To W. E. Darwin 5 [November 1858]1
Down.
5th
My dear Gulielmus
I am not surprised at Furniture &c coming to £27; though the papering will be a dead loss.— I enclose draft for £30, which must be backed by you.2 Try for discount.— A man of business like you will of course carefully keep receipts.— Please acknowledge receipt of draft.— You will now have £12 or £15 in hand, which I hope will last for some little time. But I well know the first term must be extra expensive.
Lizzie was perfectly delighted with your note & we all laughed heartily at it.—3 It set her off twittering in first-rate style.
We are all rather extra well & jolly here, & the Boys are going to have 5s. worth of fireworks & a bon-fire.—4 Tell us whether you attend the discussions at Union Club: shall you ever get up pluck to speak? I hope you may. I heard a funny & authentic story at Moor Park of a very nervous man, who knew he shd. have to return thanks at a public dinner; so made a long speech & learnt it by heart; but when he got up he ⟨forgot⟩ to speak out & ⟨section excised⟩ action & gesticulations, which ought to have accompanied the speech: the audience were so good natured, that whenever he made much action, they cheered him; & he never found out that he had been quite silent for the whole quarter of an hour; & the next morning the non-speaker said to my friend that he ⟨ ⟩ had got through
Footnotes
Summary
Discusses matters relating to WED’s first term [at Cambridge].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2353
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- William Erasmus Darwin
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- DAR 210.6: 33
- Physical description
- inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2353,” accessed on 2 October 2023, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2353.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7