From G. H. Darwin   5 October 1873

My dear Father,

I have decided to send the letter to Nature for the reasons wh I gave before & also because I feel partly guilty of the obscurity of your former letter. I have of course altered it as you suggest & added one other sentence.¹

I had to do a great deal more than was good for me in London & even then did’nt buy my furniture for Down, & consequently when I got down here on Friday morning was quite knocked up with all the scrimmage & was very bad all day.² Yesterday morn^g. I was bad too but got m. better in the p.m & had a most enjoyable game of tennis—the first for about 1$\frac{3}{4}$ years. I shall try & play as often as I can but fear that I shall not be always up to the mark. Horace seems tol. as far as I can see.³ I am trying to starve myself right, but it is most difficult to know how & to what extent to do it.⁴ I’m not very brilliant again this morning, but I sha’nt have quite so m. scrimmage henceforward.

I found my rooms in the most hopeless confusion, full of my boxes & straw & dismantled bookshelf & writing table. One sitting room & the bedroom literally without a stick in them. I am now in some rooms on the same staircase & hope to get into my room tomorrow or Tuesday. There is a general gyproom⁵ for the staircase with a boiler in it, which will be very convenient & I have of course a small private one. I have been spending my time in going backwards & forwards to the upholsterers & crockery shop & have bought bed-room furniture glasses &^c. furniture for the small room & the big one I shall do by degrees afterwards.

The man whose rooms I am going into is very touchy & has just come to a dead cut (after many little tiffs) with Jackson,⁶ who is my next door neighbour; so the change must be pleasant for J..— There are very few men up yet & I hope to get furnished before the crush comes.

I heard from F Galton this a.m & he says ‘Do u kno or has D^r. C heard of that $\frac{1}{2}$ incred. but uncontrad^d. assertion made … before a crowd of physiolog^s. at Bradf. that albumen mixed with water in a short time becomes indistinguishable from the contents of the lacteals white corpuscles &c!!! (So that u c^d. assim. it with^t. any stomach at all) & the v. pract. conclusion that if an egg is broken into cold water & left to stand 12 hrs it becomes opaque then boil the whole slightly & the result is a food that the author asserted to be digestible when nothing else c^d be digested!’⁷

He says he’s sorry to hear of yr illness.

I saw the Ed. of Examiner (Cox not [Mawe] in town & Im put on his free list for the paper & am to write occasionally if I like.⁸ I of course sha’nt let it interfere with my work but I think it will be rather amusing than otherwise to write a little— They pay about £1 per article.

Yours affly | G H Darwin

Will you have sent me the wooden cone for putting on wicks to my reading lamp— have I got lamp scissors if so send them too

Very glad to hear about Allens—⁹ I suppose it will be snapped up for F. at once