Ɛpsilon

From J. W. Judd   26 June 1878

Art and Science Department | South Kensington | Science Schools | South Kensington | S.W.

26th. June 1878.

My dear Sir,

My friend Dr. Neumayr of Vienna has asked me to forward to you the accompanying paper, which he hopes may offer some observations not unworthy of your interest.1

Dr. Neumayr is still carrying on, under the auspices of the University of Vienna, his researches on the geology of the Turkish Empire—but his work has of course been somewhat interrupted of late. He has now just returned from his wedding-tour in the North of Italy;— he has married the daughter of his old friend and teacher Prof. Suess.2

Your kind interest in myself and my studies—the sense of which affords me the strongest incentive and encouragement to labour—emboldens me to trouble you for a moment, with a statement of my own affairs. My class is now transferred to this building, and next year I hope to commence a course of practical instruction in geology in illustration of the lectures. Prof. Huxley has powerfully aided me in realizing this object of my ambition for a long time past.3

I am also about to take the same important step in life that Dr. Neumayr has, and believe my future wife is calculated by education and taste to sympathize with and aid me in my studies.4 I know that you will pardon this reference to my own prospects and hopes; and I hope that the partial recovery of health of which you spoke to me as having taken place in your own case, and in which we all so greatly rejoiced, has continued—and that you are able to work under less adverse conditions than formerly.

Remembering all your kind sympathy and friendly encouragement, | Believe me to remain, | Yours very dutifully, | John W. Judd

1
Judd had sent Melchior Neumayr’s paper ‘Ueber unvermittelt auftretende Cephalopodentypen im Jura Mittel-Europa’s’ (On abruptly occurring cephalopod types in the Jura of Central Europe; Neumayr 1878); a copy is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
2
Neumayr was professor extraordinarius of palaeontology at the University of Vienna; his work was interrupted by the Balkan crisis (see letter to R. A. T. Gascoyne-Cecil, [18 May 1878] and n. 2). On 2 April 1878, he married Paula Aloisia Suess, the daughter of his doctoral supervisor Eduard Suess (Svojtka et al. 2009, p. 358 n. 3).
3
In 1877, Judd had been appointed professor of geology at the Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London. Soon afterwards it moved to South Kensington, where there was room to establish a practical course in geology (Nature, 9 March 1916, p. 37). Thomas Henry Huxley had taught a practical course in biology since that department of the School of Mines had moved to South Kensington in 1872 (T. H. Huxley and Martin 1875, pp. vi–vii). CD had supported Judd’s election to the Royal Society of London; see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from J. W. Judd, 24 April 1877.
4
Judd married Jeannie Frances Jeyes on 10 August 1878.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11569,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11569