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From Hermann Müller   27 April 1880

Lippstadt

April 27th 1880.

My dear Sir

I thank you very heartily for your kind letter and for the Preface of the second edition of your “Forms of Flowers”, which indeed contains many notes new to me.1

I myself am very well, but my Brother Fritz has had a hard grief about 10 months ago and is as yet very depressed. One of his daughters, the most endowed of all, in Berlin in a paroxysm of melancholy has precipitated herself out of the window and immediately found her death.2

I am now preparing my work on alpine flowers which will contain numerous illustrations and wich, I hope, before the end of this year will be published.3

Some days ago I have read with the greatest interest and with sincere admiration for your grandfather your and Ernst Krauses “Erasmus Darwin” (second edition)4

With the best wishes for your further health, my dear Sir, | yours very sincerely | H. Müller.

Footnotes

1
CD’s letter has not been found. Forms of flowers 2d ed. was published in July 1880 (Freeman 1977); the preface to the second edition contained eight pages of new material based on information CD had received in correspondence, as well as on work published after the first edition. CD had mentioned articles by Müller on gynodioecy and androdioecy (species having both hermaphrodite and female or hermaphrodite and male flowers on different plants; see Forms of flowers 2d ed., pp. ix–x).
2
Fritz Müller’s daughter Rosa had travelled to Germany in 1876 and studied at the high school for girls in Regensburg. Although she did well in examinations, she failed to get a teaching position in Berlin, and on 12 June 1879, died in a fall from the window of her third-floor room (for more on her death and Fritz Müller’s reaction, see West 2016, pp. 153–4).
3
Müller’s work, Alpenblumen, ihre Befruchtung durch Insekten: und ihre Anpassungen an dieselben (Alpine flowers, their fertilisation through insect agency and adaptations for this; H. Müller 1881) was published in January 1881 (Möller ed. 1915–21, 2: 404).
4
The German version of Erasmus Darwin had just been published (Krause 1880; see letter from Ernst Krause, 19 April 1880).

Bibliography

Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1879.

Forms of flowers 2d ed.: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. 2d edition. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.

Freeman, Richard Broke. 1977. The works of Charles Darwin: an annotated bibliographical handlist. 2d edition. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson & Sons. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, Shoe String Press.

Krause, Ernst. 1880. Erasmus Darwin und seine Stellung in der Geschichte der Descendenz-Theorie von Ernst Krause. Mit seinem Lebens- und Charakterbilde von Charles Darwin. Leipzig: Ernst Günther.

Möller, Alfred, ed. 1915–21. Fritz Müller. Werke, Briefe und Leben. 3 vols in 5. Jena: Gustav Fischer.

Müller, Hermann. 1881a. Alpenblumen, ihre Befruchtung durch Insekten: und ihre Anpassungen an dieselben. Leipzig: W. Engelmann.

West, David A. 2016. Darwin’s man in Brazil: the evolving science of Fritz Müller. Gainsville, Fla.: University Press of Florida.

Summary

Fritz Müller’s daughter has committed suicide.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12592
From
Heinrich Ludwig Hermann (Hermann) Müller
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Lippstadt
Source of text
DAR 171: 314
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12592,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12592.xml

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