From Emma Darwin to Leonard Darwin 26 March [1876?]

My dear Leo—

You & George have been very good in writing so often & so long. I am sadly afraid that [Vesuvius] burst out in a most provoking way just after you left; but it seems only to have smoked & not flamed. It was provoking your having such unbecoming weather at Naples— We had just the same 50 years ago in the month of April or May— & I remember I quite disliked the dull grey promontory of Pausilippo like a slug crawling into the sea.

Sicily seems to have been the cream of your tour— We have had another burst of severe winter weather last week with a deepish snow. We had Ellen Tollet & as she never went out & could talk most pleasantly for any number of hours it did not matter. She had up the Bath chair & made pilgrimages to A^t Eliz & to the Franks. I am afraid G. will be starved coming across France— I expect he will be here before the 30^th which was the day he fixed. It was g^t good fortune for him having you, & he said he felt v. dull after you were gone with no inclination to loiter. The Litches have been at home nearly a fortnight. Hen. has been feverish & unwell again & R. has been confined to the house more than a week with a scalded foot, but no mischief about it.

Mr Finden has been making us very lively this week, by a series of accusations against the schoolmaster, some of which have been proved to be false, & some such as flirting with the schoolmistress, are difficult to disprove— The master says that his real crime is going to the Reading Room & teaching at the night school— There is one good thing for him, that the whole village is anxious to prove M^r F. in the wrong. Frank is now a parish magnate & in the thick of it. They wanted to make him Church warden; but that was too absurd & he got off— Mr Snow is quite happy telling all the long & the large— By the way he told Horace that his brother who is Steward to Lord de Grey—met Lord Alfred Ker who had been dining with you on his ship—being an admiral— Do you know any thing about it?

I suppose you heard that the Stipa paper went off well & Frank read & spoke it quite clearly— Amys gigantic drawings were excellent— Every body seems in a fury with the Queen doing so snoobish a thing as taking the title of Empress— Some of Dizzy’s speeches on the subject are so indiscreet & silly that I think he must have lowered himself very much.

The Times boils over so constantly about it that I think he must think the Tories shaking in their seats.

Yours my dear old man | E. D—

G. had a bitterly cold journey to Ancona after you parted from him—but did not catch cold—