18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W.: April 27, 1890.
As Ethel has already told you, I believe, we have taken a three years' lease of a charming old house, and let this one for a corresponding period. It is a very old house in Oxford, having been built by Cardinal Wolsey. It is immediately opposite Tom Tower of Christ Church, and full of old oak—walls, floors, and ceilings of the principal rooms being nothing else.
I do wish you could come up before we begin operations, to give us the benefit of your advice how so splendid an opportunity in the way of decoration should be utilised. We have to get out of this house, with all our furniture, on or before May 20. The children and servants will then go to Geanies, while my wife and I will go to Oxford to begin the decorations.
I am preparing my lectures on Darwinism for the press, so that they may be ready for publication on the last day of my course at Edinburgh in November. I suppose I have your permission to reproduce your R.S. pictures of electric organs? Also, could you send me for a day or two Haddon's book on Embryology?
I have just heard that Charles Lister (whom I think you met at Geanies) has died of fever in Brazil, where he was zoologising.
Yours ever sincerely,
Geo. J. Romanes.
94 ST. ALDATE'S