden. The old fellow is now eighty-four. Something induced him to ask my advice, and to let me know the very ample fortune with which he is to endow the garden, when he dies. I was in doubt whether all this was likely to be quite wasted, or was in condition to be turned to good account for botany and horticulture when Mr. Shaw leaves it and his trust comes to be executed. I wished also to see that dear old Engelmann’s herbarium should be properly and permanently preserved. So I went on to St. Louis. Mr. Shaw took me into his counsel and, without going here into details, without seeing a chance for doing much while Mr. Shaw lives, which cannot be very long, I see there is a grand opportunity coming, and I think that none of the provisions he has made will hinder the right development of the Mississippian Kew, which will hardly be “Kew in a corner.” And if he follows my advice and mends some matters, there will be a grand foundation laid.
We are expecting Ball toward the end of the month. He will have time to travel and botanize before the Montreal meeting. But I can’t go with him, nor, perhaps, could I much help him....
Dr. Gray’s friend of many years, George Engelmann, M. D., died in February, 1884. He was a student at Heidelberg with Schimper and Alexander Braun in 1827, and again in Paris, in 1832, with Agassiz and Braun. He came to America in 1834, made some journeys on horseback in the West, and settled as a physician in St. Louis, then a frontier trading-post, in 1835. He lived to see it become a metropolis of over four hundred thousand inhabitants. Dr. Gray says in his memoirs of him, “In the consideration of Dr. Engelmann’s botanical work it should be remembered that his life was that of an eminent and trusted physician; ... that he devoted only the residual hours, which most men use for rest or recreation, to scientific pursuits.... Nothing escaped his attention; he drew with facility; and he methodically secured his observations by notes and sketches. The lasting impression which he has made upon North American botany is due to his habit of studying his subjects in their systematic relations, and devoting himself to a particular genus of plants until he had elucidated it as completely as lay within his power. In this way all his work was made to tell effectively.... It shows how much may be done for science in a busy physician’s horæ subsecivæ, and in his occasional vacations. Personally he was one of the most affable and kindly of men, and was as much beloved as respected by those who knew him.”
TO SIR EDWARD FRY.
October 10, 1884.
It is quite time that I responded to your kind and welcome letters. First, let me congratulate myself upon having you as a colleague in the Royal Society, in which I think you need not owe your fellowship to official dignity. I believe you took honors in science at the university, along with our friend Professor Flower.
You mentioned your approaching visit, with Lady Fry, to Lord Coleridge.... Lord C., referring to your visit, sent us very cordial messages in a letter to my colleague Professor Thayer. He will know that his host in Boston, General Butler, is one of the candidates for the Presidency.