From E. A. Darwin 26 [November 1869 or later]1
26th
Dear Charles
I was talking to Sylvester yesterday and he asked ‘has your nephew a great liking for the army, has he a fancy for it, ah well or it is quite a pity that he does not leave it & go to Cambridge he’d be certain to become a fellow—2 I’nt that a compliment considering that the summum bonum3 of this life might be obtained—
His opponent he said (Cardew?) was a regular genius & might become anything—a nephew of Ld Westbury—4 he’ll have to go into F Galton’s list as well as Lenny who I see has already a niche in the temple of Fame5
Yours aff | E D
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Galton, Francis. 1869. Hereditary genius: an inquiry into its laws and consequences. London: Macmillan.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Summary
Has seen J. J. Sylvester again.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6539
- From
- Erasmus Alvey Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 105: B66
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6539,” accessed on 29 May 2023, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6539.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17
