"And now I am going to tell you a most important piece of news!! I have almost resolved to build a small hot-house; my neighbour's really first-rate gardener has suggested it, and offered to make me plans, and see that it is well done, and he is really a clever follow, who wins lots of prizes, and is very observant. He believes that we should succeed with a little patience; it will be a grand amusement for me to experiment with plants."
Again he wrote (February 15th, 1863):—
"I write now because the new hot-house is ready, and I long to stock it, just like a schoolboy. Could you tell me pretty soon what plants you can give me; and then I shall know what to order? And do advise me how I had better get such plants as you can spare. Would it do to send my tax-cart early in the morning, on a day that was not frosty, lining the cart with mats, and arriving here before night? I have no idea whether this degree of exposure (and of course the cart would be cold) could injure stove-plants; they would be about five hours (with bait) on the journey home."
A week later he wrote:—
"You cannot imagine what pleasure your plants give me (far more than your dead Wedgwood-ware can give you); H. and I go and gloat over them, but we privately confessed to each other, that if they were not our own, perhaps we should not see such transcendant beauty in each leaf."
And in March, when he was extremely unwell, he wrote:—
"A few words about the stove-plants; they do so amuse me. I have crawled to see them two or three times. Will you correct and answer, and return enclosed. I have hunted in all my books and cannot find these names, and I like much to know the family." His difficulty with regard to the names of plants is illustrated, with regard to a Lupine on which he was at work, in an extract from a letter (July 21, 1866) to Sir J. D. Hooker: "I sent to the nursery garden, whence I bought the seed, and could only hear that it was 'the common blue Lupine,' the man saying 'he was no scholard, and did not know Latin, and that parties who make experiments ought to find out the names.'"
The book was published May 15th, 1862. Of its reception he writes to Mr. Murray, June 13th and 18th:—
"The Botanists praise my Orchid-book to the skies. Some one sent me (perhaps you) the Parthenon, with a good review. The Athenæum[285] treats me with very kind pity and contempt; but the reviewer knew nothing of his subject."