Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Autograph letter signed ('Ch. Darwin') to [Thomas Rivers], 28 December [1862]
7 pages, 202 x 126mm, on two bifolia, printed address heading. Provenance: The Property of a Lady; Sotheby's, 23 & 24 July 1987, lot 353.

An enthusiastic letter to a leading authority on roses and fruit trees. 'I shall indeed be truly obliged for any information you can supply me on bud-variation or sports ... It is most true what you say that any one to study well the physiology of the life of plants, ought to have under his eye a multitude of plants'. Darwin also asks about grafting of trees, specifically 'the effect produced on the stock by the graft', mentioning a rumoured experimental finding in grafting Filberts onto hazels; referring also to his work on laburnums: 'I have now growing splendid, fertile yellow Laburnums ...'. He declines on health grounds an invitation from Rivers: 'I suffer severely from ill-health of a very peculiar kind, which prevents me from all mental excitement, which is always followed by spasmodic sickness, & I do not think I could stand conversation with you, which to me would be so full of enjoyment'. Darwin concludes with warm appreciation of Rivers' letter to him: 'To a man like myself who is compelled to live a solitary life & sees few persons, it is no slight satisfaction to hear that I have been able at all to interest by my books, observers like yourself ... I have not often in my life received a kinder letter'.

Thomas Rivers (1798–1877) was a Hertfordshire nurseryman and a leading authority on roses and fruit trees, and over the long correspondence which followed from this letter was to supply Darwin with much material towards the latter's Variation of plants and animals under domestication. DCP-LETT-3879.