Ɛpsilon

To T. H. Huxley   [30? July 1860]1

[Hartfield]

– Wolstenholme2 (tutor of Christ’s Coll) told me (i.e. my son

William) last night;3 that two Cambridge men, one a blind man named Fawcett,4 were at the Brit. Assoc.; and after the meeting they happened to be near the B. of Oxford; and the one asked Fawcett whether he thought the Bishop had ever read the Origin; and the blind man shouted out in a loud voice “Oh no, I would swear he has never read a word of it.” The Bishop bounced round with an awful scowl and was just going to pitch into him, when he saw that he was blind, and said nothing.—

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1
Dated by the relationship to the preceding letter.
2
Joseph Wolstenholme, a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, was William Erasmus Darwin’s mathematics tutor.
3
See preceding letter.
4
Henry Fawcett, a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, lost his sight in a shooting accident in 1858 (DNB). The reference is to Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop of Oxford. See also Appendix VI.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2887,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2887