From Arthur Mellersh 2 February 1872
Fernhurst | Haslemere
February 2d. | 1872
My dear Darwin,
I am very gratified at receiving the Photograph as well as your kind letter, which I should have answered before but the continued wet had crowded so many shooting engagements into the last few days that I had no time and I am now rather done.1 I had procured your Photo, somewhere in London, but it is not so good as that you sent me which I think is excellent.2 I send mine which I had taken the last time I went to the Levèe;3 I have none in plain clothes some of which were thought to be better. The beard alters me, though I do not think I am so changed as the “Claimant”.4
But I do not think I should know King if I were to meet him.5 I met two years ago the late 1st. Lt. of my last ship the Forte, and could not call his name to mind until he told me, when of course I knew him at once.6 Would not Sergeant Ballantyne like to hear this.7 I am now living in sight of the ruins of the pretty cottage where I was born, and surrounded by land that was my Fathers; and I have managed to buy a “corner of about 40 acres of wood land part of a very old inheritance but I am a tenant of the great Architect Mr. Salvin who builds the ugliest houses I ever saw, though his own is rather pretty.8
His second son Osgood tells me he knows you well, and I think he is a very nice fellow.9
I am my dear Darwin | Yours very sincerely | A. Mellersh
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Navy list: The navy list. London: John Murray; Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. 1815–1900.
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.
OED: The Oxford English dictionary. Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, et al. 12 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1970. A supplement to the Oxford English dictionary. 4 vols. Edited by R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972–86. The Oxford English dictionary. 2d edition. 20 vols. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. Oxford English dictionary additional series. 3 vols. Edited by John Simpson et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993–7.
Summary
Exchange of photographs among CD, AM, and Philip G. King.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8196
- From
- Arthur Mellersh
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Fernhurst
- Source of text
- DAR 171: 147
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8196,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8196.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 20
