To St G. J. Mivart   12 January 1875

Jan 12th 1875

Sir

Your article in the Q. R. for July 1874 contains a wholly false & malicious accusation against my son, Mr G. Darwin.1 You had a fair opportunity in the following number of retracting your infamous & explicit accusation, & you did not make even this small reparation.—2 Your article also includes deliberate misrepresentations of what I have published.3

Therefore I refuse to hold for the future any communication with

Sir | Your obedt. servt. | Ch. Darwin

To | St. G. Mivart Esq

ADraftS

1
In an anonymous essay review in the Quarterly Review of works by John Lubbock and Edward Burnett Tylor, Mivart had suggested that an article on marriage by George Howard Darwin spoke in an approving strain of the encouragement of vice to check population (that is, of prostitution; [Mivart] 1874, p. 70, G. H. Darwin 1873).
2
In the October 1874 issue of the Quarterly Review, a letter from George denying Mivart’s accusations appeared, followed by an anonymous note by Mivart in which he said he was glad to find that George did not apprehend the full implications of the doctrines that he had helped to propagate (Quarterly Review 137: 587–9).
3
For a list of comments in [Mivart] 1874b bearing on CD’s work, see Correspondence vol. 22, Appendix V.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 in … number 1.3] before del ‘of the Review,’; transposed from after ‘accusation,’
1.3 even] interl above del ‘even’
1.4 deliberate] after del ‘gross, & it cannot be doubted’
2.1 Therefore I] ‘I’interl
2.1 Therefore … communication with] interl above del ‘Your conduct has been disgraceful, & I reject your acquaintance.’
2.1 for the future] interl
3.1 Sir] after interl and del ‘you for the future’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9812,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9812