skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

From John Farr   10 July 1873

North Hill | Highgate N

July 10th 1873

Dear Sir,

I thank you kindly for your Photograph and letter.1 I shall prize them greatly, as coming from one who has changed the current of human thought to a considerable extent, by a process of right reasoning based on accumulated facts.

I shall read your works with additional zest, knowing you are alive and well. Your photograph represents you aged, but I hope you will be spared many years to enjoy the calm serenity of a well spent life. And when I feel inclined to write to you, I will do so without apology or hesitation.

I have very much admired the writings of the brothers Andrew & George Comb, now deceased; I daresay you are acquainted with the writings of both. I mean George Comb on the “Constitution of Man”, and Andrew on “Physiology”.2

I am, Dear Sir | yours sincerely | John Farr

C. Darwin Esqr

Footnotes

1
The letter from CD has not been found. For Farr’s request, see the letter from John Farr, 7 July 1873.
2
G. Combe 1828 used phrenology to promote a secular society based on natural laws. It had a wide readership amongst the reform-minded working and middle classes in Britain, selling 100,000 copies by 1860 (see Cooter 1984, pp. 120–33). It appears on CD’s list ‘Books to be read 1852–60’ in his reading notebooks (see Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV). Andrew Combe’s Principles of physiology applied to the preservation of health (A. Combe 1834) also drew on phrenological principles (ODNB).

Bibliography

Combe, Andrew. 1834. The principles of physiology applied to the preservation of health, and to the improvement of physical and mental education. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black.

Combe, George. 1828. The constitution of man considered in relation to external objects. Edinburgh: J. Anderson, jun.

Cooter, Roger. 1984. The cultural meaning of popular science: phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth-century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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

Thanks for photograph.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-8973
From
John Farr
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Highgate
Source of text
DAR 164: 28
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8973,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8973.xml

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

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge