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To J. L. Stokes   2 January [1847]1

Down Farnborough | Kent

Jan 2d

Dear Stokes

Your magnificent books arrived quite safely yesterday.—2

You once gave me hopes of seeing you here. I have asked some of our mutual friends here on Saturday the 16th to stay over Sunday; will you give us the pleasure of joining them.3 I hope Falconer & Forbes will come.4 Your best way here is by the Croydon Train which leaves London Bridge at 3o.15’ & stop at Sydenham Station & take a Fly (above 9 Miles Eheu)5 with Forbes & Falconer, if, as I expect, one or both come. Please send me a line & I hope it won’t be inconvenient to you to come.

I expect Hooker & Waterhouse6 here.

Very truly Yours | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to Stokes’s publication (Stokes 1846) and by the invitation to visit Down House on 16 January; see n. 3 below.
2
CD refers to the two volumes of Stokes 1846. The volumes are not in the Darwin Library–CUL or the Darwin Library–Down. See also Correspondence vol. 3, letter to J. L. Stokes, [c. 26 November 1846] and n. 2.
3
Joseph Dalton Hooker was also invited for Saturday 16 January 1847, and Charles and Mary Lyell may have come the same day or shortly after; other guests, ‘the old set’, were evidently invited for the Sunday (Correspondence vol. 3, letter to J. D. Hooker, [December 1846 – January 1847], and Correspondence vol. 4, letter to Charles Lyell, [23 January 1847]).
5
Sydenham was on the South-eastern line. The Railway Chronicle travelling chart, circa 1846, comments that the South-eastern line, ‘instead of pursuing the old coach-road, through Rochester and Canterbury, as was proposed, was compelled by the benighted, and now repentant, opposition of the inhabitants of North Kent to take a circuitous route through the Weald of Kent’. Eheu: ‘Alas!’ (Latin).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.4 Croydon] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1050A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1050A