Ɛpsilon

To ?   23 October 1879

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

Oct 23d 1879

My dear Sir

I am much obliged for your note. The report of Mr Nash’s death was very precise, & we were deeply grieved; but we since heard through the Desborough’s that the report was false. I am heartily glad that he has recovered. Mr Nash & his wife have always appeared about the best man & woman whom we have ever known.—1

Believe me yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

1
The note has not been found. Wallis and Louisa A’hmuty Nash had lived in Down during the 1870s, before emigrating to Oregon in 1879. Mary Desborough, Louisa’s widowed mother, had also lived in Down. The source of the false report has not been identified, but apparently reached Down on 6 October 1879 (letter from Emma Darwin to Ida Farrer, [6 October 1879] (DAR 258: 651)). In his book Two years in Oregon (Nash 1882, p. 100), Wallis Nash refers to ‘a sharp attack of illness’ in the autumn of 1879. Nash wrote a memoir of the Darwins as his neighbours in Down in Nash 1919, chapter 14.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12268F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12268F