skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

To Edwin Lankester, Ray Society   [18–22 October 1850]1

8 Paragon Ramsgate

Owing to your letter not having been fully directed (Down Farnborough Kent is correct) it went a round & has had to follow me.— I shall return home in about 10 days;2 & I will then immediately look over my M.S. & write to you fully on the subject.3 I will endeavour not to give more trouble than I can help, but there are some preliminary questions which I must ask.

Pray believe me with thanks for your note | Your’s very faithfully | C. Darwin

Footnotes

CD’s ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I) records a journey on 14 October to Hartfield, Sussex (where Emma’s sisters Charlotte Langton and Elizabeth Wedgwood lived) and on 18 October to Ramsgate. Emma Darwin’s diary indicates that she and CD joined the children and their governess, who had travelled to Ramsgate on 3 October. According to Henrietta Litchfield, the trip to Ramsgate was made on account of Anne Darwin’s health, which had begun to break down in the summer of 1850 (Emma Darwin (1915) 2: 132). In Emma Darwin’s diary an entry for 27 June reads: ‘Annie first failed about this time’. See also Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I, n. 32.
According to his ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I) and Emma Darwin’s diary, CD left Ramsgate on 22 October.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Emma Darwin (1915): Emma Darwin: a century of family letters, 1792–1896. Edited by Henrietta Litchfield. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1915.

Summary

CD will write again when he returns to Down and has looked over his MS.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-1363
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Edwin Lankester; Ray Society
Sent from
Ramsgate
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.)
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1363,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1363.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 4

letter