Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton
JHC428
Hotel Italia, Rome, Italy
JDH/2/16 f.72
Thiselton-Dyer, William Turner and Harriet Anne
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
10-3-1881
© Descendants of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
Letters to Thiselton-Dyer
The Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
English
Original MS
7 page letter over 2 folios
 

JDH reports that he has arrived in Rome. En route the party stopped in Paris & dined with Lavalie[?] & Copen[?], the latter may leave his herbarium to RBG Kew. They then travelled through Chambery & Turin, where they saw the Champollion Collection of Egyptian Antiquities but JDH forgot to call on Giovanni Arcangeli who is a professor there. JDH admired the view of the Alps towards Monte Viso from an 'Alpine club' house at Turin. After Turin they went to Genoa & tried unsuccessfully to call on the Marquis Giacomo Doria. They also saw the Doria Natural History Museum with a splendid collection of animals from the Malay Islands & called on Federico Delpino. JDH revisited the palaces with the Van Dyke paintings he saw in 1874. He calls the Genoa botanic garden 'small & miserable'. From Genoa they took the train to Pisa where they met up with Betsy White as was. JDH describes the Duomo they visited in Pisa. He also describes the scenery en route from Pisa to Rome. They will next go to Castellammare & stay at the Hotel Quisisana in Naples before returning to Rome. They have briefly seen Miss May Symonds & her brother. JDH notes how sparsely populated, though cultivated, the plains of Italy are. He has seen a few wild flowers: anemones & violets. Curiously the bark of almost all the trees south of the Alps is very white: Planes, Poplars, Mulberries & Elms.

Transcript

From Genoa we took the train to Pisa, arriving in time to take one view of the Duomo, which is to my mind the most satisfactory Italian Cathedral I know. The lines of the interior are most beautiful & the pink decorations quite in keeping throughout. The Cathedral[,] Baptistry & Tower stand in an open area, & the effect by moonlight is delicious (but it was awfully cold!) -- Next morning early we revisited it & spent all the time we could in the Campo Santo. Where the wonderful frescos deserve any amount of study. We left by the train at 11 am, meeting Betsy White (that was) at the station. -- she seemed so glad to see us but looked so wretchedly pale thin & with face discoloured red & white that I did not know her -- pray say nothing of this at Kew as it would grieve her parents so if it came to their ears. She said she was very well & her baby too, & asked warmly[?] for you all.

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Rome
Hotel Italia
March 10/[18]81
Dearest Harriet*1 & William*2,
As the seeing [of] Rome is an event in one's life I think I must celebrate my arrival here by writing to you: though I have seen nothing yet but walls, ruins, & a lovely view from the Pincian Hill (on which our hotel is situated). My first observation is on the climate; it is horrid a brilliant sky & sun & a wind that both stings & powders with dust. Deceived by the glare of the sun I went out before breakfast without a coat & am now sneezing in consequence.-- However I have as yet nothing worth telling you about Rome, & shall work back a little in our journey. We spent 4 days in Paris, dining on Monday with the Lavalier[?]

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a very gentlemanly agreeable & apparently wealthy man. We were over persuaded into staying over the Tuesday to dine with Mr. Copen[?], who was alone, his wife & family being in the country & I am sorry to say we were most dreadfully bored. What can have possessed him to ask 2 ladies to a a bachelors' party, during which no attempt of any kind was made to entertain them! & as to ourselves he simply praised away till we were tired. He has a fine house, a very rich Herbarium -- which he says he will leave leave to a garden ours in fact if the latter it caters for Botany, if not it is to be offered to the Gov[ernmen]t for fr.500,000, & if they won't purchase it is to go as a from free gift to Kew. It is very rich in European & Oriental plants including all Bunge's
From Paris we went to Chambery & next day to Turin where we saw the Champollion Collection of Egyptian Antiquities*3 which is very fine. I most stupidly

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had packed my "Morren"*4 & did not remember that [Giovanni] Archangeli [Arcangeli] was Professor, or I should have called on him.
*5 last There is here a very interesting "Alpine Club" house, commanding a superb view & pretty[?] sketches of Alpine scenery; from it you have a grand view of the Alps from Monte Rosa to Monte Viso.
From Turin to Genoa where we stopped 3 nights. We called at once on the Marquis Doria*6 to whom both Ball & Beccari had written, informing him of our arrival. The serv[an]t told us he was at the Municipal Chambers, & we left our cards & addresses, but he did not return our call! We saw the Doria Museum of Nat[ural] Hist[ory] in which the Mammals & Birds of the Malay Islands are splendid. We called on [Federico] Delpino*7, who is a shriveled up Italian, & seemed afraid of the Ladies -- he was most polite in his offers[?] of civility, but rather glad when our backs were turned we thought. We I revisited the old Palaces that I saw in 1874 & where the Van Dykes are superb beyond conception. The Bot[anical] Gardens are small & miserable.

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From Genoa we took the train to Pisa, arriving in time to take one view of the Duomo, which is to my mind the most satisfactory Italian Cathedral I know. The lines of the interior are most beautiful & the pink decorations quite in keeping throughout. The Cathedral[,] Baptistry & Tower stand in an open area, & the effect by moonlight is delicious (but it was awfully cold!) -- Next morning early we revisited it & spent all the time we could in the Campo Santo. Where the wonderful frescos deserve any amount of study. We left by the train at 11 am, meeting Betsy White (that was) at the station. -- she seemed so glad to see us but looked so wretchedly pale thin & with face discoloured red & white that I did not know her -- pray say nothing of this at Kew as it would grieve her parents so if it came to their ears. She said she was very well & her baby too, & asked warmly[?] for you all.

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From Pisa we came on here along the Great line which is flat throughout & often marshy -- a most thinly populated though widely cultivated country -- I was very much struck with the absence of rivers or even streams all the way between the Arno & the Tiber it looked as if the country had been recently raised from the sea & that the waters had not had time to collect themselves into definite channels yet there were hills all along to the East. We arrived by bright cold moonlight, & leave tomorrow for Castellam[m]are. Hotel Quisisana where we shall be off & on for a fortnight doing Naples & all the neighbourhood from thence we shall return to Rome by the 4th April before which I shall write again. We have just caught Miss (May) Symonds & her brother here, they leave tomorrow for the North.
I am very much struck with the scantiness of the population in all central Italy that we traversed -- we could see very small & very scattered villages in the

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hills far back from the plains, & it is evident that the peasants must come a long way to their work every day. We are fortunate in travelling before the foliage is on the trees which in this flat country would impede the view along the plains. Of wild flowers we have seen few but purple anemones & violets & not many of these. Not a tree is even in bud bud yet. -- One curious feature is the whiteness of the bark of almost all the trees S[outh] of the Alps, Planes, Poplars, Mulberries, & Elms.
With Our best love to the children. Please let Willy [William Henslow Hooker] know, & thank him for his letter & enclosure of 11th just received.
Address till end of month Hotel Quisisana, Castellam[m]are Pro[vince] de Naples, Italy.
Ever your most affectionate father, J D Hooker [signature]

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Mr. Beccari has written wishing to meet us at Rome, if you see Mr. Ball please tell him this.

ENDNOTES


1. Harriet Anne Thiselton--Dyer née Hooker (1854--1945) Botanical illustrator, principally for Curtis' Botanical Magazine between 1878 and 1880. Daughter of JDH and Frances Harriet Henslow. In 1877 married William Thiselton--Dyer.
2. Sir William Turner 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 previously held professorships at the Royal Agricultural College Cirencester, Royal College of Science for Ireland and Royal Horticultural Society. He married Hooker's eldest daughter Harriet in 1877.
3. Champollion Collection of Egyptian Antiquities. Housed in the Museo Egizio, Turin. Collected by Jean-François Champollion (1790--1832). Egyptologist, and linguist. Appointed Curator of Egyptology in the Louvre, 1826.
4. Possibly Charles Jaques Eduard Morren's unfinished Bromeliaceae.
5. An arrow and square bracket direct that the following two and a half lines are to be inserted here from the bottom of page 3 and top of page 4.
6. Marquis Giacomo Doria (1840--1913). Italian naturalist and politician. Founder of the Natural History Museum in Genoa, which now bears his name.
7. Federico Delpino (1833--1905) Italian botanist specialising in pollination.

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