Ɛpsilon

From E. A. Darwin   11 December [1872]1

11 Dec.

(no hurry)

Dear Charles

Read Mr Salts letter & return it as I want to show it to George.2 Mr Salt has not quite understood us I think. The will as it stands is all right and the contingency we want to guard against is that I should survive you & from any cause I should not be able to make a fresh will. Now in this case I should be intestate as regards real estate & the personalty would be equally divided among the children.3

My wish is to leave it (in case I survive) exactly as you would have left it if it had come into your possession. Think over it at your leizure & let me know, & till then I shall let my present will stand: Lincoln Estate £240 to £250 per ann. Marks cottage say £100 Lease of Queen Anne now £2000 share of residue.4

Mr Salt is coming up to town soon when I shall have a talk with him. I have proposed to him to leave my present will and make a codicil contingent on my survival & in it leaving the property just as you wish but I dont know what he will say to that

ED

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from E. A. Darwin, 13 December [1872].
2
The letter from George Moultrie Salt, of the law firm Salt & Sons in Shrewsbury, has not been found. George Howard Darwin had studied law in London and was called to the bar in 1872.
3
The two classes of property, realty or real estate (immovable assets) and personalty (goods, money, and other moveables), were subject to different inheritance laws.
4
Presumably Erasmus, like CD, owned property in Lincolnshire (see Correspondence vol. 5, letter to John Higgins, 7 June 1851 and n. 1); Mark’s Cottage was a cottage near The Mount in Shrewsbury in which the Darwin family coachman, Mark Briggs, lived rent-free (see Correspondence vol. 15, letter from E. A. Darwin, 3 March 1867 and n. 1); Queen Anne Street was the address of Erasmus’s London home.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8671,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8671