From Hermann Kindt   13 November 1865

Bampton, Penrith

13. Nov. 1865.

Dear Sir,

I herewith send you the facsimile reproduction of your handwriting, and beg you will be kind enough to let me know if you like the manner in wh: it has been executed.1 At the same time accept my warmest thanks for your courteous attention. I am sure that the paragraph as well as the specimen of your handwriting are a great ornament to our publication, and will be received with the greatest pleasure by your numerous friends and admirers. I can at least vouch for my own countrymen.

If you can possibly send me for the same purpose of a facsimile reproduction an interesting note or letter of your celebrated Grandfather, I shall feel greatly obliged to you.2

I beg to enclose a biographical notice intended for that purpose, which was chiefly extracted from Miss Seward’s “Life of Dr. Erasmus Darwin”.3 I copied and compiled it some time ago but cannot remember the biographical compilations I made use of for that purpose.

With renewed thanks for your kindness, believe me to remain | Your’s very faithfully | Hermann Kindt

Charles Darwin Esq. M.A., F.R.S., etc.

1
Kindt had requested a page of handwriting from CD for facsimile reproduction in the Autographic Mirror (L’Autograph Cosmopolite; see letters from Hermann Kindt, 17 October 1865, and 23 October 1865 and n. 2).
2
A facsimile reproduction of a letter from CD’s paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, to his maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood I, was published in the Autographic Mirror (L’Autograph Cosmopolite) 4 (1866): no. 70.
3
Kindt refers to Seward 1804. The biographical sketch of Erasmus Darwin appeared in the Autographic Mirror (L’Autograph Cosmopolite) 4 (1866): 23.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4935,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4935