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Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. B. Innes   1 May [1862]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

May 1st

Dear Innes

I have bad news about Quiz: perhaps you had better not tell your son for a time.2 He has been killed; it was done instantaneously by a gun. We were forced to do this, for he would fly at poor people, & one day bit a child & two days after a beggar woman & we had an awful row about it. There was another reason we could not stop him having fearful battle with Tartar; I had such a job one day in separating them both streaming with blood; & this was incessantly happening. Poor little Quiz had, also, got so asthmatic that he could not run, so that altogether we had no choice left us, though we were very sorry about it.

I hope the world goes well with you all; it has not of late with us, for we have had our youngest boy strangely ill, with singular involuntary movements, for two months;3 but at last he is decidedly better. We feared much that there was mischief in the Brain, but it now seems clear that it was all sympathetic with irritation of stomach.

I know of no news of any sort here; we all go on exactly as usual as quiet as mice.

Dear Innes | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to Horace Darwin’s illness (see n. 3, below).
‘Quiz’ was the pet dog of Innes’s son John William Brodie Innes. When the Innes family moved to Scotland at the turn of the year they left Quiz with the Darwins (see letter from J. B. Innes, 2 January [1862] and n. 3).
Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242) records that Horace Darwin was seriously ill throughout the early part of 1862.

Summary

Quiz has had to be killed because he became vicious.

Horace Darwin strangely ill.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-3528
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Brodie Innes
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Cleveland Health Sciences Library (Robert M. Stecher collection)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3528,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3528.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10

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