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Letter 1293

Darwin, C. R. to Henslow, J. S.

17 Jan [1850]

    Summary Add

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    Announces birth of his fourth son, Leonard.

Transcription

Down Farnborough | Kent

Jan 17th

My dear Henslow

Mr Ransome has in the most magnificent manner, & owing, he says, to all that he has heard you say of me, presented me with a complete series of the Ipswich likenesses. In consequence I have you in duplicate & wish therefore to return one copy to you.— Will you tell me where I can have it left for you in London.— I have some copies of my own likeness, which you no doubt have in the series, otherwise I shd of course have been proud to have sent you one.— My wife says she never saw me with the smile, as engraved, but that otherwise that it is very like.— My said wife has been occupied these two days past in producing a fourth boy Darwin & seventh child! He is to be called Leonard,—a name I hold in affection from Cambridge & other associations.— I was so bold during my wifes confinement which are always rapid, as to administer Chloroform, before the Dr came & I kept her in a state of insensibility of 1 & 12 hours & she knew nothing from first pain till she heard that the child was born.— It is the grandest & most blessed of discoveries.

Yours affect | C. Darwin

I hope Mrs & Miss Henslow are well

I am at work again & believe I have succeeded in persuading our Clodhoppers to be enrolled in a Club.—

    Footnotes Add

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    f1 1293.f1
    George Ransome, secretary of the Ipswich Museum.
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    f2 1293.f2
    The collection of sixty lithograph portraits by Thomas Herbert Maguire, made for the Ipswich Museum. See letter to George Ransome, 25 October [1849], n. 1.
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    f3 1293.f3
    See letter to J. S. Henslow, [7 October 1849].
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    f4 1293.f4
    Leonard was the eighth child born to the Darwins, but Mary Eleanor, their third child, born in September 1842, had lived for only three weeks.
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    f5 1293.f5
    CD refers to Leonard Jenyns, Henslow's brother-in-law, with whom he made frequent entomological expeditions during his Cambridge undergraduate days, and to Henslow's oldest child, also called Leonard.
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    f6 1293.f6
    This refers to the establishment of the Down Friendly Society, a mutual insurance and benefit club, of which CD served as treasurer for thirty years (LL 1: 142).
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