To C. V. Riley 1 July [1871]1
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
July 1
My dear Sir
I shall be delighted to see you here, but I am bound to tell you that my health is very precarious & that I cannot possibly talk more with anyone than for or 1 hour.2 Under these circumstances you may not think it worth while to come so far. I truly grieve to appear so inhospitable, but I have no choice, & suffer much afterwards if I excite myself by much conversation. […] I wrote a few weeks ago to you at St. Louis thanking you for your most interesting & valuable Report on Noxious Insects.3
Pray forgive my inhospitality & believe me | My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch Darwin
P.S. If I do not hear, I shall expect you on Thursday
Some people will have to see my family on Tuesday & Wednesday, which made me fix Thursday4
Footnotes
Bibliography
ANB: American national biography. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. and supplement. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999–2002.
Riley, Charles Valentine. 1869–77. Annual reports on the noxious, beneficial, and other, insects of the State of Missouri. Jefferson City, Mo.: Regan & Edwards, public printer [and others].
Riley, Charles Valentine. 1882. Darwin’s work in entomology. [Read 12 May 1882.] Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 1 (1880–2): 70–80.
Summary
Would be delighted to see CVR at Down, but is in precarious health and cannot talk to anyone for more than an hour.
Wrote to CVR a few weeks ago to thank him for his book [see 7794].
Will expect CVR on Thursday unless he hears otherwise.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7846F
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Charles Valentine Riley
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Profiles in History (dealers) (Fall 1996 catalogue)
- Physical description
- ALS ** 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7846F,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7846F.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19