282 Life and Letters of Francis Oalton 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. April 29, 1906. 



My dear Francis Galton, The scrapbook with the photograph* reached me just before 

 leaving Longcot, and the other book was awaiting my arrival here. I shall endeavour to get 

 an enlargement, for as you say the attitude is very characteristic, but I fear it will not stand 

 much enlarging. Please tell Miss Biggs I will take all care of the book. The other book shall 

 go back to its place on the shelves at Oxford, when I next go down. I found the finger-print 

 books and the letters in going through the papers at Oxford. I shall keep myself free on Friday 

 and you will tell me whether you are able to see me. At times there seems so much to talk to 

 you about and then again it all passes from me. It was possible to go on as long as I was 

 attempting to put the papers at Oxford in order, but I seem now quite dazed, and for the first 

 time in all my teaching experience the idea of facing my students and lecturing seems positively 

 repellent, — at times impossible. I feel wholly without energy to start the term, and if I could 

 only see the man able to do my work, I would ask for 6 or 9 months leave of absence. I have 

 only sounded this personal note because I want you to pardon me, if I say or do anything stupid 

 at present. Yours always sincerely, Karl Pearson. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. April 30, 1906. 



My dear Karl Pearson, The account of your overwrought spirits and energy quite 

 distresses me. I look forward greatly to seeing you here on Friday. If there are hopes of your 

 coming earlier than 4 p.m. on that day please send a postcard that I may not be out. My time 



is quite at your disposal Anyhow I look forward to some quiet conversation with yourself 



alone. Ever affectionately, Francis Galton. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. May 7, 1906. 



Mv dear Karl Pearson, My attempts have been fruitless to put anything down that 

 you are not already familiar with, about Weldon's characteristics. The extraordinary fulness 

 and accuracy of his letters astonished me. He would write almost a treatise, and insert long 

 tables with apparent ease and as a work of supererogation, which would be a large labour 

 to most men. I suppose too that a certain pertinacity, in the favourable sense of the word, was 

 one of his most marked peculiarities. The extraordinarily wide range of his accurate, not super- 

 ficial, knowledge, was another feature. He was too kindly a critic of things that I asked him 

 to criticise to be of value to me on those occasions, I am sorry to say. Rightly or wrongly my 

 impression always was that he needed some one very strong scientific end in view to compel 

 him to concentrate his remarkable powers more steadily. But I may be judging incorrectly 

 here. I wish I could think of more, this much is I fear useless to you. 



Affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. May 13, 1906. 



Dear Francis Galton, I want to ask your opinion about resigning my fellowship of the 

 Royal Society. You will remember that the last paper I contributed to the Society met with 

 a great deal of difficulty in getting accepted — probably was accepted only on account of your nice 

 little speech. But the Secretaries communicated a resolution to me that I should be requested in 

 future contributions not to mix statistics and biology in the same paper. This of course was 

 equivalent to the intimation that they would not accept future biometric papers from me. 

 I was at the time — I think it is more than three years ago — sorely tempted to resign, but did 

 not do so under the impression that it might be looked upon as personal dudgeon. I have not com- 

 municated any paper of my own to the R.S. since. The one case where I presented a paper was 

 an application by Miss Cave of our statistical methods to a problem in meteorology. In that 

 case the Secretary wrote and suggested that I should withdraw the paper as the meteorologists 

 did not approve the methods usedf . This I declined to do and after some controversy the paper 



* Of Weldon; at his death, but few, and those unsatisfactory, portraits could be found. 



I A commentary on this judgment is that the Meteorological Office recently sent round a 

 circular to various persons, including myself, asking if we could provide further correlations of 

 barometric pressures ! Still the pioneers of correlation work in meteorology were hardly treated. 



