From W. W. Reade 18 December [1874]1
10 Beaumont Street | Portland Place | W.
Dec. 18.
My dear Sir
I am located as above, and shall most likely be here some considerable time; I hope that if you pay your annual visit to London you will favour me with a visit.2
I met Colenso last night at dinner and we had a chat about the Caffres & negroes. He declares positively that the Zulus & other tribes of S. Africa usually called Caffres are simply negroes—perfect specimens of whom he has seen from Sierra Leone & other parts of the West Coast. This is the first testimony from a trustworthy resident of those parts which I have ever been able to obtain though as you may remember I always held that theory—basing it on photographs, verbal descriptions in books &c—3
I am likely to do a good deal of reading next year in books of travel & so forth: if there is any point you want evidence upon, besides those touched upon in the Descent4 please to let me know— But do not otherwise trouble to answer this. I hope that this weather is not injurious to you, and that you are able to work at those subjects which no one but yourself is capable of treating— I was surprised to find in Livingstone’s Journals a reference to your Researches on Plants: in his first great work there are many ‘Facts for Darwin’ as I dare say you have observed.5
Believe me | yours very truly | Winwood Reade
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Cox, George W. 1888. The life of John William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal. 2 vols. London: W. Ridgway.
Dubow, Saul. 1995. Scientific racism in modern South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1997. The mismeasure of man. Revised and expanded edition. London: Penguin Books.
Livingstone, David. 1857. Missionary travels and researches in South Africa; including a sketch of sixteen years’ residence in the interior of Africa, and a journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the west coast; thence across the Continent, down the river Zambesi, to the Eastern Ocean. London: John Murray.
Reade, William Winwood. 1872. The martyrdom of man. London: Trübner & Co.
Stocking, George W., Jr. 1987. Victorian anthropology. New York: The Free Press. London: Collier Macmillan.
Summary
Bishop J. W. Colenso supports his old contention that the Kaffirs (including Zulus of South Africa) are Negroes.
[Horace Waller’s] The last journals of David Livingstone [in central Africa (1874)] cites CD’s plant research and has many facts "for Darwin".
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9764
- From
- William Winwood Reade
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- London, Beaumont St, 10
- Source of text
- DAR 176: 72
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9764,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9764.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 22