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Darwin Correspondence Project

From G. H. Darwin   [before 3 October 1873]1

New University Club, | St. James’s Street. S.W.

Dear Father,

I send you a draft of a letter to Nature (with a wide margin for corrections)—if you think it worth while correcting yr former letter.—2 And I think it is worth while, since everything you write attracts so much attention, that it is a pity to let people break their heads over your meaning. If you think of sending it you might have the proofs sent direct to me at Camb. & I wd. take the trouble off your hands.3 I think the letter expresses your meaning clearly— if it does’nt it is’nt worth your while to bother more about it.

I have been down to Greenwich this mg. to see Lenny & the observy.4 I am pretty well today tho’ I turn bilious every night.

Would you have sent to me by post (price 4d I think) the Sausage of beef tea wh. I gave to Mrs. Evans just before starting.5 Dr. C.6 wishes me to give up meat & everything solid when I get right down bad—& as I never know when that may be I shd. like to have it by me.—

I asked Dr. C about Edmund7 & he said his meaning was that he cd. never get well & that the only question was whether & for how long one cd. keep things Stationary & not that he was in a galloping consumption. He thinks it wd be wiser for him to go abroad for winter. I’m off tomorrow a.m.

Yrs | G H Darwin

Footnotes

The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to G. H. Darwin, 3 October [1873].
CD had published a letter in Nature, 25 September 1873, pp. 431–2, headed ‘On the males and complemental males of certain cirripedes, and on rudimentary structures’ (see letter to Nature, 20 September [1873]). George’s draft has not been found, but was a clarification of CD’s remarks on the variation of organs (see letter from G. H. Darwin to Nature, 4 October [1873]).
George took up residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1873 (ODNB).
Leonard Darwin was working at the School of Military Engineering in Chatham (ODNB). He may have visited the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in preparation for an expedition to observe the transit of Venus (Correspondence vol. 20, letter to Hubert Airy, 24 August 1872).
Margaret Evans was the cook at Down House.
Edmund Langton was George’s cousin.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

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

Sends CD a draft of a letter to Nature [see 9087], which he thinks expresses CD’s meaning.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9084
From
George Howard Darwin
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
New University Club
Source of text
DAR 210.2: 28
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9084,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9084.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21

letter