To G. J. Romanes   9 April [1878]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

April 9th

My dear Romanes

I was just going to write to you, when I read in the newspapers the dreadful loss which you has suffered.2 I sympathise most truly with you & all your family. I did not even know that your sister was out of health.

My object in writing was to say that we leave home on the 27th, returning on the 13th of May,3 & to ask whether you could come here either before or after these dates; but probably you will not now feel inclined to do so. The onions are not yet up, & I doubt whether you will be able to do anything with them before your return to Scotland.4 Should you at any time whatever be inclined to come here, I beg you to inform me, & I will tell you whether the house will then be free of visitors.5

Believe me dear Romanes | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the death of Romanes’s sister (see n. 2, below).
2
Georgina Isabella Romanes, Romanes’s elder sister, died in London on 1 April 1878; her death was announced in The Times, 3 April 1878, p. 1.
3
From 27 April to 13 May 1878, CD visited William Erasmus Darwin in Southampton (‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
4
Romanes usually spent the summers at Dunskaith, the Romanes family home on the Cromarty Firth; he had built his own laboratory there, and also enjoyed the grouse and deer shooting (ODNB). He was carrying out grafting experiments in order to test CD’s hypothesis of pangenesis, and had asked CD to grow experimental onion plants in the garden at Down (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from Charles and Francis Darwin to G. J. Romanes, 5 December 1877).
5
Emma Darwin’s diary records that Romanes visited Down on 18 May 1878 (DAR 242).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11466,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11466