To J. D. Hooker   27 December [1874]¹

My dear Hooker

I return M^rs Gray’s most feeling & charming letter, which we have read with great interest.²

I have not heard from Mivart, & I do not expect to do so, as if he intended to write it would have been natural, for him to have done so at once.³ I am not so good a Christian as you & cannot forgive a man for malicious lying, merely because he says he is sorry. Mivart knows that I do not live in that world, & have no influence, & cannot write savagely, & therefore he will not be at the trouble to apologise to George & myself.— I will let you hear immediately if he does write, & if you do not hear you can judge by date of his letter to Huxley’s, how much law he ought to be allowed.⁴ It still seems to me the most manly & simple line for me to take is to write to Mivart & say what I think of his conduct, & thus come to a dead cut: I am sure that this will be the pleasantest course for me, in case I ever meet him.—

I am very glad you have got through Christmas day, as anniversaries after a heavy loss are often most painful.⁵

Farewell my dear old friend. Your conduct & sympathy in this odious Mivart affair has been most generous.—

Yours affect | Ch. Darwin

P.S. When I write to Mivart, I shall not allude to his confession to Huxley, but shall simply state that the article was written by him, of which fact I was firmly convinced before he owned to it.— I hope that you will not ask him to apologise publickly or privately to me; as an extorted apology w^d be valueless.— He could not put a recantation in the Quarterly, stultifying & contradicting his shabby rejoinder when he thought himself unknown.⁶ And an apology in any other periodical will only stir up the dirt, & more of it, as Litchfield⁷ thinks, would stick to George, who, I do not doubt, has already been injured by the lying scoundrel.—

C. D.