My Dear Hooker
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MY DEAR HOOKER Transcriptions of letters from James Hector to Joseph Dalton Hooker between 1860 and 1898 Rowan Burns & Simon Nathan Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133B October 2012 Published by the Geoscience Society of New Zealand Inc, 2012 Information on the Society and its publications is given at www.gsnz.org.nz © Copyright Simon Nathan, 2012 Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133B ISBN 978-1-877480-21-8 ISSN 2230-4495 (Online) ISSN 2230-4487 (Print) Bibliographic Reference Burns, R.; Nathan, S. 2012: My Dear Hooker: Transcriptions of Letters from James Hector to Joseph Dalton Hooker between 1860 and 1898. Geoscience Society of New Zealand miscellaneous publication 133B, 208 pages. MY DEAR HOOKER: Transcriptions of letters from James Hector to Joseph Dalton Hooker between 1860 and 1898 Introduction Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) and James Hector (1834-1907) corresponded from opposite sides of the world for almost forty years, and their correspondence gives a unique, personal view of 19th century scientific developments in Great Britain and in New Zealand. Hooker was Director of Kew Gardens and later President of the Royal Society of London, while Hector was Director of the New Zealand Geological Survey and the Colonial Museum (predecessor of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa). They were leading figures in their own scientific communities, concerned with changing ideas and institutions, and they gossiped about personalities and current issues. They regularly exchanged seeds and plants as well as scientific curiosities and items for display. So far 91 letters from Hooker have been identified as well as 165 letters from Hector (not including short, formal letters, dispatching or acknowledging the receipt of plants or other items). The letters from Hooker were transcribed and published by Yaldwyn and Hobbs (1998). They stated that, “Hector’s writing is more difficult to read than Hooker’s; some parts of these letters are indeed unreadable and, as Hector’s style is less interesting than Hooker’s, no attempt was made to transcribe and include the text of Hector’s side of the exchange…”. Notwithstanding these difficulties, we felt that the Hector letters needed to be transcribed as part of a biographical study of James Hector, and this was done over a 5 month period from October 2011 to March 2012. Rowan Burns is responsible for the primary transcriptions, but both authors checked and discussed every letter. Additional assistance was sought from colleagues, especially for the identification and spelling of biological names. Although Hector’s writing is certainly difficult to read, most of his letters can be decoded by working through them slowly and carefully. But as Hooker was a busy scientist and administrator, we have to wonder if he was always able to interpret the details of what Hector had written to him. Background Yaldwyn and Hobbs (1998, pp. 3-17) give considerable biographical information on Hooker and Hector, and this is not repeated here. For those seeking detailed information, the most effective way of understanding the correspondence is to have both this volume and Yaldwyn and Hobbs’ compilation open on the desk together. But for those using only this compilation, a brief chronology is given in Table 1, and biographies are available online from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography: Hector: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h15/1 Hooker: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h33/1 My Dear Hooker 1 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133B Figure 1: Map of New Zealand showing major towns in the late 19th century as well as localities mentioned in letters from Hector to Hooker My Dear Hooker 2 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133B A locality map, showing the main towns and places mentioned by Hector is given in Figure 1. Because Hooker had visited New Zealand in 1841, Hector assumed that he was familiar with local geography. Hector was 17 years younger than Hooker, whom he regarded as a mentor. Hooker was able to keep him in touch with the latest scientific ideas in England as well as being the first port of call for advice or favours. But Hooker also had a lot to gain from the correspondence because Hector sent him plants and seeds (mainly collected by his botanist, John Buchanan) as well as supplying him with information about New Zealand. Hooker regularly sent extracts from Hector’s letters to the newly established scientific journal, Nature, whose readers were thus kept up to date with antipodean news ranging from debates about the extinction of the moa to descriptions of volcanic eruptions from Mounts Tongariro and Tarawera. In late 1868 Hooker sent his eldest son, William (Willie), on an extended trip to New Zealand under Hector’s care. Aged 16, Willie had health problems and no inclination for intellectual matters, and his father wondered if he might settle in New Zealand. Hector supervised him for 18 months, and then arranged for him to return to England in early 1870. Willie’s letters have been transcribed by Yaldwyn and Hobbs (1998, pp. 202-236), and give an interesting view of life in New Zealand through the eyes of a young man. Twenty years later Hooker sought Hector’s assistance for his son Brian, a geologist/mining engineer, who spent some time in New Zealand. The Hector letters All but two of the letters are held in the Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. The exceptions are two incomplete letters (dated 9-7-1862 and 19-7-1878) that were never sent to Hooker, and are held in the Te Papa archives. The Kew letters were sorted and catalogued by Lady Hyacinth Hooker, second wife of Sir Joseph Hooker. Unfortunately the photographs that Hector records having sent to Hooker became separated from the letters, and most have not been relocated. The Kew letters were microfilmed as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP), and a copy of the microfilm is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library (Micro-Ms-Coll-10). Most of the letters are catalogued as part of the Director’s Correspondence (DC) series, mainly in volume 174, but a few are filed elsewhere. Each transcription has the Kew file number as well as a microfilm number. A set of prints made from the microfilm are held in the Te Papa archives (MU000285/001/0001), and these were used as the main source for transcriptions. As the project progressed, it became clear that microfilming had often clipped out marginal notes, some copies were difficult to read, and a few pages were muddled. We obtained new digital scans from the Kew archives for 45 of the letters, and this enabled many of the problems to be resolved. We present the Hector to Hooker letters in date order with the individual letters serially numbered starting with Hector’s letter of 31 August 1860, before he had any idea of coming to New Zealand. There is a gap in the letters of about seven years, between 11 September 1886 and 7 February 1894, soon after Hooker retired from the directorship of Kew Gardens. There is evidence that some letters were written during this period, and it is hoped that these may still come to light. My Dear Hooker 3 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133B Table 1: Comparative chronology of James Hector and Joseph Hooker during the years that they corresponded (1860-1898) My Dear Hooker 4 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133B Partial or complete transcriptions of some of the letters have already been made by Tony Hocken and by Yaldwyn and Hobbs (1998), and these have been incorporated into the compilation that follows although in all cases we have checked the original letters. We have generally followed the style and conventions adopted by Yaldwyn and Hobbs (1998, p. 9). Hector’s spelling, punctuation, abbreviations and capitalisation have been retained as they appear in the original letters, although a few full stops have been added where they were obviously intended. Hector’s underlining has been retained, except for biological names and for ships, both of which are given in italics. Words that cannot be read, but for which a reasonable interpretation is suggested by the context are indicated by a question mark set in square brackets. Words that cannot be read at all are indicated by dashes. Acknowledgements We would like to thank a large number of people and organisations for their assistance during this project: • The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew kindly gave permission to reproduce the letters; • Kiri Ross-Jones, Stephanie Rolt and Tracey Wells from the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, answered many queries by email and arranged for selected letters to be scanned; • Jennifer Twist, Archivist at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, for her assistance in accessing the copies of the Hector letters and for answering our many queries; • Patrick Brownsey (Te Papa), Alan Beu and Dallas Mildenhall (GNS Science) for their advice on deciphering scientific terms; • Victoria University and GNS Science for a Summer Scholarship that supported Rowan Burns while undertaking the transcriptions; • The Brian Mason Scientific & Technical Trust for funding that allowed this volume to be prepared for publication; • Conal McCarthy (VUW Museum Studies Programme) for advice and assistance, and the School of Art History, Classics & Religious Studies for the use of facilities • GNS Science for the use of facilities and for supporting Simon Nathan as an Emeritus Scientist; • Maureen Coomer and Steve Edbrooke (GNS Science) for helpful comments on the manuscript; My Dear Hooker 5 GSNZ Miscellaneous Publication 133B • The staff of Archives New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library who assisted with access to microfilms and answered many queries; • Tony Hocken’s PhD thesis on Hector’s Otago career has been of great assistance, and we are grateful for his permission to use some of his transcriptions; • The compilation of letters from Hooker to Hector transcribed by Juliet Hobbs and John Yaldwyn has been a wonderful source that we have used repeatedly.