Ɛpsilon

To E. B. Tylor   [28 January 1875]

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

My dear Sir

I have forwarded the certificate to Sir J. Lubbock. As I do not know Col: Fox personally I could sign only from general knowledge & this I have done with much pleasure.1

You will remember the review on your works in the Quarterly last year. This article contained a deliberately false & malicious attack on my son George.2 I am justified in saying this as Huxley Hooker & others compared my son’s Article with the Review, & as Hooker told Mr Murray it was “as base as it was baseless”.3 I know positively that this article was written by Mr Mivart & I wish to take every opportunity of saying how false a man I consider him to be

My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS

Postmark: JA 28 75

1
Augustus Henry Lane Fox became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1876. John Lubbock was also a member of the society. Applications for fellowship of the Royal Society had to be signed from personal or general knowledge of the candidate.
2
In 1874, St George Jackson Mivart had published an anonymous essay review of anthropological works by Tylor and Lubbock in the Quarterly Review ([Mivart] 1874). In the course of this work he made critical remarks about George Howard Darwin’s article on marriage (ibid., p. 70). See also Correspondence vol. 22, Appendix V.
3
See letter to T. H. Huxley, 6 January 1875 and n. 1, and letter from J. D. Hooker, 16 January 1875. John Murray was the publisher of the Quarterly Review.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9832,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9832