Ferdinand von Mueller

Sunday

1

The date is inferred from that of the official letter to which M refers: 15 June 1873 was a Sunday.

Allow me, honored and dear Sir, to accompany the official letter, now transmitted,

2

M to J. Francis, 15 June 1873 (in this edition as 73-06-15c).

with an inofficial note to yourself. I hope that with your usual kindness you will allow me to explain to you with candor, that I am mainly prompted to seek for a time the transfer of my services to the phytologic field, to save my professional honor before my great Directorial Colleagues in Europe and elsewhere. However important my experience for field operations may be, I must feel, that I am no longer able to bear the privations of exploring as I was able when the elasticity of youth. It weighs also severely on my mind, that I must inavoidably retard by my absense from my homestudies the issue of the seventh and eighth volumes of the great work, on which I am engaged with Bentham,

3

Bentham (1863-78). The work was completed in 7 volumes.

whom at the age of nearly 70 I ought not to detain for any lengthened period, and who without my cooperation and without the great Melbourne collections cannot proceed.

Altogether I should have far preferred to retire in private life; but the very small income attached to my office was always so heavily taxed not only scientifically but also departmentally, that I could save nothing and even my original private property has been sunk into my Department. Though my medical advisers or any other medical testimony could well bear witness, that I would be fairly entitled to a retiring allowance as almost worn out in my 21 years Victorian service, yet that allowance under the ordinary clauses of the civil service act would be so small, that I could not maintain out of it my dignity socially nor my labors scientifically. A very large sum was voted as a Donation by the British Parliament to Dr. Hooker. An equally large sum was voted a few years ago to the Rev. T.N. Clarke by the Sydney Parliament.

4

Presumably M means to refer to Rev. W. B. Clarke, to whom in 1861 the NSW Government awarded a grant of £3,000 for his part in the discovery of the Australian goldfields. In accordance with William Hooker's will offering his personal library and herbarium to the nation, the British Government purchased from his estate 'over 1 million herbarium specimens, 4000 volumes of publications, and about 29,000 letters dating from 1810 from over 4400 correspondents, bound in 76 volumes' (S. FitzGerald (2009), accessed 15 November 2020), the proceeds of which, £7,000, were then inherited by Joseph Hooker.

A freehold was presented to my late friend Baron von Liebig by his fellow citizens, when he was raised to his rank of a hereditary nobleman. Not having ever enjoyed similar favors, I fear, I must remain reluctantly with fading strength and blighted hopes of my life in official harness; altho could I have retired with the abolishment of the office of Gov. Botanist, honorably into private life on ever so modest a competency I would have continued my literary labors and afforded information, whenever I could amidst my fellow colonists here.

Of course £300 are utterly inadequate to conduct a Department of which the Museum is but a small branch, even if the office of Gov. Botanist and Director of bot garden were separable.