Transcript
experts, clerical work etc.
I suppose we cannot go in for additions to our salaries? Which I should perhaps have broached, if at all, when the transference was first mooted, & not left the Board to accept the transfer first with my approval. It had best perhaps be a claim for pension, or future assistance, or aught else.
No time for more,
Ever your affectionate | J.D.Hooker [signature]
Showery weather. I am very busy landscape gardening & foresting. No answer from Charlie to Colvile.
ROYAL GARDENS KEW
Aug[ust] 22/[18]79
Dear Dyer*1,
I was so glad to hear that you have stuck to [Henry] Trimen*2 for Ceylon & [George Henry Kendrick] Thwaites' retirement. I will have nothing to do with sending out a 3rd ass[istan]t to Thwaites -- except such as are volunteers , & the C[olonial]. O[ffice]. sending him out on their sole responsibility.
I am drafting for your revision an answer to Mitford's minute, & will send it tomorrow. The £200 must be unreservedly in our hands except in regard to what is given to [John Reader] Jackson, &
that the Board must approve of. I should say that £25 is abundance. He has not been satisfactory of late at all -- is any how better under direct pressure from us & is past his best time of life & work, a most important consideration -- Then too I think he has not yet touched the maximum of his annual rise..
I am sure we can well spend the £175. – on Museum & Herbarium & Library. All all of which are involved in distribution of duplicates, purchases, fees to
experts, clerical work etc.
I suppose we cannot go in for additions to our salaries? Which I should perhaps have broached, if at all, when the transference was first mooted, & not left the Board to accept the transfer first with my approval. It had best perhaps be a claim for pension, or future assistance, or aught else.
No time for more,
Ever your affectionate | J.D.Hooker [signature]
Showery weather. I am very busy landscape gardening & foresting. No answer from Charlie to Colvile.
1. Sir William Thiselton-Dyer (1843--1928). British botanist and third Director of the Royal Botanic gardens, Kew (1885--1905). He succeeded Joseph Hooker in the role after serving as his Assistant Director for ten years. He also married Hooker's eldest daughter Harriet in 1877.
2. Henry Trimen (1843--1896). British botanist. Director of Royal Botanic Garden Peradeniya, Ceylon [Sri Lanka] for 16 years. Author of A hand-book of the Flora of Ceylon.
3. Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837--1916). British diplomat, collector and writer. From 1874 to 1886 Mitford was Secretary to HM Office of Works, involved in the lengthy restoration of the Tower of London and in landscaping parts of Hyde Park including "The Dell".
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