Once again I heartily congratulate you on your well-earned present and I feel assured grand future success.
Yours very truly,
Ch. Darwin.
P.S. 28th.—Can you spare time to come down here any day this week, except Saturday, to dine and sleep here? We should be very glad indeed if you can come. If so, I would suggest your leaving Charing Cross by the 4.12 train, and we would send a carriage to Orpington to meet you, and send you back next morning. In this case let us have a line fixing your day. It will be dull for you, for none of my sons except Frank are at home.
The extraordinary modesty, the absolute simplicity, the fatherly kindness, which breathe in this letter, cannot but give some idea of what Mr. Darwin was and why he was so much loved.
Dunskaith, Ross-shire: August 29, 1878.
My dear Mr. Darwin,—I only returned here yesterday and found your letter awaiting me.
Your letter has made me as proud as Punch, and as you have such a good opinion of the line of work, I think I shall adopt your plan of working up the subject well before I publish the book. The greatest difficulty I had in writing the lecture was to make it short enough, but it will be splendid to be able to spread oneself over the whole subject in a book. I was at one time in doubt whether it would be better to spend time over this subject or over something more purely physiological, but of late I had begun to incline towards the former, and your opinion has now settled mine.
I have not previously heard of the book by the Belgian physicist, and should much like to read it. I have already such a number of your books that I fear you must sometimes miss them; but I can return any of them at a minute's notice.