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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Anthony Rich   20 November [1880]1

Chappell Croft, | Heene, Worthing.

Novr. 20.

My dear Mr. Darwin

When you read the postmark on the envelope of this letter, you will, I doubt not, guess that it comes to thank you at once for a copy of the “Movement of Plants” which Murray sent me yesterday.2 The meerest glance at its pages is sufficient to indicate the labour you must have had from first to last with such a book; and makes me doubt whether my “empty little egg shell of a head” (to appropriate the Slade Professor’s effective definition of his pupil’s cranium)3 will be able to master all the special details of the volume; but I hope to make myself thoroughly acquainted with the main argument they are intended to support, and furnish additional proof of the truth of that grand theory upon which you have spent so many years of your life, and which is to render your name illustrious for generations.—

I saw in the Papers some few weeks ago the death of Miss Wedgewood, at Downe, the lady I conclude about whom you wrote that Mrs. Darwin had had so much anxiety.4 Any thing which gives pain or grief to Mrs. Darwin would be a source of sorrow to me. To say more than that would be a sort of officious impertinence on my part.—

A source of sorrow there was likewise in the account you gave of my “friend George” (if he will consent to accept that title). I had persuaded myself that a summer’s yachting with relaxation from labour either mental or bodily, would have procured him a sufficient stock of robust health to confront the coming winter with a bold face. The wish it seems must have been father to the thought.5 You say that he can not make up his mind exactly where to go for the winter months. Has he ever tried Rome? In my youth I spent six consecutive winters there, having caught a serious cold soon after leaving Cambridge, that from neglect or other causes and frequent relapses seemed determined to settle itself upon my lungs, and not to quit its hold until it had settled me. At the end of those years I returned home free from all delicacy in my chest and have remained sound in that respect ever since. I spent the summers as well as the winters in Italy, because the journey in those days to England and back was a long, trying, and expensive one, before railways were known, and steam carriage by water only in its infancy. But now for a traveller like him such a journey would be little more than a pleasant excursion.—

I can read your writing without any difficulty; and accept your compliments upon mine with pleasure for the sake of my correspondents, who are, fortunately for them in other respects but few—

Very truly yours, Anthony Rich

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to Movement in plants, which was published in 1880.
Movement in plants was published by John Murray; Rich’s name appears on CD’s presentation list for the book (see Appendix IV).
The quotation is from a letter attributed to John Ruskin, who had been Slade Professor of art at Oxford; the letter was widely circulated in the press in November 1880, although Ruskin denied having written it (see Hamilton 1882, pp. 14–15).
Elizabeth Wedgwood, Emma Darwin’s sister, had died on 8 November 1880 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)). Her death was reported in The Times, 9 November 1880, p. 1.
See letter from Anthony Rich, 4 June 1880. CD’s letter to Rich has not been found; on George Howard Darwin’s continuing health problems, see the letter from G. H. Darwin, 19 November 1880. George accompanied Frances Anna and William Thomson on their yacht (see letter from G. H. Darwin, 27 July 1880 and n. 3).

Bibliography

Hamilton, Walter. 1882. The æsthetic movement in England. 3d edition. London: Reeves & Turner.

Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.

Summary

Thanks for Movement in plants.

Condolences on S. E. Wedgwood’s death.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12833
From
Anthony Rich
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Worthing
Source of text
DAR 176: 144
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12833,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12833.xml

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