From F. E. Abbot to W. E. Darwin   19 January 1876

My dear Sir,

I was greatly surprised and delighted by the evidence of such sympathy and goodwill, on the part of yourself and your world-famous father, as was furnished by your letter of Dec. 20.¹ How can I thank you warmly enough for such spontaneous generosity, transmitted in terms which went straight to my heart? That a gentleman whom I so reverence and love as your father should desire in this way to unite with his son in sending cheer and courage to one who has so many discouragements and difficulties to battle with, commands a gratitude I really know not how to express without seeming perhaps too demonstrative for our modern nil admirari² manners; but I cannot disguise the exultation and pleasure I feel in the thought that Charles Darwin and his son should be moved of their own accord to do so kind a thing to my struggling little Index.³ Nobody will ever know what it has cost me, or how near to my heart lay the plans I had to sacrifice in order to establish it; but, also, nobody will ever know what heart-felt happiness has come to me from from such sympathy in my work as you now show. Take my poor words, and guess the rest.⁴

The cheque for £20, realised $109.20, receipt of which I hereby acknowledge. As you and your father are so kind as to ask me to use this money in any way I think best for the Index, I will devote it to the “Paid Contributors’ Fund,” for which I have been obliged to ask no appropriations for a long time, with a recent exception. This money, therefore, will not be turned into the general treasury, or acknowledged in our weekly “Cash Receipts,” but deposited in this fund, for the use of which I render a special report to the directors once a year. If I made it pay for a share of stock, it would go to the Treasurer⁵ at once, and be beyond my control; whereas now I can use it for literary purposes without asking an appropriation. All I have had for these purposes has for two or three years come in a similar way—not much, at that. But this is most opportune, I do assure you, and will greatly aid me. The stock, alas, would do you no good, it is not even “fancy” stock!⁶

Please give to Mr. Darwin my most grateful thanks, and believe me, yours with a full heart, | Francis E. Abbot.