In 1873 Hooker made a series of experiments on the digestion and absorption of food by certain insectivorous plants, notably Nepenthes, with the object of helping Darwin in his work on that subject.
We must return a year or two to deal with a matter which, as Mr L. Huxley remarks, “ravaged and embittered” the period 1870–72—namely, his conflict with Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works in Gladstone’s Government. Mr L. Huxley, like a clever musician, gives a touch of Ayrton’s tone in the opening phrases of his composition. At a grand festivity in honour of the Shah of Persia this sovereign was unaccountably anxious to meet the Commissioner of Works. Ayrton was at supper, and bluntly responded, with his mouth full of chicken, “I’ll see the old nigger in Jericho first!”
He began to show his quality by sending an “official reprimand to the Director of Kew.” This, the first received in twenty-nine years’ service, was based “on a misapprehension.” Ayrton’s aim seems to have been to compel Hooker to resign and convert Kew Gardens into a public park.
In 1871 Hooker casually discovered from a subordinate “that he himself had been superseded . . . in one of his most important duties—namely, the heating of the plant-houses.” It would take too long to enumerate the endless acts of insolence and folly which marked Ayrton’s treatment of Hooker. A full statement of the case was drawn up and signed by a small body of the most distinguished scientific men of the day, and after a debate in the House of Commons, Mr Ayrton was kicked upstairs “from the Board of Works to the resuscitated office of Judge Advocate General.” I remember an anecdote which illustrates Ayrton’s stupendous ignorance of the great department over which he was called to rule. Hooker was taking Ayrton round the Gardens when they met Mr Bentham, who happened to remark that he had come from the Herbarium. “Oh,” said Ayrton, “did you get your feet wet?” For the official ruler of Kew there was no difference between a Herbarium and an Aquarium.
This period has pleasanter memories, for it was in 1873 that Huxley, much out of health and “heavily mulcted” by having to pay the costs of an unsuccessful action brought against him by a man of straw, was persuaded to accept from a group of personal friends a sum of £3000 to clear his financial position, Hooker wrote to Darwin, “I am charmed by Huxley’s noble-minded letter.”
In 1874 Mrs Hooker died, leaving six children, of whom three still required care. Hooker wrote later to Darwin from Nuneham (ii., p. 191): “I am here on two days’ visit to a place I had not seen
since I was here with Fanny Henslow [Mrs Hooker] in 1847. I cannot tell you how depressed I feel at times. She, you, and Oxford are burnt into my memory.” Here occurs, in a letter from Mrs Bewicke, some account of Hooker’s method of dealing with his family. She gives the impression (though clearly not intentionally) that Hooker rather worried his children. She speaks of the many questions he asked them at meals and the pleasure he took in their success in answering. She adds, “When we drove into London with him, he would tell us the names of the big houses and their owners, and then expect us to know them as we drove back.” This confirms my impression that Hooker was not quite judicious in his manner of educating or enlightening his children. I have a general impression of having sympathised with them in their difficulties.
In 1876, Hooker was happily married to Hyacinth, widow of Sir William Jardine; and about the same time Sir William Thiselton-Dyer married Sir Joseph’s daughter.
The Index Kewensis, which unites the names of two friends, was carried out at Kew, with funds supplied by Darwin. It was in fact a completion of Steudel’s Nomenclator, and was published in four quarto volumes in 1892–95. The MS. is said to have weighed more than a ton and comprised about 375,000 entries. Hooker, with wonderful energy and devotion, read and criticised it in detail. [131]
In 1885, Hooker resigned his position as Director at Kew, and henceforward lived at the Camp, Sunningdale, his “Tusculum” among the pine-woods as Mr Huxley puts it, where he remained, ever hard at work, for twenty-six years.