Ɛpsilon

From G. H. Darwin   21 August 1881

Trin Coll Camb.

Aug 21. 81

My dear Father,

I have at last by dint to tying a knot in my watch chain remembered to ask Sidgwick about Graham.1 He is an Irishman & was probably at Trin. Coll. Dublin   he was afterwards & may be still private Secretary to Mitchell Henry the Irish M.P.2 That is all that I can pick up.

Was ever such weather— I suppose an afternoon like this means a loss of hundreds of thousands. I hope it wont be like this at York.3

I’ve done the report & am trying to do my Math. Tripos questions,4 but find it very hard to buckle to with a will it is so uninteresting.

By the bye Sidgwick has not read Graham’s book; he said that he found G. had not read his own book5 & he thought he ought to have done so— this was a sort of joke. He says he is going to read it.

This weather will make Abinger rather appalling for H & I.6

Your affectionate son | G H Darwin

1
Henry Sidgwick. CD had recently read William Graham’s Creed of science (Graham 1881; see letter to William Graham, 3 July 1881).
2
Mitchell Henry was MP for county Galway from 1871 to 1885.
3
The British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting was held at York from 31 August to 7 September 1881 (Report of the 51st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1881)).
4
George wrote a report on an instrument for measuring small changes in the direction of gravity (see Report of the 51st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1881), pp. 93–126). He was setting examination questions for the mathematical tripos at Cambridge, which was held in January.
5
Sidgwick was best known for his book of moral philosophy, Methods of ethics (Sidgwick 1874).
6
Horace and Ida Darwin. Ida’s father and stepmother, Thomas Henry and Effie Farrer, lived at Abinger Hall in Surrey.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13294,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13294