Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- 1 Friends
- 2 Marriage
- 3 Children
- 4 Scientific wives and allies
- 5 Observing plants
- 6 Companion animals
- 7 Insects and angels
- 8 Observing humans
- 9 Editors
- 10 Writers and critics
- 11 Religion
- 12 Travellers
- 13 Servants and governesses
- 14 Ascent of woman
- List of letters and provenances
- Biographical notes
- Bibliography and further reading
- Index
1 - Friends
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- 1 Friends
- 2 Marriage
- 3 Children
- 4 Scientific wives and allies
- 5 Observing plants
- 6 Companion animals
- 7 Insects and angels
- 8 Observing humans
- 9 Editors
- 10 Writers and critics
- 11 Religion
- 12 Travellers
- 13 Servants and governesses
- 14 Ascent of woman
- List of letters and provenances
- Biographical notes
- Bibliography and further reading
- Index
Summary
Darwin loved female company. As a boy in Shropshire, he spent time not only with his sisters and Wedgwood cousins, but with the Owen girls at Woodhouse. Later in life, Emma Darwin was entertained to see him flirting prettily, as she put it, with female visitors. He was on cordial terms with the ladies he met while he was undergoing hydropathic treatment, and Ellen Lubbock and Henrietta Huxley sent him teasing, funny letters. The formidable Lady Derby kept up an intermittent friendship with him in a series of visits and characteristically brief letters. As a old man, Darwin made an effort to reconnect with the Owen girls, sending a copy of his book on expression of the emotions to the elderly Sarah Haliburton, as she had become.
The first letter is to Darwin from an elderly friend of his family, Mary Congreve. At the time, in 1821, she would have been 75; Darwin was 12. Little is known of Mary. Her brother William, comptroller of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, where ammunition was manufactured, became a baronet, and his son, William, the second baronet, became famous as a rocket designer. It's tempting to suggest that the Congreve family might have fostered Darwin's youthful interest in chemistry.
My dear Mr. Charles
I find I have only just time to thank you for your entertaining letter, as if I take time to write what I intended I shall not be able to get it franked & I'm sure it will not be worth the postage, I should have liked to have seen the good Gentleman Grin that you mention there is no doubt but those that were out of the Scrape were much amused, I assure you I wish'd much you had been of our party on thursday night at the play, I think you would have been highly entertained both with the Coronation, and the entertainment of Monsieur Tonson [a farce by W. T. Moncrieff], I never laugh'd so much at a play I think, I dare say you have been much amused with Mr. Alexander [a ventriloquist] & I hope I shall hear some specimenes of his art from you when I return, as I dare say it is practiced in School Lane, so god bless you as I am obliged to conclude this ever believe me | Yours truly M Congreve …
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- Information
- Darwin and WomenA Selection of Letters, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017