To John Lubbock   [22 November 1859]1

Well Terrace | Ilkley Otley | Yorkshire

Tuesday

My dear Lubbock

I beg pardon for troubling you again. I do not know how I blundered in expressing myself in making you believe that we accepted your kind invitation to Brighton. I meant merely to thank you sincerely for wishing to see such a worn-out old dog as myself.2 I hardly know when we leave this place,—not under a fortnight, & then we shall wish to rest under our own roof-tree.—

I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley’s Natural Theology:3 I could almost formerly have said it by heart.—

I am glad you have got my Book, but I fear that you value it far too highly.— I shd. be grateful for any criticism I care not for Reviews, but for the opinion of men like you & Hooker & Huxley & Lyell &c—

Farewell. With our joint thanks to Mrs Lubbock & yourself | Adios. | C. Darwin

1
The date is the Tuesday following the letter to John Lubbock, [19 November 1859]. The date given in Freeman 1977, p. 75 (15 November), is incorrect. CD did not leave Ilkley until around 7 December 1859 (‘Journal’; Appendix II), but this letter evidently precedes Emma Darwin’s departure on 24 November (Emma Darwin’s diary). After Emma left, CD relinquished his rented house in Wells Terrace and returned to Edmund Smith’s hydropathic establishment, Ilkley Wells House.
3
Paley 1802. CD read William Paley’s works at Cambridge University and admired them deeply (Autobiography, p. 59, and Correspondence vol. 1).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2532,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2532