To G. H. Darwin   [27 July 1874]1

Abinger Hall | Wotton Surrey (Post Town) | Gomshall (Station) S.E.R.

My dear G.

I have been thinking during my whole walk on the scurrilous libel on you.2 It is has occurred to me (& Erasmus & Hensleigh3 agree at first blush) that it wd be a good plan to lay the case before an eminent Counsel, not necessarily for Prosecution of the author, but that he shd. compare the Review with your Article, which he wd. naturally do & express an opinion how far Reviewer is justified. But I do not know whether Counsel will allow this opinion to be published. If so, & the opinion was clear that the Reviewer has falsified your statements, then to send it to the Quarterly Rw. & demand its publication; which I suppose wd. be refused. In this case publish it elsewhere & even as an advertisement. It will then be for me to consider whether I must not cut Murray & a nice perplexity I shd be in about my rights on the stereotyped editions.—4

Think well over this. What I fear is that by selecting separate sentences, the Reviewer will perhaps be able to justify his essentially false statements.

Yours affect | C. Darwin

1
The date, ‘July 27. 74’, was added on the letter by a contemporary hand.
2
CD refers to the attack made on George in an anonymous essay review ([Mivart] 1874, p. 70), in which George’s comments in his paper ‘On beneficial restrictions to liberty of marriage’ (G. H. Darwin 1873a) were described as approving of oppressive laws and encouraging vice.
4
John Murray was the publisher of the Quarterly Review and had been CD’s publisher for all his works from Origin onwards. The identity of the review’s author (St George Jackson Mivart; see Wellesley index) was not known to CD. CD had agreed to have the sixth edition of Origin stereotyped, a process by which metal plates were made from moulds of movable type, allowing new impressions of a book to be made cheaply (Correspondence vol. 19, letter to R. F. Cooke, 4 November 1871).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 Reviewer is] above del ‘it was’
1.9 be for] ‘be’ interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9568,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9568