From W. E. Darwin to Emma Darwin 13 October [1878]

My dear Mother,

It is some days since I last wrote, but I have been on the move and S. wrote a few days ago.

on Wednesday last Theo & I started for Stockbridge in order to see their old home built by their great grandfather who was first speaker of Congress, and to call upon the numbers of Sedgwick relations & connections who own places near Stockbridge & Lenox. Sara very wisely gave up at last & determined to stay with her aunts, as she knew the journey & the great number of visits would be too much; I was partly glad as her associations were chiefly painful with the house, as she left it at 18 or 19 after having missed her fathr & mother who both died there after lingering illnesses   Theodora was so young that she only has a child's memory of it all.

It is 5 hours by rail to Stockbridge and part of the route is very fine, something like Northumberland, and w. crossed the Connecticut river views; unluckily the foliage this year is unusually dull, with only here & there a patch of flame coloured maple; but the general colouring is a beautiful yellow orange & green with enough brilliant bits for my taste, though I should have liked to have seen the hillsides the red blaze they describe.

The home at Stockbridge now belongs to a cousin H. Sedgwick a N. Y. lawyer, as Arthur to whom it was left could not afford or thought it wiser not to keep it.

It is a charming old wooden house surrounded by very fine trees, placed above an old steep bank of the Honsatonia river which is covered with grass & appletrees, and below a flat green meadow evidently a river deposit but now fine rich grass, and beyond the meadow the river winds with fine trees overhanging it, and above these trees one sees the hills, which are like the hills in the lake country only not so high but covered to the top with maple & birch & chestnut and hickory and Weymouth pine, the colouring of the whole with the sun on it being a rich orane gold tinted with green and scarlet.

Stockbridge is mainly one long village street with old wooden houses on each side surrounded with fine trees, some houses being near the road & some farther back on each side of the street, which is as broad as Portland Place, there are fine Elms trees making an irregular avenue and nice grass walks flanking the carriage road. The village is in an uneven plain in which the Housantonia winds very much and is quite surrounded by the hills which vary very beautifully in outline; in every direction there are pretty walks and beautiful drives, and pretty houses in small parks and several nice lakes within a few miles. I think altogether it is the most beautiful country of the kind I have ever seen; though the entire clottering of the hills with trees makes it different from the lake country, the "Stockbridge Mirror" round which we drove reminded me of our lakes a good deal. This is my first day here (Niagara) & I travelled all last night & have been on the go all day so I go to bed— 10.15. P. M. I shall not bore you with Niagara tomorrow

Monday evening We have had another splendid day for Niagara, and have seeen eveything including moonlight on the falls, which makes them look like a tremendous wall of snow with a thin white cloud across it; it is altogether wonderfully grand & beautiful, but I find it difficult to realize the immense size; the rapids above the falls as seen from Goat island are very beautiful; on the island we met Dean Stanley and Grove whom I knew & Harper Frank's acquaintance of St. George's who is travelling about as their D^r, so we joined them and they took us in their carriage round the island & were v. pleasant.

This afternoon Arthur & I drove down to a place called "top of the Mountain", from where we see Niagara as it comes out of the Gorge, and we could see it flowing below us as far as Ontario; the escarpment is very steep and stretches away with promontory after promontory standing out into the plain and I suppose was once the shore of Ontario, and the view is very grand. Tomorrow we go to Trenton falls near Utica which is beautiful in foliage and picturesquness & will not compete with Niagara— on Thursday we go down the Hudson to N. York so I get back to Cambridge on Saturday or Sunday for my last fortnight alas.

To go back to Stockbridge, it was very pleasant having Theo. and as a cousin of Sara's a M^rs Butler lent us a capital carriage pair we drove all round the country on Thiursday & Friday and I made 11 or 12 calls under Theo's wing, she arranged it all capitally, and settled how many minutes we must be given to each call— We dined out & had people to tea & dinner all the time so that I saw everybody. It seems a most social life, and the whole place gives me a very homelike feeling as if generation after generation had settled down there & away from the bustle of the world.

I met two ladies who live there of whom I knew friends, one a cousin of Major Wilson R. E. (gone to the Balkans) another a M^rs Edwards who had a house for sometime near the [Whitmores] & knew everyone at Bromley; she said Frank's lecture first put her in the way of ventilating her house.

It feels very strange being so far from Sara and I have not heard for a day or two, when she last wrote she said she felt as if she were transformed into S. S. again   I think her Aunts will enjoy her all to themselves. I am bound to be back by end of this week as I have so many calls to make. I am quite well now; I was quite seedy till I got to Stockbridge, but I found the air just like Ilkley only more bracing and in 24 hours I was quite a different being.

The Dean & Grove go back with us on the Bothnia on the 6^th which will be pleasant for Sara, if not for me; but perhaps I shall not be such a dyspeptic wretch this time.

Goodbye Dear Moth I hope you are all well. I received your pleasant letter at Stockbridge unopened as the stern Sara would not open it, also Hen's letter to me!

Your affect son | W. E. D.