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To Dear Friend1   3 January 1822

January the 3 1822

My dear friend

I hope you like that inquisitive man Monseur Beodoes,2 when I was a boy I used to think him a most impertinent man but you may differ in your opinion, he always used to be asking about my father and other things; In you last letter you told me you knew, who, my sisters at Shrewsbury were talking of, I think Papa3   you will inform me in return of post

I remain—yours Tobe Case4

P.S. Mr Bayly5 was formerly a devlish boor but I dare say he is not so to you

Footnotes

1
The friend has not been identified. See this volume, Supplement, letter to Dear Friend, 1 January 1822, n. 1.
2
‘Monseur Beodoes’ has not been identified. The reference may be to the poet and physician Thomas Lovell Beddoes, whose father, the physician Thomas Beddoes, had been a close friend of the Wedgwood and Darwin families (B. Wedgwood and Wedgwood 1980). ‘Beddoes’ was, however, a fairly common name in early-nineteenth-century Shropshire.
3
CD refers to two or more of his sisters, Marianne, Caroline Sarah, Susan Elizabeth, and Emily Catherine Darwin, and to his father, Robert Waring Darwin.
4
The form of the signature is unexplained. CD had previously attended a school run by George Augustus Case in Shrewsbury (Autobiography, p. 22 and n. 1).
5
CD possibly refers to William Bayley, of the banking firm Rocke, Eyton, Campbell, Leighton and Bayley in Market Square, Shrewsbury, who had been instructed to act in a financial transaction on Robert Waring Darwin’s behalf in January 1820 (DAR 227.6: 339 and 340, Commercial directory for Shropshire). CD’s sister Emily Catherine wrote in her letter of 15 January [1826] that a Major Bayley desired ‘most particularly’ to be remembered to CD (Correspondence vol. 1).

Bibliography

Wedgwood, Barbara and Wedgwood, Hensleigh. 1980. The Wedgwood circle, 1730–1897: four generations of a family and their friends. London: Studio Vista.

Summary

"Monseur Beodoes" is inquisitive and impertinent; Mr Bayly "was formerly a devlish boor". Asks who his sisters have been talking about.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-1H
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Friend
Source of text
DAR 271/1/1
Physical description
AL

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1H,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1H.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 13 (Supplement)

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