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To Edwin Lankester, Ray Society   [7 August 1851]

7. Park Stt.— | Grosvenor Sqe.—

Thursday

My dear Sir

We return home on Saturday next;1 it would therefore be a very great convenience to me, if in your power, to permit my servant to take my M.S. to Adlard on Saturday morning, between 9 & 10 oclock.— My reason for wishing my own servant to take the M.S. is that I have not a copy of a page, & I would on no account reundergo the labour I have spent on it, & therefore am very unwilling to trust it to the tender mercies of a public conveyance. If I do not hear from you, I shall understand that my servant may call for it.—

I hope you have much enjoyed the brilliant festivities at Paris.2

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

P.S | I may mention as a proof to you, that I send my M.S. fit for the Printers, that Mr Bowerbank retained that for the Pal: Socy: for less than an hour, & the corrections were not heavy.—

1
According to CD’s ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 5, Appendix I) and Emma Darwin’s diary, CD did not return to Down until Sunday, 10 August 1851.
2
The president of the French Republic, Louis Napoleon, invited the jurors of the Great Exhibition to Paris during the first week in August. For an account of some of the festivities, see R. S. Owen 1894, 1: 367–9. Lankester was a juror and the reporter of the section on ‘Manufactures from animal and vegetable substances, not being woven, felted, or included in other sections’ (Exhibition of the works of industry of all nations, 1851. Reports by the juries (London, 1852), pp. 590–602).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 reundergo] over illeg
4.2 that for the Pal: Socy:] above del ‘it’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1448,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1448