From Emma Darwin to W. E. Darwin [14 May 1862]

My dear William

I do hope you will manage Cambridge but you must not do any thing very depraved. It rather depends upon my being able to get home on Saturday whether I go or not & also how Horace is but if every thing is smooth I sh^d enjoy it very much. I read aloud you letter to the admiration of the audience who all thought it very idiomatic & grand. (If you go to Kew you must call on Miss Pugh who is in lodgings on the green & it would please her much also mortify her if not) The Hookers have been most kind to her.

You see by George's letter what a dangerous accident Lenny's might have been. I went over there yesterday to make sure that no fever had come on & found the poor fish quite right but only limping. M^rs Harding M^r Wrigley's sister who is housekeeper had cuddled him & taken the greatest care of him & said there never was so good a patient   I buttered her & M^r Wrigley but I did not find him a good subject for buttering being dry & shy. Then I called on M^r Pritchard also on the buttering principle. He shewed me all his hot houses which are very superior & full of curious & beautiful things especially the fernery also the Chapel which is really a beautiful Chapel but I found I c^d not praise it nearly enough so I c^d only follow him at a humble distance. Miss L. & Horace came home yesterday. The last 3 days he had fallen back but he did the journey well & played about very briskly in the afternoon & evening he also looks better.

The boys shewed me their bedroom & the bath &c. & they were walking me to the Station (not Lenny of course) when we were delayed by ices & so I had to take a cab to New-Wandsworth only a mile & quite a pleasant way of coming instead of the odious Boro' & London B. Good bye | my dear old man