My dear Carpenter

I should have written to you long before this to have reminded you of your kind promise of running down here for a Sunday; but I have for last seven weeks been hoping against hope that my daughter would rapidly recover.—   She has now been in her bed with low fever for exactly this period; & is only just now beginning very slowly to recover; whenever she is strong enough to get her out of bed, we shall have to move somewhere for change of air; so that I am sorry to say we must defer your little visit here till the latter part of summer or autumn. I know that you go to your sea-side home in Scotland every year;² & I suppose we shall have to go, also, to sea-side for my daughters sake.—

I have been of late sufficiently well pitched into to please anybody, about my Book.—   But I care very little, which I entirely & absolutely owe to the generous & kind support of a very few men.— When I reflect, as I often do, that such men as Lyell, yourself, Hooker, & Huxley go a certain way with me, nothing will persuade me that I am so wholly & egregiously in error as many of my reviewers think.—

Pray do not trouble yourself to answer this.—

My dear Carpenter | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin