My dear Fox

It was very good of you to write to me in the midst of all your troubles, though you seem to have got over some of them in the recovery of your wife’s & own health.— I had not heard lately of your mother’s health, & am sorry to hear so poor an account.¹ But [as] she does not suffer much, that is the great thing; for mere life I do not think is much valued by the old. What a time you must have had of it, when you had to go backwards & forwards!—²

We are all pretty well & our eldest daughter is improving. I can see daylight through my work & am now finally correcting my chapters for press; & I hope in month or six weeks to have proof-sheets. I am weary of my work. It is a very odd thing that I have no sensation that I overwork my brain; but facts compel me to conclude that my Brain was never formed for much thinking.— We are resolved to go for 2 or 3 months, when I have finished to Ilkley or some such place, to see if I can anyhow give my health a good start, for it certainly has been wretched of late, & has incapacitated me for everything.³ You do me injustice when you think that I work for fame: I value it to a certain extent; but, if I know myself, I work from a sort of instinct to try to make out truth.⁴

How glad I should be if you could sometime come to Down; especially when I get a little better, as I still hope to be.— We have set up a Billiard Table, & I find it does me a deal of good, & drives the horrid species out of my head.—

Farewell my dear old friend.— | Yours affecty | C. Darwin

One of my Boys is turned Coleopterist, & how the sight of a fresh Brachinus crepitans did remind me of that famous trip to Whittlesea meer.—⁵

Pray give my very kind remembrances to your sisters.—

I most sincerely hope that M^rs Fox’s sufferings will not increase.