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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Anthony Rich   28 December 1879

Chappell Croft, | Heene, Worthing.

Decr. 28. 1879.

My dear Mr. Darwin

I am thinking that you have in all probability followed an order which I heard given the other day to a set of industrious men—to “knock off—” and are at this moment enjoying a dignified ease, in the midst of your family, free from all worry of printer’s boy, “copy” or “revises”.— With that conviction I am unable to resist the temptation to break in upon your rest, and enquire how it has fared with you and yours during the last two months of winter; at the same time taking advantage of the opportunity to wish you a pleasant and a warmer new year. What has become of the Gulph Stream?1 Has it lost itself, or gone some other way round? We have had here two months of almost absolute calm and drought, with a constant succession of the heaviest and whitest white frosts that I ever remember. My shrubs, flowering evergreens, look pinched, and flabby, and flowerless, and some of them, I suspect, will come out of the winter in a very shattered condition. I hope that yours can show a bolder front; but I console myself with the reflection that mine were already getting too luxuriant, and that the natural pruning they are likely to receive from the long continuance of frost will save them from the relentless surgical operations which otherwise I should have had to inflict upon them myself a month or two hence. The Philadelphus you were so good as to send me looks well at present.2

I have just procured a little book from the pen of Mr. Huxley—“Crayfish”— If you ever see him, as I dare say you do, would you call me to his memory, and salute him for me.3 He is so pleasant. I had some hopes that I might have seen him here sometime in the course of last summer. But when I think of family claims, business occupations, and the hosts of old and agreeable friends and acquaintances all eager for a lien upon him, with which he must be constantly beset, I see that such a thought on my part does really approach a species of presumption.

In the year that is coming I seem to fancy that there will be a deal of quarelling and ill blood set up throughout the county, as is ever the case when political parties are violently excited, more especially if they are, or are thought to be, pretty equally divided.4 It is a satisfaction to me that here in my eyrie I shall be out of the turmoil, or danger of collision with either of the combatants—Tros Rutilusve fuit5 And that is the more fortunate because I have been through life one of those unwelcome, not to say despised, purists, who entertains a very firm conviction that nations as well as individuals ought to be guided in their relations with one another upon altruistic rather than egotistic principles—justice and truth, rather than force and chicanery—the court of honour rather than the court of Capel—the interests of mankind rather than the interest of the “Hebrew houses”.—6 I hope that I have not wearied, nor “riled” you!

Please to make my Complts. and respects to Mrs. Darwin; accept the same for yourself, and pass them round to all members of your family who may be willing to accept them—and believe me to be, very sincerely yours | Anthony Rich

Footnotes

An earlier spelling of Gulf Stream, an ocean current that brings warm water to the British Isles from the Gulf of Mexico.
No previous correspondence about CD’s sending a plant of Philadelphus (the genus of mock-orange) has been found.
Thomas Henry Huxley’s The crayfish: an introduction to the study of zoology (T. H. Huxley 1880a) had just been published. Huxley had visited Rich in 1878 (see Correspondence vol. 26, letter from T. H. Huxley, 28 December 1878).
In the latter part of 1879 and the early part of 1880, William Ewart Gladstone, the leader of the opposition Liberal party, was campaigning for the Midlothian constituency in Scotland, drawing national attention; he became prime minister in April 1880 (ODNB s.v. Gladstone, William Ewart).
Tros Rutulusne fuat, nulla discrimine habebo: Whether he be Trojan or Rutulian, I will make no distinction (Virgil, Aeneid 10: 108). The speaker is Jupiter or Jove, king of the gods, announcing his impartiality in the conflict between the Trojans and an Italian tribe. Rutulusve is an alternative reading.
The London Stock Exchange was in Capel Court in the City of London (Post Office London directory 1878). Hebrew houses: in this context, Jewish family-owned banking and finance companies, such as the Rothschilds and the Pereires (see, for example, Nottinghamshire Guardian, 16 December 1858, p. 3, and Standard, 22 July 1871, p. 5).

Bibliography

Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1880a. The crayfish. An introduction to the study of zoology. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.

Summary

New Year greetings.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12374
From
Anthony Rich
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Worthing
Source of text
DAR 176: 140
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12374,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12374.xml

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