Darwin, C. R. to Huxley, T. H.
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Relates anecdote concerning the blind Henry Fawcett and the Bishop of Oxford; Fawcett proclaimed, within the other's hearing, that the Bishop had not read the Origin.
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Transcription
[Hartfield]
-- Wolstenholme
William) last night; that two Cambridge men, one a blind man named Fawcett, were at the Brit. Assoc.; and after the meeting they happened to be near the B. of Oxford; and the one asked Fawcett whether he thought the Bishop had ever read the Origin; and the blind man shouted out in a loud voice ``Oh no, I would swear he has never read a word of it.'' The Bishop bounced round with an awful scowl and was just going to pitch into him, when he saw that he was blind, and said nothing.—
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- f1 2887.f1
Dated by the relationship to the preceding letter. - +
- f2 2887.f2
Joseph Wolstenholme, a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, was William Erasmus Darwin's mathematics tutor. - +
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See preceding letter. - +
- f4 2887.f4
Henry Fawcett, a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, lost his sight in a shooting accident in 1858 (DNB). The reference is to Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford. See also Appendix VI.