To Fanny Mackintosh Wedgwood   [24 April 1851]

[Malvern]

Dear Fanny.

Will you take Miss Martineau1 to Erasmus’.— I am rather sickish, but yet think I shall do journey well.— Please tell Miss Thorley, I have packed up some books.—

God bless you my very dear Fanny | Yours | C. D.

ask Brodie to look round my Bedroom, & bring my Clothes now at wash

P.S. | I do not think it will be prudent for Brodie to travel on the Friday— she will be ill Think of this.— There must be packing up— once again my dearest Fanny God Bless you & thank you

1
Possibly Harriet Martineau’s Poor laws and paupers illustrated (1833), reissued early in January 1851, or Henry George Atkinson and Harriet Martineau, Letters on the laws of man’s nature and development, published early in February 1851 (Publishers’ Circular 1851). The latter had been discussed by Fanny Allen in March 1851 (Emma Darwin (1915) 2: 129) and may have been lent to CD by Erasmus Alvey Darwin. CD, however, did not record having completed it until 4 August 1852 (Correspondence, vol. 4, Appendix IV, 128: 3). Harriet Martineau was a close friend of Erasmus Alvey Darwin and Fanny Mackintosh Wedgwood.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.1 ask Brodie … wash] added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1413,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1413