To B. J. Sulivan 20 December [1870]1
Down | Beckenham | Kent S.E.
Dec. 20th—
My dear Sulivan
I thank you cordially for your very kind letter of congratulation & for your interesting news.2 All my sons are an infinite satisfaction & none of them have ever given me an hour’s uneasiness.— My third son has just passed his examination at Cambridge for Natural Sciences, but he was unfortunate & tells me that he has done very badly & will be very low.—3 I had not heard of Lieut Musters’s surprising Journey: no doubt I shall see some account in Journal of Geograph. Socy.4 As for myself I keep much as usual, always ailing & grumbling, but able to do some hours work daily. I have lately been working rather too hard in the intolerably tedious labour of correcting the proofs & making uncouth English rather less uncouth for my new book on man, which will disgust you & many others.—5 It is now nearly done, otherwise it wd. have done for me; for my strength is at a very low ebb.—
It is enough to make one boil over with indignation to hear of the negligence & indifference of the Admiralty in sending your son to the coast of Africa.—6 If you go to Southampton again, do call on my son William: :7 he said he intended to call on you, if he went to see the Langtons at Bournemth.8
We are all fairly well. With kind remembrances to Lady Sulivan.9 Ever | My dear Sulivan | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
Thanks BJS for his congratulations [on Leonard Darwin’s success].
CD is "as usual, always ailing and grumbling".
Expects his new book [Descent] to "disgust you & many others".
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7400
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Bartholomew James Sulivan
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Sulivan family (private collection)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7400,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7400.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18