KEW, [CHARLTON HOUSE], September 20, 1869.
The skies were propitious to us in Switzerland, and the only very warm day was the one which we passed, very pleasantly indeed, with Godet at Neufchâtel. Thence we went to Paris, stopping at Dijon en route....
Oliver and Baker are here steadily at work. Dr. Masters[79] drops in now and then. Dr. Hooker, after some respite, was at home. Dr. Thomson returned last week; and now Bentham is here also, fresh from the Continent.
At British Museum I find Dr. Carruthers[80] and the new assistant, Dr. Trimen. Mr. Bennett still, I think, away on his holiday. Botanical and other news I have none. I send you this mere apology for a letter, in the hope of getting something from you; and later I may have more to say. Can I be of any use to you here?
Remember me kindly to Dr. Müller,[81] to whom best thanks for all the friendly services which he has rendered me.
Our united kind regards to Madame De Candolle, and to your son (from whom I still expect a photograph), and my wife’s to yourself. We have the most pleasant recollections of our brief visit to Geneva.
I don’t know when you would get a response to your welcome letter of August 22, which reached us here in due course, so long as things went on in the ordinary way,--I working at botany as much as possible, but presiding here over a considerable household, some sight-seeing and much intermittent visiting. But now that I am all alone, and my wife with the rest of them _girareing_ over the north of England, sober reflection has its hour, and I remember the friends that are far away, perhaps on the shores of Italian lakes, and long to know how they get on and what they are about. To attain which knowledge and put myself _en rapport_ I should first, I know, give you some account of ourselves and our doings.
But where to begin? I think we wrote you from Paris. We had three weeks there, I mostly at the Jardin des Plantes till near dinner-time....
For ourselves, after cool weather in Paris we came in for a piece of very sultry weather in London, where we had to stay awhile, our lodgings here not being available till about 15th September. So after staying to the Harvard boat-race,--which I saw from the umpire’s boat, and Mrs. Gray, with good Miss S., from some grounds above Fulham,--we set off on a little round of visits, first to the Darwins’, near Bromley, then to the Churches’ in Somersetshire, a pleasant country rectory and a delightful couple. You remember the university sermons we had up the Nile were his. Next we passed a day with an old bachelor botanical acquaintance near Taunton, who makes a capital squire; then to Torquay for three days (with a daughter of Sir William Hooker, and her husband, Dr. Lombe), one of which I devoted to an excursion down the river Dart from Totness to Dartmouth (which the English think much of, but you dwellers on the Hudson would not), and to a view of that quaint little town. On our way back we had an hour at Exeter to see the cathedral; a night and morning at Salisbury, the cathedral as to exterior, site, and all, and beautiful spire, one of the most satisfactory in England; took a glance at Wilton, a peep into old George Herbert’s little church of Bemerton and into his house and garden; stopped over a train at Romsey to see the fine Norman abbey church, and to Winchester, most interesting cathedral as to the interior, Winchester school and the old Hospital of St. Cross. Then, on returning to London, we settled down here, and after a few days were joined by the rest of our party from France.