On the voyage out, he was fortunate in becoming known to Lord Dalhousie, and the friendship built up in the course of the journey and afterwards in India “showed itself in unstinted support of Hooker.” It was, however, “a personal appreciation of the man rather than of the scientific investigator.” Indeed, Lord Dalhousie, “a perfect specimen of the miserable system of education pursued at Oxford,” had a “lamentably low opinion” of science.
At Darjiling began Hooker’s “lifelong friendship
with a very remarkable character, Brian Hodgson,” [122a] administrator and scholar, who had “won equal fame as Resident at the court of Nepal and as a student of Oriental lore.” Mr L. Huxley points out that “if the friendship with Lord Dalhousie provided the key that opened official barriers and made Hooker’s journeyings possible, the friendship with Hodgson more than anything else made them a practical success.”
I shall not attempt to follow Hooker through his wanderings—only a few scattered references to them are possible. It is pleasant to read that when Mr Elwes visited Sikkim twenty-two years after Hooker, he found that the Lepchas almost worshipped him, and he was remembered as a learned Hakim, an incarnation of wisdom and strength.
The most exciting adventure of Hooker and his fellow-traveller was their imprisonment in Sikkim, where their lives were clearly in danger, and they were only released when “troops were hurried up to Darjiling” and “an ultimatum dispatched to the Rajah.” [122b]
For the rest of his botanical journeyings he had the companionship of Thomson, who had been his fellow-student, and, like himself, was the son of a Glasgow professor. A letter to his father (undated) gives an idea of the wonderful success of his Indian travels: “It is easy to talk of a Flora Indica, and Thomson and I do talk of it, to imbecility! But
suppose that we even adopted the size, quality of paper, brevity of description, etc., which characterise De Candolle’s Prodromus, and we should, even under these conditions, fill twelve such volumes at least.”
The usual shabbiness [123] of governments towards science is well illustrated (p. 344) in the case of Hooker:—“His total expenditure was £2200; the official allowances were £1200: the remainder was contributed from his own and his father’s purse.”
In 1855 Joseph began his official life at Kew on being appointed assistant to his father. And ten years later, on Sir William’s death, he succeeded as a matter of course to the Directorship.
Shortly before this, i.e. in 1854, he was the recipient of an honour greatly coveted by men of science, namely the award of the Royal Medal. He is characteristically pleased for the sake of the science of Botany rather than for himself, and refers to the neglect that botany has generally experienced at the hands of the Society in comparison with zoological subjects. His own success