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To T. H. Huxley   29 January [1874]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan. 29th

My dear Huxley

It was very good of you to write so long an account.2 Though the seance did tire you so much it was, I think, really worth the exertion, as the same sorts of things are done at all the seances, even at Crookes;3 & now to my mind an enormous weight of evidence would be requisite to make one believe in anything beyond mere trickery.— It is a very significant fact that Williams now regularly goes to Crookes.—4 I am pleased to think that I declared to all my family the day before yesterday, that the more I thought of all that I had heard happened at Queen Anne St, the more convinced I was that it was all imposture.—5 I would not have believed that H. Wedgwood would so easily have been humbugged:6 my theory was that Williams managed to get the two men on each side of him to hold each others hands, instead of his, & that he was thus free to perform his antics— I am very glad that I issued my ukase7 to you to attend

Yours affecty | Ch. Darwin

George is as much pleased at the result as I am—& attributes all the success to you

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from T. H. Huxley, 27 January 1874.
3
William Crookes investigated several mediums in the 1870s and 1880s and became convinced that some practitioners possessed genuine psychic abilities (ODNB).
4
Charles E. Williams was the medium at the séance reported on by Huxley (see letter from T. H. Huxley, 27 January 1874). An observer at a séance held at the home of Crookes claimed to have seen the materialisation of a spirit, ‘John King’, while Williams was asleep behind a curtain in the room with Ellen Crookes keeping her hand on his shoulder (Melton ed. 1996, p. 1406).
5
CD had been present briefly at a séance in the home of Erasmus Alvey Darwin in mid-January 1874, but did not remain for most of the proceedings (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 18 January [1874]).
6
Hensleigh Wedgwood had hosted the séance and was seated next to the medium when the movement of furniture took place (see letter from T. H. Huxley, 27 January 1874).
7
Ukase: a decree or edict, having the force of law, issued by the Russian emperor or government (OED).

Bibliography

Melton, J. Gordon, ed. 1996. Encyclopedia of occultism & parapsychology. 4th edition. 2 vols. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research.

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.

OED: The Oxford English dictionary. Being a corrected re-issue with an introduction, supplement and bibliography of a new English dictionary. Edited by James A. H. Murray, et al. 12 vols. and supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1970. A supplement to the Oxford English dictionary. 4 vols. Edited by R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1972–86. The Oxford English dictionary. 2d edition. 20 vols. Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989. Oxford English dictionary additional series. 3 vols. Edited by John Simpson et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993–7.

Summary

Discusses THH’s account of the séance. CD convinced all are fraudulent.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9258
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Thomas Henry Huxley
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 377)
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9258,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9258.xml

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

letter

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