personal friends a sum of 3000 pounds 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.

He was still astonishingly vigorous; at eighty-two he was "younger than
ever," though at ninety-three he confessed to being lazy in his old age.

In 1885 and subsequent years he was, as I gratefully remember, employed
in helping me in the _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_. I could not
have had a kinder or wiser collaborator.

Hooker's unaffected modesty came out again about this period. In 1887 he
was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, an honour which is the
pinn