Ɛpsilon

To J. D. Hooker   [12] May [1867]1

Down

Sunday | May 13

My dear Hooker

We are both thoroughly ashamed of ourselves for having given you so much trouble about the Paris lodgings.2

If you can come here on the 25th it will give us real delight. It is a long time since I have seen you; but if the day shd prove very bad or unexpected business occur, do not fash yrself & give us up at once.3 Tho’ mind you will then be doubly in our debt & come you shall & must.

The address is

Dr Fritz Müller

Desterro

Brazil

via Bordeaux

(9d for 14 oz. 1/6 for 12 oz.)4

I sent to him yr “Ins. Floras.”5

yours affectionately | Ch Darwin

(base forgery)6

L(S)(A)

Endorsement: ‘/67.’

1
In 1867, 12 May was a Sunday.
2
Hooker had booked a room in Paris for the the month of April, while he was attending the Paris exhibition as a juror (Gardeners’ Chronicle, 6 April 1867, p. 348); in his letter of 13 April 1867, by which time he had returned temporarily to Kew, he offered it to CD’s sons. CD wrote on 15 [April 1867] that some of them would be ‘hugely tempted’; see also letter to J. D. Hooker, 25 [April 1867]. There is no record in Emma Darwin’s diary of any of the children going to Paris in April or May 1867. George Howard Darwin visited the Paris exhibition in June (see letter from G. H. Darwin, [3 June 1867] and n. 7.
3
‘Fash’: trouble or bother (Scottish; Chambers). Hooker did not come to Down on 25 May; see letter to J. D. Hooker, [21 May 1867].
4
Hooker may have wanted Fritz Müller’s address in connection with the dispatch of plants from Brazil to Kew; see letter to Fritz Müller, 22 April [1867].
6
Emma Darwin forged the signature after beginning to sign her own name. The words ‘(base forgery)’ are in CD’s hand.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.6 (9 … oz.)] square brackets in MS

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5532,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5532