Ɛpsilon

From G. H. Darwin   [9 June 1881]1

Trin. Coll Camb.

Thursday night

Dear Father

I enclose Lawes’ name & address & also Frank’s letter—which by the bye had only just been returned from here.2

I have all but done my mathematical paper. It has been worrying my life out, but I hope to be rid of it soon.3 I hav’nt settled exactly the day for coming N. It wd. be some help if you cd. let me hear when Leo. and the Litchs go.4

Is not Troutbeck nearer than Penrith & cd. I have a dogcart to meet me there if I were to telegraph to you at Patterdale.—5

Ball has sent me a copy of his lecture from a Dublin paper but it is’nt worth reading6

Yours affec | G H Darwin

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to G. H. Darwin, 8 June [1881]. In 1881, the Thursday after 8 June was 9 June.
2
CD had asked George to find out the full name of John Bennet Lawes; the enclosure with the name has not been found (see letter to G. H. Darwin, 8 June [1881]). The letter from Francis Darwin has not been identified, but was most likely addressed to Emma Darwin and passed to other family members; the most recent letter from Francis to CD was that of [before 4 June 1881].
3
George’s paper ‘On the stresses caused in the interior of the earth by the weight of continents and mountains’ was received at the Royal Society of London on 11 June 1881 (G. H. Darwin 1881b).
4
George joined the Darwins at Patterdale in the Lake District on 15 June 1881; Henrietta Emma Litchfield, with, presumably, her husband, Richard Buckley Litchfield, left Patterdale on 17 June and Leonard Darwin left on 25 June (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).
5
Troutbeck is about seven miles south of Patterdale while Penrith is fourteen miles north-east; Penrith was on the London and North Western Railway West Coast Main Line and connected to Troutbeck via the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway.
6
Robert Stawell Ball; see letter to G. H. Darwin, 8 June [1881] and n. 2. The lecture, ‘Recent progress in astronomy’, was given on 4 June 1881 and was reported at length in the Dublin Daily Express, 6 June 1881, p. 7.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13199,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13199