To J. D. Hooker   21 [December 1859]1

Down Bromley Kent

21

My dear Hooker

Pray give my thanks to Mrs. Hooker for her extremely kind note, which has pleased me much.—2 We are very sorry she cannot come here, but shall be delighted to see you & Willy 3 (our Boys will be at home) here in 2d. week of January or any other time.— I shall much enjoy discussing any points in my Book with you.—

I think the copy of your Introduction for Wallace had better go to Stephens’.—4 Will you send me a copy? I hate to hear you abuse your own work. I on the contrary so sincerely value all that you have written. It is an old & firm conviction of mine, that the naturalists who accumulate facts & make many partial generalisations are the real benefactors of science. Those who merely accumulate facts, I cannnot very much respect.

I had hoped to have come up for the Club tomorrow, but very much doubt whether I shall be able.5 Ilkley seems to have done me no essential good. I attended the Bench on Monday & was detained in adjudicating some troublesome cases 112 hour longer than usual, & came home utterly knocked up & cannot rally.—6 I am not worth an old button.

It is curious about Revue Horticole.7

Many thanks for your pleasant note. | Ever yours | C. Darwin

I feel confident that for the future progress of the subject of the origin & manner of formation of species, the assent & arguments & facts of working naturalists like yourself are far more important than my own Book: so for Gods sake do not abuse your Introduction.

P.S | I have this minute received another most interesting letter from you with Asa Gray’s—but I am feeling so sick that I cannot read Gray’s—8

Yours remarks are excellent—specially about explaining too much, yet I cannot yet see my error.—

1
Dated by the reference to the forthcoming meeting of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society (see n. 5, below).
2
CD had invited the Hookers to stay at Down (letter to J. D. Hooker, 14 December [1859]).
3
William Henslow Hooker was the Hookers’ oldest son.
4
CD refers to Hooker 1859, which was due to be published in December 1859. Samuel Stevens was a natural history dealer who lived in Kennington in south London. He had acted as Alfred Russel Wallace’s agent since 1848 (Wallace 1905, 1: 266).
5
A meeting of the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society was held on 22 December 1859 (Bonney 1919, p. 147).
6
CD was a county magistrate for the Bromley division of Kent. His name appears in the list of magistrates, misspelled as Darcori, in Post Office directory for the six home counties 1859, p. 441.
7
Hooker must have mentioned the paper by Charles Victor Naudin on species and varieties published in the Revue Horticole (Naudin 1852). See following letter and letter to J. D. Hooker, 23 [December 1859].

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 Mrs. Hooker] ‘Hooker’ interl
1.2 We] ‘W’ over ‘I’
1.3 (our Boys will be at home)] interl; square brackets in MS
3.3 on] over illeg

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2591,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2591