To C. V. Riley   1 July [1871]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

July 1

My dear Sir

I shall be delighted to see you here, but I am bound to tell you that my health is very precarious & that I cannot possibly talk more with anyone than for 34 or 1 hour.2 Under these circumstances you may not think it worth while to come so far. I truly grieve to appear so inhospitable, but I have no choice, & suffer much afterwards if I excite myself by much conversation. […] I wrote a few weeks ago to you at St. Louis thanking you for your most interesting & valuable Report on Noxious Insects.3

Pray forgive my inhospitality & believe me | My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch Darwin

P.S. If I do not hear, I shall expect you on Thursday

Some people will have to see my family on Tuesday & Wednesday, which made me fix Thursday4

incomplete5

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to C. V. Riley, 1 June [1871].
2
Riley’s letter to CD has not been found. On Riley’s 1871 visit to England and France, see Sorensen et al. 2008, pp. 138–9. Riley had been born in London and was brought up by his mother’s family; the ANB describes him as a ‘devoted family man with strong ties to his immediate family and relatives in England’.
3
See letter to C. V. Riley, 1 June [1871] and n. 2; CD refers to the third report in Riley 1869–77.
4
Notes in Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242) read ‘Mr Litch’ (crossed through) on Tuesday 4 July 1871, and ‘Mr Litch’ on Wednesday 5 July: these are probably references to Richard Buckley Litchfield, Henrietta Emma Darwin’s fiancé. Riley visited Down with John Jenner Weir; he recalled that his Report on noxious insects (see n. 3, above) was in CD’s study, with many pages turned down (Riley 1882, pp. 77–9).
5
The original letter is complete and is described in the sale catalogue as being four pages long. The text from ‘most interesting’ to the end of the letter is transcribed from a photograph; the rest is from the dealer’s transcription.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7846F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7846F