MY LIFE 



A RECORD OF EVENTS AND OPINIONS 

 CHAPTER XXV 



MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES— DARWIN 



Soon after I returned home, in the summer of 1862, Mr. 

 Darwin invited me to come to Down for a night, where I 

 had the great pleasure of seeing him in his quiet home, and 

 in the midst of his family. A year or two later I spent a 

 week-end with him in company with Bates, Jenner Weir, 

 and a few other naturalists ; but my most frequent inter- 

 views with him were when he spent a few weeks with his 

 brother, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in Queen Anne Street, which 

 he usually did every year when he was well enough, in order 

 to see his friends and collect information for his various 

 works. On these occasions I usually lunched with him and 

 his brother, and sometimes one other visitor, and had a little 

 talk on some of the matters specially interesting him. He 

 also sometimes called on me in St. Mark's Crescent for a 

 quiet talk or to see some of my collections. 



My first letter from him dealing with scientific matters 

 was in August, 1862, and our correspondence was very ex- 

 tensive during the period occupied in writing or correcting 

 his earlier books on evolution, down to the publication of 

 "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," 

 in 1872, and afterwards, at longer intervals, to within less 

 than a year of his death. A considerable selection of our 



VOL. II. 1 B 



