Ɛpsilon

To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   9 April 1881

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

Saturday evening | Ap. 9th 1881

My dear Dyer

It has been extraordinarily kind of you, overworked as you are, to write about Frank.—1 I assure you that neither he nor I ever expected that he wd. be elected on the first occasion, & after reading over the long list I saw at once that it was wholly out of the question.2 There is another name on the list with incomparably higher claims than those of Frank, namely Bates, & I earnestly hope that he has been elected.—3

Believe me my dear Dyer | Yours truly & gratefully | Charles Darwin

1
The letter from Thiselton-Dyer concerning Francis Darwin’s candidacy for fellowship of the Royal Society of London has not been found.
2
Francis Darwin had been proposed as a fellow of the Royal Society by Michael Foster in January 1881, but he was not elected until June 1882 (Royal Society archives, GB 117 EC/1882/09). Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thiselton-Dyer had signed the certificate of nomination.
3
Henry Walter Bates was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in June 1881 (Royal Society archives, GB 117 EC/1881/09). He had first been nominated by CD in 1879 (see Correspondence vol. 27, letter to H. W. Bates, 12 February 1879).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

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

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13109,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13109