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Darwin Correspondence Project

From GHDarwin   [6 or 7 August 1874]1

Dear Mother

Read this to F if the letter is’nt gone— if not suppress it2

Dear Father,

If you’ve not sent off yr. letter to Murray I want to say a few more words.

Murray may bonâ fide make it an absolute rule not to meddle in any way with his Editor,3 & if he does so, does’nt it appear rather hard on him that you shd. cut him. No doubt you wd’nt feel the same to him after the failure to get my letter inserted, as before, but you have but little personal dealing with him except by letter & it wd. be a great annoyance to go to a new publisher   Do you not think it wd. be sufficient then if you were to merely urge it on him strongly & not push it to the point of a cut.

I’m a grown man now & shd. stand on my own footing, & if it is refused I’m really no worse off than if I had sent my letter direct to the Editor & it had been refused.

Jackson4 said, when I told him you thought you wd cut Murray, that he doubted whether it was quite fair to put pressure on an Editor, who is probably quite indept. of the publisher in his opinions, thro’ the publisher.

Of course if you quite feel you cd’nt stand going on with Murray in case of refusal there’s nothing more to be said.

How wd. it be to delay till Monday when we can talk about it?

Yours | G H Darwin

Footnotes

The date is established by the relationship between this letter, the letter from G. H. Darwin, 6 [August] 1874, and the letter to GHDarwin, [8 August 1874].
F: father, i.e. CD. George refers to the letter CD was planning to write to John Murray asking him to have the editor of the Quarterly Review print George’s response to a hostile reference to his article on marriage (see GHDarwin 1873a, [Mivart] 1874, and letter from GH. Darwin, 6 [August] 1874).
Murray was the publisher of the Quarterly Review; the editor was William Smith. Murray was also CD’s publisher.
Henry Jackson was a friend of George’s at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Bibliography

[Mivart, St George Jackson.] 1874b. Primitive man: Tylor and Lubbock. [Essay review of the works of John Lubbock and Edward Burnett Tylor.] Quarterly Review 137 (1874): 40–77.

Summary

Urges CD not to break with Murray even if he does not force the editor [of Q. Rev.] to insert GHD’s letter [in response to Mivart’s attack]. Murray may have a rule not to meddle with editor.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9592
From
George Howard Darwin
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
unstated
Source of text
DAR 210.2: 40
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9592,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9592.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 22

letter