To J. S. Henslow 4 August [1858]
Norfolk House | Shanklin | Is. of Wight
Augst 4th.
My dear Henslow
Your letter of the 31st has been forwarded to me here & received only this morning.1 I grieve most sincerely to miss your visit, but we do not return home till the 13th. or 14th. & my wife, perhaps not till later; if the sea does my eldest girl good.2 We were driven from home by Scarlet Fever, which caused the death of our poor dear little youngest child & was very bad in the village. We had other & bad illness in the House. As yet the sea has not done much for us.—
I the more regret that we shall not see you at Down at the time proposed, (but I hope at some other time) as I shd. be extremely glad (& grateful) to hear your objections to my species speculations.3
The difficulties which I can see are many & grave. I am now writing a pretty full abstract of all my notions on this subject.—
My dear Henslow | Your old affectionate pupil | C. Darwin
P.S. | I want to beg a favour of you, which will cost you writing a note, viz can you advise me what I ought to allow my eldest son who goes to X Coll. in October per annum to cover all his expence whatever.—4 I can afford & shd. wish to give him a liberal allowance, but not to encourage extravagance.
Footnotes
Summary
CD and his family have come to the seashore, driven from home by scarlet fever at Down, death [of Charles Waring Darwin], and other family illness. Sorry to miss seeing JSH.
Would be grateful to hear his objections to CD’s species speculations.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2320
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Stevens Henslow
- Sent from
- Shanklin
- Source of text
- DAR 93: A53–4
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2320,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2320.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7