skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

From G. H. Darwin   [29 August 1881]1

6 Queen Ann St

Monday

Dear Father,

I am sorry you do not agree about employing Salt but both W. & I thought it best & I still think so.2 Salt drew the will & was one of the witnesses only a year ago & has a number of papers & title deeds connected with the Estate so that it wd. have been impossible to have had nothing to do with him. The agents are a very large firm of solicitors in Lincolns Inn Fields & the head partner seems a gentleman & clear headed man.3

I have left the will there this morning.

We have talked the matter over with R. & have settled on the Bromley route with funeral at 12.30.4 All the letters are written & the arrangements made. If however you have a strong objection telegraph & I will do it again.

I have been about 3 hrs at Herries & looking over certificates5 & on the go since 8.30 & have more letters to write

I’ll do the best I can & hope things will go without much hitch. I shall drive down with the hearse on Thursday morning

Yrs affec. | G H Darwin

Footnotes

The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from G. H. Darwin, 28 August 1881. The Monday following 28 August 1881 was 29 August.
George and William Erasmus Darwin were executors of Erasmus Alvey Darwin’s will. George Moultrie Salt was partner in the firm Salt & Sons, Shrewsbury. CD had expressed reservations about using Salt’s London agents (see letter to G. H. Darwin, [28 August 1881]).
The London agents were Paterson, Snow, & Bloxam of 25 Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the senior partner was William Benjamin Paterson (Law list 1881).
R. is probably Richard Buckley Litchfield. Erasmus Alvey Darwin was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Down.
Herries, Farquhar, Chapman & Co. were a London banking firm (Post Office London directory 1878).

Summary

E. A. Darwin’s funeral arrangements.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13303
From
George Howard Darwin
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Queen Anne St, 6
Source of text
DAR 210.2: 91
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13303,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13303.xml

letter