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To Leslie Stephen   11 January 1881

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

Jan 11 1881

Dear Leslie Stephen.—

It has suddenly occurred to me that you might possibly like to place the Life of Erasmus Darwin in your Library, so I have told Murray to send you a copy.—1

I fear that you will have groaned over my daughter, Henrietta’s, long letter, & will have thought the whole lot of us the most unreasonable of human beings.2 The sole excuse which I can offer is that I shall value your verdict most highly & act on it implicitly. What you said to my daughter at some dinner-party consoled me much, for it is difficult to avoid being pained at being publicly called in ones old age a liar, owing to having unintentionally made a small omission, which omission, as far as I can see, makes no difference to Mr. Butler or anyone else.3 Hoping for your forgiveness & begging you not to add to your trouble by acknowledging this note, I remain

Yours sincerely & obliged | Charles Darwin

1
Erasmus Darwin was published by John Murray; no letter to Murray has been found.
3
Samuel Butler had accused CD of making a false statement (see Butler 1880, pp. 58–62). In the preface to Erasmus Darwin, p. iv, CD had stated that Ernst Krause’s essay, which comprised the second part of the book, was completed before the publication of Butler’s Evolution, old and new (Butler 1879), whereas Krause’s original essay (Krause 1879) was substantially modified before it was translated into English, and the revised version included an allusion to Butler’s work (see Erasmus Darwin, p. 216).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
2.5 publicly] interl
2.6 owing to] above del ‘from’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13005,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13005