Ɛpsilon

To John Maurice Herbert   [1 January 1837]

Sunday night

My dear old Herbert.

As I have not seen you to wish you good bye in propriâ personâ, I must do it, on paper. for I suppose you will not be in Cambridge at the latter end of the week when I return.—1 I do not know when I have spent a merrier evening than yesterdays. It was like the old times, sitting by you & hearing prodigies. I shall not in a hurry forget your awful appearance, as you lay on the sofa with a great snow ball in the place of your head. Jem2 certainly victimized you in capital style. I suppose we shall have the Gentleman in the Plaid Coat, hawking “this is the head of that well know character—fellow of St Johns3 &c & c.” I certainly will put my name down for a proof before letter4 if there are such things— I was wishing so much that we had agreed to take a walk. I went into Kings & heard Saul’s dead March.— What a glorious sight the whole is.— I never formerly knew how properly to admire it.

Adios, you best of good old Fellows | Chas. Darwin. 3. Fitz William St. 5

1
On 4 January 1837, CD read his paper on ‘Observations of proofs of recent elevation on the coast of Chili’ to the Geological Society of London (Collected papers 1: 41–3).
3
Herbert had been elected Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge in 1832 (Alum. Cantab.).
4
Proofs made from the plates of an engraving before the ordinary printing.
5
Now 22 Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge, where CD lived until March 1837. Saul’s Dead March: the ‘Dead march’ from George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Saul.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-339,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-339