From Ida Darwin to R. B. Litchfield 8 February 1881

Dear Richard,

The commission I spoke of so mysteriously is this. I want to get a copy of the little Mozart photogravure which you gave me, to give away, & I should like to have it framed just like mine. I was going to ask you if you would order this for me & ask the shop to send it to Miss E. Erskine 66. Oxford Terrace. W. & the bill to me. It will be very kind if you will do this & I shall be very grateful. That little pic. has given me ever so much pleasure, & has become one of my favorite household gods.

F. Balfour was dining here last night & said he had written many imaginary letters to Butler but certainly will not write a real one. He has written to Krause to urge him not to do anything more unless he can shew that the date of Uncle Ch’s letter to K. was before the celebrated April Butler advertisemt. & H. was going talk to him today about his—F.M.B’s—writing to still further represent to (he is not going to write to Romanes) Romanes what a pity it was to do anything more. F.M.B. says truly the most extraordinary part of it all is, how anyone who has been to Down & seen Uncle Charles, can think of him as a hypocrite or anything else bad.

I enclose two letters sent me by Hen^ta. & another to show the sort of logic we grow at Cambridge.

Yours ever | I. Darwin

from the Lab. to borrow some compasses. Today it is lovely to look at but so cold again. I enclose a note from M^rs. Stokes to shew how right you were in yr advice that H. shd go without me.

I am going to ask Miss Gladstone if she will come & keep me company.

I was so surprised to hear that Lily was in town. I had no idea she was coming up w. Laura. It is horrible to think of that poor babs having his way paved to the grave by such coddling. I suppose it is reaction, thinking that she tried to care Eddy by not coddling him. She will do the reverse with Morgan. You are wonderfully candid about Berry. I can’t get up one little spark of care abt him, Wdn’t it be horrid to watch his parents characteristics dawning in him? Apparently Alfred’s “Is” & “Mys” are coming out strong in him already. He says “Dora’s my nurse” “that’s my ganma” “shan’t call my bed her bed”.

Poor dear Laura; she sounds hardly up to her days in London. I hope she may not be knocked up by them. I do wish she had been allowed to go to you when she wd have felt more her own mistress than at 31. I daresay Effie wd not have liked it so well. What a strange position L’s is between all of us. It has been striking me afresh just lately, knowing that E. has been telling her of our visit to Bry. Sq. as if L’s sympathies were all on her side.

Mary told me she was v. m. struck w. Tom’s looking so ill, so different to the summer when he was with us at Botolph. We have just been reading Butler’s answer to Romanes. What do you think of it & what will it call forth? F. Balfour is furious w. the paragraph wh. ends “this wd not be at all in M^r. Darwin’s manner”, because Butler takes no notice whatever of Krause’s emphatic statement that Uncle Charles wrote to tell him to take no notice of B⁠⟨⁠u⁠⟩⁠tler. What a pity the controve⁠⟨⁠rs⁠⟩⁠y was ever opened.