From Anthony Rich 20 November [1880]1
Chappell Croft, | Heene, Worthing.
Novr. 20.
My dear Mr. Darwin
When you read the postmark on the envelope of this letter, you will, I doubt not, guess that it comes to thank you at once for a copy of the “Movement of Plants” which Murray sent me yesterday.2 The meerest glance at its pages is sufficient to indicate the labour you must have had from first to last with such a book; and makes me doubt whether my “empty little egg shell of a head” (to appropriate the Slade Professor’s effective definition of his pupil’s cranium)3 will be able to master all the special details of the volume; but I hope to make myself thoroughly acquainted with the main argument they are intended to support, and furnish additional proof of the truth of that grand theory upon which you have spent so many years of your life, and which is to render your name illustrious for generations.—
I saw in the Papers some few weeks ago the death of Miss Wedgewood, at Downe, the lady I conclude about whom you wrote that Mrs. Darwin had had so much anxiety.4 Any thing which gives pain or grief to Mrs. Darwin would be a source of sorrow to me. To say more than that would be a sort of officious impertinence on my part.—
A source of sorrow there was likewise in the account you gave of my “friend George” (if he will consent to accept that title). I had persuaded myself that a summer’s yachting with relaxation from labour either mental or bodily, would have procured him a sufficient stock of robust health to confront the coming winter with a bold face. The wish it seems must have been father to the thought.5 You say that he can not make up his mind exactly where to go for the winter months. Has he ever tried Rome? In my youth I spent six consecutive winters there, having caught a serious cold soon after leaving Cambridge, that from neglect or other causes and frequent relapses seemed determined to settle itself upon my lungs, and not to quit its hold until it had settled me. At the end of those years I returned home free from all delicacy in my chest and have remained sound in that respect ever since. I spent the summers as well as the winters in Italy, because the journey in those days to England and back was a long, trying, and expensive one, before railways were known, and steam carriage by water only in its infancy. But now for a traveller like him such a journey would be little more than a pleasant excursion.—
I can read your writing without any difficulty; and accept your compliments upon mine with pleasure for the sake of my correspondents, who are, fortunately for them in other respects but few—
Very truly yours, Anthony Rich
Footnotes
Bibliography
Hamilton, Walter. 1882. The æsthetic movement in England. 3d edition. London: Reeves & Turner.
Movement in plants: The power of movement in plants. By Charles Darwin. Assisted by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
Summary
Thanks for Movement in plants.
Condolences on S. E. Wedgwood’s death.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-12833
- From
- Anthony Rich
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Worthing
- Source of text
- DAR 176: 144
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12833,” accessed on 3 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12833.xml