A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xj 



Madame Sismondi to her niece Emma Darwin. 



Wednesday [Summer, 1852]. 



... I can never tell you how much I enjoyed my Lotte's 

 visit. It made me as merry as in my childhood, when I 

 told stories only to make myself laugh. Her charity to me 

 made her talk, and you know her delicious laugh. Patty 

 [Smith] says, " You never told me what a woman Mrs Lang- 

 ton is ! everybody speaks and knows what an agreeable 

 woman Mrs Hensleigh Wedgwood is, but Mrs Langton, 

 what a manner ! how clever ! Oh, she is a most extra- 

 ordinary person." Please to send this on to Charlotte. 

 She ought to know herself, none of my nieces do. I always 

 tell them what I hear of them, because they are grossly 

 ignorant of themselves. . . . 



I think your little George must be the nicest little 

 fellow that lives. If he will always find work for himself 

 he will surely find happiness, if it is but worsted work. 



My brother, afterwards Sir George Darwin, Fellow of 

 Trinity College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy at 

 Cambridge, who died in December, 1912, inherited my 

 father's power of work. This energy was remarkable when 

 he was a little boy, and his pursuits playing at soldiers, 

 heraldry, and collecting moths were carried on with quite 

 extraordinary zeal and persistence. He inherited also much 

 of my father's cordiality and warmth of nature, combined 

 with a characteristic power of helping others. Like my 

 father, he worked under a constant strain from ill-health of 

 a most wearing nature. 



This summer Erasmus Darwin came to stay with us at 

 Down. I wish it were possible to give any impression of the 

 charm of our uncle Ras's character. Outside the narrowing 

 circle of those who knew him he will be chiefly remem- 

 bered by Carlyle's few words of description, and these are 

 to my mind misleading. They are, however, remarkable, 

 inasmuch as Erasmus Darwin is one of the few he speaks 

 of quite without any grudge, or concealed sneer. Ln his 

 Reminiscences (Vol. II., p. 208) Carlyle writes: "He was one 

 of the sincerest, naturally truest, and most modest of men. 

 . . . My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin 



