To W. D. Fox   12 September [1862]

Cliff Cottage | Bournemouth

Sept. 12th

My dear Fox

Very sincere thanks for all the trouble which you have so kindly taken for me about the Turkeys: your information will be of use to me, whenever circumstances will permit me to finish my half completed volume.—1 Your ancient case of the woman with a hairy face is curious;2 for, as perhaps you know, there has of late occurred an instance in the Malay archipelago; & the peculiarity was hereditary & accompanied by peculiarities in the teeth.3

Thanks for all your sympathy about us: we have been most unfortunate; Horace4 seriously ill, in a strange manner, all the Spring; & then Leonard came home from school with Scarlet Fever, had recurrent fever, with serious mischief in his kidneys & then bad erysipelas.5 At last we started for this place; but he suffered much from the journey & at Southampton Emma had Scarlet-fever pretty sharp: we have been here for about 10 days & both my patients are going on admirably, & we have two Houses so that I trust the other children will escape. I have never passed so miserable a nine months.—6 I hope we shall all get safe home in about 3 weeks. I had thought of going to Cambridge;7 but now I feel very doubtful & shall not make up my mind till the time arrives & I see how I am. If I do go it will be only for 2 or 3 days. It would indeed be most pleasant to meet you there; but I never know what I can do. All this misery has shaken me a good deal; but I am righting now.— Emma sends her kind remembrances to you.

My dear old friend | Yours affectionly | C. Darwin

If you go to Cambridge please tell me.

Endorsement: ‘Sep 15/62’

Postmark: SP 13 62

1
CD refers to Variation, which was eventually published in 1868. In the letter to W. D. Fox, 12 May [1862], CD asked Fox whether he could provide him with information about crosses between the wild and the common turkey. Fox’s reply has not been found; however, in Variation 1: 392, CD reported Fox’s observation that wild turkeys crossed freely with the common domestic kind, and that ‘during many years afterwards … the turkeys in his neighbourhood clearly showed traces of their crossed parentage’.
2
CD refers to the case of Barbara Van Beck; he acknowledges Fox’s assistance in providing information about this case in Variation 2: 4.
3
CD may be referring to the case, reported in 1855, and cited in Variation 2: 327, of a Burmese family in which superfluous hair growth and abnormal dental structure persisted through three generations.
5
Leonard Darwin was sent home from Clapham Grammar School on 12 June 1862, suffering from scarlet fever (see letter to W. E. Darwin, 13 [June 1862] and n. 3); his condition deteriorated in early July (see, for example, the letter to Asa Gray, 14 July [1862] and n. 3, and Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).
6
CD, Emma, and Leonard Darwin had started their journey to Bournemouth on 13 August 1862, but were delayed at Southampton until 1 September by Leonard’s relapse and by Emma’s becoming ill with scarlet fever (see ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 10, Appendix II)).
7
In 1862, the British Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting in Cambridge during the first week of October.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 from] ‘fr’ over ‘w’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3717,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3717