My dear Carpenter
I should have written to you long before this to have reminded you of your kind promise of running down here for a Sunday; but I have for last seven weeks been hoping against hope that my daughter would rapidly recover.— She has now been in her bed with low fever for exactly this period; & is only just now beginning very slowly to recover; whenever she is strong enough to get her out of bed, we shall have to move somewhere for change of air; so that I am sorry to say we must defer your little visit here till the latter part of summer or autumn. I know that you go to your sea-side home in Scotland every year;2 & I suppose we shall have to go, also, to sea-side for my daughters sake.—
I have been of late sufficiently well pitched into to please anybody, about my Book.— But I care very little, which I entirely & absolutely owe to the generous & kind support of a very few men.— When I reflect, as I often do, that such men as Lyell, yourself, Hooker, & Huxley go a certain way with me, nothing will persuade me that I am so wholly & egregiously in error as many of my reviewers think.—
Pray do not trouble yourself to answer this.—
My dear Carpenter | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin
Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2834,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on