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To G. J. Romanes   14 September [1879]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington.S.E.R.

Sept. 14th

My dear Romanes

We send you our best thanks for your magnificent present of game. I have not tasted Black grouse for nearly half-a-century, when I killed some on my Father-in-laws land in Staffordshire!2

I hope that you are well & strong & do not give up all your time to shooting. Pray tell Mrs Romanes if you turn idle, I shall say it is her fault & being an old man shall scold her.3 But you have done too splendid work to turn idle, so I need not fear & shall never have audaciously to scold Mrs. Romanes. But I am writing great rubbish.— You refer to some Zoological Station on your coast, & I now remember seeing something about it, & that more money was wanted for apparatus. Therefore I send a cheque of 5.5.0 just to show my good will.—4

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

We went to the Lakes for 3 weeks to Coniston, & the scenery gave me more pleasure than I thought my soul, or whatever remains of it, was capable of feeling. We saw Ruskin several times & he was uncommonly pleasant.5

How does poor Grant Allen go on?6

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the reference to CD’s stay in Coniston (see n. 5, below).
2
Josiah Wedgwood II owned Maer Hall, Staffordshire.
3
Romanes had recently married Ethel Duncan.
4
A small zoological station was opened in Cowie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in August 1879; Nature reported the event and made an appeal for financial support (Nature, 14 August 1879, pp. 372–3). No letter from Romanes about the zoological station has been found.
5
The Darwins had stayed at Coniston in the Lake District from 2 to 27 August 1879 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)). John Ruskin’s house, Brantwood, overlooked Coniston Water. For more on the Darwins’ visit with Ruskin, see Healey 2001, pp. 301–6.
6
CD had sent a cheque to assist Grant Allen (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 23 July 1879 and n. 1).

Bibliography

Healey, Edna. 2001. Emma Darwin: the inspirational wife of a genius. London: Headline Book Publishing.

Summary

Thanks GJR for gift of game.

Contributes to [Naples] Zoological Station.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12229
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George John Romanes
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.567)
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12229,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12229.xml

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