Ɛpsilon

From John Price   28 October 1868

Chester

Oct 28 | 1868

My dear Charlie

If I wrote as often as I think of you & long for a crack, you wd be wearied with weary letters!1

I wanted to congrate you on your Boy’s success; & now I see fresh reason therefor, thank God.2

My Son gives me no satisfaction by the mere fact of being a Clergyman;3 but I cd tell you of many very pleasing traits in him & in Mary,4 who is not (yet) in Orders, nor an electress, nor M.D., nor even a whipper-in, tho’ she rides respectably, when she gets a chance for I can’t keep a “Peggy” for her. D’ye mind Peggy? what Woman will be—qui sait?

I am sending you a Phenomn.* wh. I think you will attend to.5 Botanists are, I fear, bigots; &, when they have ascertained that certain plants are “proliferous” or “viviparous”, some of them seem to think that the ne plus ultra; whereas I think the various ways in which difft. plants perform that supererogatory duty deserve most careful & discrimg attention, wh. may throw lt. on reproduction in genl.

If you have time to read what I have said about Card. pratensis & then to look at the “funny stories” in the best Flora, I think you will be amused by their concise-ness.6 And if you dont take the plant in hand, you will set your youngsters, or some others, to work on it, to more purpose than I have skill or time for. I mean to send also some seeds of Heracleum Ponticum biennial umbellate 12 to 15 feet!7 I never saw so grand a herb. Your thistles wd. make it look small, aiblins.—

I constantly see a Darwin revolving in our district   I mean Frank Parker, who married a young friend of mine,8 & keeps a good horse or 2 or 3— He & I were robbed, 1 nt., of some small articles; the rogues having the good taste to plunder the rich man most

*The leaves I was to have sent rotted   when I get more you shall have them. I send this as a token of good will.

Yours very truly | J Price

Love to Raz.9

1
Price was a childhood friend of CD’s; they attended Shrewsbury School together, and had corresponded sporadically since 1826 (see Correspondence vols. 1, 7, and 11). Price’s last extant letter is that of 5 March 1868.
2
George Howard Darwin had just been awarded a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge (see letter from E. A. Darwin, [11 October 1868]). In his letter of 5 March 1868, Price had congratulated CD on George’s success in the Mathematical Tripos examination at Cambridge.
3
Elis Price was a curate near Abergele, Wales, in 1868 (Crockford’s clerical directory 1882).
4
Mary Elizabeth Price was John Price’s daughter. [Additional information December 2019.]
5
The item has not been identified.
6
For Price on Cardamine pratensis in Price 1863–4, see the letter from John Price, 5 March 1868 and n. 4. In Lindley and Moore eds. 1866, p. 221, the authors give the plant’s common names of lady’s-smock or cuckoo-flower and note that the flowers are ‘associated with pleasant ideas of spring’. For more on the plant’s common names, see Grigson 1996, pp. 65–6.
7
Price may refer to giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), a native of the Caucasus Mountains, or the Persian hogweed (H. persicum). The name H. ponticum, which refers to a closely related plant almost as tall, did not appear in print until 1932 (Index Kewensis).
8
Francis Parker, CD’s nephew, married Cecile Agnes Longueville (Darwin pedigree).
9
The reference is to Erasmus Alvey Darwin.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6434,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6434