36

Jan 15: 1884

I like to think of Father in all ways I can so as to keep the image of him before me to the end of my life.

I like to remember the sound of his walking stick on the gravel walk in the morning before breakfast as he came to the house after his early walk.

I like the vision of him at the further end of the sandwalk in his hat & cloak walking to meet me, when he met me he would stop still a yard or so off to listen to what I had to say leaning on his stick, and his pale tired face would light up with a delightful smile of sympathy — I like to remember the many happy turns I have taken with him in the sandwalk, and this brings to my memory the walks before breakfast in the dusk I took with him sometimes down to High Elms Lane when I was a school boy.

I can never forget the keen intentness with which he would watch for or look at any rare bird.

I like to think of the brisk cheerful way he would talk when I sometimes (too seldom alas) came down to his early breakfast.

I like to think of him sitting in his big arm chair in the drawing room talking & laughing with us all with a beaming face, or at dinner making jokes & laughing with Sara¹ when sitting next to him, for whom he had the love of a Father,

¹ "Sedgwick, Sarah Price Ashburner, 1839-1902. Of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Sister of Theodora S. CD's daughter-in-law. Friend of Chauncey Wright. LL3:165. Letters of Chauncey Wright, pp. 246-8. "She was the kindest of the kind but a little formidable...Sedgwicks, Eliots and Nortons are not to be lightly encountered". B. Darwin, Green memories, 1928, p. 42. 1877 Nov. 29 Married William Erasmus Darwin. ED wrote often to S with the last letter perhaps 1896 Sept. 19." Paul van Helvert and John van Wyhe, Darwin: A Companion, 2021.

36v

It was very pleasant to see the kind and cheerful way he would try and amuse or draw out, or be polite to any young man or woman who happened to be at lunch.

After dinner the intense earnestness over his game of backgammon with Mother and the way he would shout when he turned up high numbers or when he won the game was so pleasant to see.

He would berate Mother in a delightful way pretending that she was very severe and that he was afraid of offending her

After dinner when he came back into the drawing room at 9 oclock he would lie on the sofa near the pianoforté, and if tired Mother would rest him by stroking or tapping his forehead, or she would play on the pianoforté and he would listen with great enjoyment and now & then ask for some favourite air; & would like looking at the picture of the "Mumbles"¹ which hung over the bookcase.

As he got older he would rarely sit out for long in summer after his walk, but would sometimes come & look on at lawn tennis with amusement.

I like to think of the tender way he would take his dog²           for a walk when she had to be confined for a time to the stables, and he would speak to her like as to a little child

¹ The Mumbles, oil painting by John Syer, of Bristol (1815-1885).

² This was the white fox-terrier, Polly. See for example Henrietta Litchfield, 'Sketches for a biography' CUL-DAR262.23.1 and Life and letters, vol. 1, pp. 113-114.

36b

In the morning when seated in his black chair writing on his board, if I went in for a ruler or anything, he would look up for a moment with a kind absorbed smile — We were always taught not to interrupt him so that we went in quietly as if he were asleep.

My deep regret in life is that I had no ability for the earnest pursuit of science so that I could have worked more with him; I did little things for him about worms & some botanical points and his praise & pleasure in all I could do was so delightful — It is a lifelong sorrow that I could not be more at Down during the last few years — If I could have foreseen it might have been possible. My pleasure is to think that I hardly ever in my life gave him any pain.

It was delightful to talk with him and ask his opinion on any question that arose in geology — in which he took the deepest interest. He was the most sympathetic listener one could imagine.

36c

Memoranda as to Father

VIII

W.ED

Immediately after decease.