From W. E. Darwin   29 April [1879]1

Bank, Southampton,

Ap 29th.

Dear Father,

This is a hyacinth growing downwards in Hankinson’s garden.2 It had to be dug out and a flower was developed underground though small & bleached. I have the hyacinth. I enclose a letter from Leslie Stephens, perhaps Frank could look to Cradocks Memoirs.3

Your affect son | W.ED4

diagram

[Enclosure]

13, Hyde Park Gate South. | S.W.

25.4.79

My dear Mr Darwin,

I am ashamed of having left your note so long unanswered.5 My wife was unwell for a day or two & then I was unwell & consequent idleness has left a legacy of business.6 I am getting free again & I mean to go to the Club in a day or two & see whether I can hunt up anything for you.

I am afraid, however, that I am not likely to find anything worth while. My own knowledge of your great-grandfather comes from Miss Seward chiefly & I presume that you know all that she had to say—a spiteful old précieuse as she seems to have been.7

I have been trying to think of any other probable sources; but I have so far beaten my brains to no purpose. However as I have said I will have a look round & let you know if anything occurs worth notice. It would be a real pleasure to me to help your father in any way. You know the remarks upon Dr Darwin in Lewes’s histy of philosophy of course.8

Your’s very truly | Leslie Stephen

I hope that if you are coming to town again at any time, you will let us know. We should be very glad to see you here.

There are, I have just found, 2 or 3 trifling anecdotes of Dr Darwin & a letter from him in Cradock’s Memoirs Vol IV pp. 143, 198, 270.9 They are hardly worth turning to.

CD annotations

Enclosure:
6.2 143,] tick above pencil
6.2 Cradock’s … to. 6.3] triple scored in margin pencil
1
The year is established by the date of the enclosure.
2
Robert Chatfield Hankinson was a partner with William in the Town and County Bank.
3
Francis Darwin (see the enclosure from Leslie Stephen and n. 9, below).
4
The diagram is reproduced here at 50 per cent of its original size.
5
CD’s note has not been found.
6
Julia Prinsep Stephen was Stephen’s second wife.
7
Anna Seward had written a memoir of Erasmus Darwin, CD’s grandfather (Seward 1804). CD thought the book a ‘wretched production’ (see letter to Ernst Krause, 19 March 1879). ‘Précieuses’ was a term that had been applied to the witty and educated women who attended female salons in seventeenth-century Paris, and who were seen by many as affected, over-refined promoters of fastidious standards of behaviour. Molière mocked them at the time in his play Les Précieuses ridicules (1659). See Gaines ed. 2002, pp. 389–90.
8
George Henry Lewes discussed Erasmus Darwin in his History of philosophy because he considered him to be ‘one of the psychologists who aimed at establishing the physiological basis of mental phenomena’ (Lewes 1867, 2: 356).
9
The fourth volume of Joseph Cradock’s memoirs, compiled after his death by John Bowyer Nichols, contained a letter from Erasmus Darwin praising Cradock’s book Village memoirs (Cradock [1774?]) as well as anecdotes about Erasmus’s views on religion and his stutter (Cradock 1828, 4: iii, 143–4, 198, 270–1).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12017F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12017F