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From Robert Monsey Rolfe   4 October 1864

Holwood | Bromley

4 Oct 1864

My dear Mr Darwin

I send you a cheque for £10.10 being the sum I have usually contributed to your Down Charities—1 The payment has not generally been made so early as this time, but I can have no objection to consider it payable in October instead of (as formerly) in December—2

I shd be very glad to know that you are better, & improving from what you were, when we had the pleasure of a short glimpse of you— You have been a sad sufferer of late, but we thought you had a look of improving health about you, & I trust we were not mistaken

Yours very truly | Cranworth

1
Rolfe was an annual subscriber to the Down Friendly Club and the Down Coal and Clothing Club, of which CD was treasurer (Freeman 1978); in addition CD distributed Rolfe’s annual subscriptions to a day school and a Sunday school in Down (see Correspondence vol. 7, letter to John Lubbock, 14 December [1859]). The Down Friendly Club was a local savings and insurance society, while the Coal and Clothing Club existed to supply working-class parishioners with cheap coal and clothing in exchange for regular savings; the account books, kept by CD, are in the Darwin Archive–Down House. In 1864, CD recorded the receipt of Rolfe’s annual donation of £10 10s. in his Account book–banking account (Down House MS) on 18 November under the heading ‘Ld. Cranworth cheque for charities’. On the same day CD noted in his Account book–cash account (Down House MS), ‘Ld Cranworth. Charities 9.9.0 to Mr Stephens 1.1.0 F. Club’. Thomas Sellwood Stephens was curate at Down (Freeman 1978). On CD’s philanthropic work at Down, see Moore 1985, p. 466.
2
Rolfe had for the last two years sent his cheque for the Down charities in November (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter from R. M. Rolfe, 28 November 1862, and Correspondence vol. 11, letter from R. M. Rolfe, [20 November 1863]).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4626,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4626