My dear M^r Darwin

I received a friendly letter from you in the early part of last spring just before you were about to settle down to several months slavery under the imperious rule of Murray and his printer’s devils; and as discretion is the better part of many other virtues besides valour, I thought it my duty not to add the worry of an idle correspondent to the irritations of incessant calls from the printers boy for “more copy”.—¹ So that letter has gone unacknowledged up to the present moment. But the spring has long passed, the summer is gone, and autumn is well on the move; the “Movement of Plants” figures conspicuously amongst M’^s Announcements; and the severe weather which we have lately experienced will probably have driven you home again, if you had gone out to refresh yourself by sea side or on mountain tops as a “reward of merit” for past exertions. Thus my time has come round when I think that I may fairly write and ask how it has fared with you and yours during all that time—and now. For myself I have got through the season without any special checks or ailments; the summer on the whole I have found to be a pleasant one, warm and sunshiny without being over hot, and, with the exception of a single fortnight about the time which is supposed to obey the rules of S^t. Swithin, pleasantly dry underfoot and overhead so as to allow of sitting in the open air without discomfort.— —²

The Philadelphus you so kindly sent to me flourished and flourishes.³ It has made shoots six feet long direct from the ground, and their wood has thoroughly ripened. I suppose that it will be proper to shorten them by and by, if the plant is to be kept under control. It bore three magnificent bunches of flowers, which seemed to have special attraction for a particular kind of fly with a black body and sharp pointed tail nearly twice the length of the common house fly. There were always four or five of them about the flowers with their heads deep into the bottom of the cups, like bees. I never observed these flies about any other of the flowers in the garden, or at any other time or any where else.—

I possess likewise a fine plant of Berberis Darwinii,⁴ which has flourished proudly with its long sprays of orange coloured blossoms in my plantation for ten goodly years, but is now getting out of all bounds, with a ragged, stragling, and dissipated air. Should it not be cut down, or shortened? or is it, as some plants I understand are given to be, recalcitrant to surgical operations? Do pray enlighten my darkness.—

Sometime during the summer I saw an announcement in one of the Papers of the marriage of a M^r. Huxley, of Penge, I think, and fancied that it might be a son of the Professor.⁵ The name is not a common one, as far as I know. If I could have satisfied myself that it was so, I am not sure that I would not have made it an excuse for writing a note to him, trusting that congratulation upon such an event, in itself an act of civility, would not be liable to the charge of officiousness

Yes, truly must Sir J. Lubbock laugh in his sleeve whenever he passes through that glorious borough—incorruptible of course—which dismissed him from its bosom to be embraced by the intelligent constituency of the London University—a seat for life, I imagine, and no “honest independent woters” to study.⁶ And I thoroughly agree with you that science is a more useful, a much better friend, to all of us than law. The worst members that a constituency can choose for a seat in parliament have always appeared to me to be those of the legal profession. It is so obvious that they can only seek the seat for their own private interests; and the political arena forms but an indifferent school for a seat on the bench of Justice.—

Now then it is time for me to relieve you from the trouble of reading these lucubrations; and how can I do that better than by asking you to call me to the remembrance of M^rs. Darwin, and to present her with my compliments and respects?— I hope that she thoroughly approves the change that has taken place in the personel of our Government. It is so pleasant to talk politics to ladies. They are such excellent politicians—when they are on our sides. Though I cannot expect that M^rs. Darwin will approve of all my wilful radicalism, I feel sure that she will feel not less satisfaction than I do in the thought that we are not to be Orientalized—at least for the present, or, let us hope, for evermore;⁷ for which time I intend to remain | Very truly yours | Anthony Rich