Ɛpsilon

To George Bentham   27 January [1858]1

Down Bromley Kent

Jan. 27th

My dear Sir

Do you ever attend elections at Athenæum?2 If you are there on Monday next, will you let me beg your vote for a distant connexion of mine, Ch. H. Woodd. He is an excellent man, very accomplished & very fond & well versed in Geology.3 I am prevented attending myself.

Pray believe me, My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I presume Hooker never attends but if at Kew, will you mention this for bare chance of his attendance4

1
Dated by the relationship to a letter to William Darwin Fox written during the previous month, in which CD assured Fox that he would try to get Charles Henry Lardner Woodd elected to the Athenæum Club (see Correspondence vol. 6, letter to W. D. Fox, 17 December [1857]). Woodd was Fox’s brother-in-law.
2
George Bentham had been a member of the Athenæum Club since 1830 (Waugh 1888).
3
Woodd was a keen geologist and had corresponded with CD on physical geology in 1850 (see Correspondence vol. 4, letter to C. H. L. Woodd, 4 March 1850). See also the following letter.
4
Joseph Dalton Hooker had been a member of the Athenæum Club since 1851 (Correspondence vol. 3, letter from J. D. Hooker, 14 November 1844, n. 2). Although Bentham lived in London, he travelled daily to Kew to work on the botanical collections housed there; in 1854 he had given his own substantial herbarium and library to the Hooker family.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 next,] interl; before omitted comma

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13778,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13778