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Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



months and he may have been failing. What a splendid life it has been; personal courage and 

 adventure, admirable mental and bodily endowments, and a powerful intellectual grip upon the 

 problems and work of his time. And with all this no freaks — sane, humane and sociable. 



Ever yours, Clifford Allbutt. 

 To Sir George Darwin, K.C.B., F.R.S. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. January 25, 1911. 



Dear Professor Pearson, If you were thinking of giving little amusing incidents in Uncle 

 Frank's life, I wonder if you would like to mention a neat dodge he had for seeing comfortably 

 in a London crowd. He got a wooden brick with a hole in it through which he passed thick 

 string, with a big knot at the bottom. This he carried under his arm*, and if a tiresome tall person 

 stood before him, he would gently and slowly drop his brick and stand on it with one foot, 

 and when it was time to go, draw it up again by its string, and no one noticed anything. Also 

 you know the "Hyperscope," I suppose, which he used for the same purpose. You put your eyes 

 to the two holes and the matinee hat drops a few 

 inches, and you see the lecturer quite clearly; the 

 opposite side being arranged with a sloping looking-glass 

 let in. He used this last, I think, when Queen Victoria 

 came to open the Albert and Victoria Museum close by, 

 and the whole of Brompton Road was crowded to see 

 her pass by. 



I wonder if you would mention his extraordinary 

 good temper — it was quite a joke when he was a child, 

 the boys at the school he went to used to stand round 

 him in a ring trying to irritate him, but always failed. 

 This was such an advantage in a household, as it made 

 the servants love him; the Scotts at Bibury used to say 

 they would like to work for him for love, because he was so delighted with every single thing 

 they did for him, and yet they all had a reverence for him and no servant was ever impertinent. 

 He was just like a child in his jokes and always said he was a tiny bit jealous of Wee ling 

 in the house! Another thing you might like to say is how extraordinarily keen he was about 

 things, everything was so intensely interesting to him, any workman in a foreign country he 

 would have a long talk with and ask how he did this, that and the other, and then tell the 

 man how clever he was; he would then take a lesson himself from the man, or child as the case 

 might be. Just before he died, when almost too feeble to speak, he was given a prick of strychnine 

 in the wrist; this interested him intensely and though we didn't want him to exhaust himself 

 talking, he wouldn't let the doctor alone without having it clearly explained what the strychnine 

 would do for him. He was most excited about the oxygen they gave him and wanted Edward 

 Wheler to tell Dr Lyndon all about his experiments with it — this an hour or so before death. 



By the bye, it is a mistake to think, as some of the papers reported, that my uncle died in 

 his sleep; he became unconscious about f of an hour before death; Gifi looked in and Uncle 

 Frank opened his eyes and smiled at him, and then never opened them again; he seemed in 

 a sort of torpor. He looked so sweet and of such a good healthy colour after death, that I could 

 not believe the doctorVhen he said the heart was not beating. I kept candles burning by him 

 till the coffin was taken from the house and visited him continually in the nights to pray for 

 his soul, and he was buried with my crucifix on his breast ; he looked so sweet in his coffin 

 with his own dear smile on his face, it was sad to leave him in that box, but he looked just 

 like himself to the last E. B. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. February 26, 1911. 



Dear Mr Perry Coste, Your kind letter has lain unanswered all this time simply because 

 I have been so occupied, not because it was unappreciated. The sympathy of my Uncle's friends 

 and admirers has been my great comfort. 



How very curious that you should have been writing to him — you are indeed quite correct 

 about his intellect, it was keen up to the day of his death, and when the doctor pricked 



[* Done up as a brown paper parcel. Ed.] 



