To A. P. Tilt 16 December 1881
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.) [4 Bryanston Street, London.]
Dec. 16th 1881
Sir
A letter from you addressed to my late brother Erasmus Darwin of Q. Anne St has been forwarded to me.1 This is clearly a mistake as he had nothing to do with the Congress. I suppose that your letter was intended for me; but I was not a member of the Congress, though I came to London to be introduced to some of the members.2 If my memory does not deceive me I was asked to Lady Burdett-Coutts party, but I did not attend.3 Under these circumstances it wd. clearly be inappropriate to introduce my likeness in your Composition.— To save, however, further correspondence, I may add that if you shd still wish to introduce my likeness, I shall be happy to send you an excellent, unpublished photograph of myself, made by my son Lieut: Darwin R.E.,4 for I have not time to spare or strength to give you a sitting.
Sir | Your obd. servt. | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
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.
Sakula, Alex. 1982. Baroness Burdett-Coutts’ garden party: the International Medical Congress, London, 1881. Medical History 26: 183–90.
Summary
Explains he was not a member of the congress [7th International Medical Conference, August 1881], and hence it would be inappropriate to introduce his likeness into the correspondent’s composition.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13554
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Archibald Preston Tilt
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.605)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13554,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13554.xml
