Ɛpsilon

To John Lubbock   14 August [1861]

2. Hesketh Crescent | Torquay

Aug. 14th.

My dear Lubbock

I thank you sincerely for your very kind expressions towards me.1 Your talking of living at Brighton made me realise how much I have enjoyed your friendship & what a loss your absence would be to me. By the way I have not heard where your new House is.—2 William & my two little Boys have had this morning a grand hunt after Petrobi & have caught about a dozen, which I send by this same Post in a large old cannister.—3

With respect to the Bank, I have been thinking over what you say & will not forget it, but the Union Bank has on two or three occasions been so obliging to me, that I should feel it intolerably shabby to leave them without sufficient motive. It would make me feel almost guilty.—4

We shall return home, I am glad to say in about a fortnight, & I suppose by that time William will be a Banker!5

Dear Lubbock | Ever yours very truly | Charles Darwin

Endorsement: ‘1861’

1
Lubbock’s letter has not been found.
2
Lubbock and his wife Ellen Frances Lubbock had lived with his parents at High Elms, near Down, Kent since their marriage in 1856. Expecting the birth of their third child in December 1861, the family planned to move, eventually settling in Chislehurst, Kent (Hutchinson 1914, 1: 52).
3
Lubbock had asked CD and his sons to help him collect specimens of bristletails, members of the primitive insect group Thysanura. The genus Petrobius is not described in the paper Lubbock was preparing (Lubbock 1862).
4
CD banked for many years at the Union Bank of London, Prince Street, Mansion House, London.
5
William Erasmus Darwin joined the Southampton and Hampshire Bank as a partner in the autumn of 1861, moving to Southampton in October (Emma Darwin’s diary).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 friendship &] ‘&’ over full stop
2.2 has] over ‘have’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3233,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3233