.jpg?mode=max&width=1025 "Declining an invitation on the grounds of ill-health")
Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
Autograph letter signed (‘Charles Darwin’) to [Henry Nottidge Moseley: ‘My dear Sir’], Down, Beckenham, Kent, 11 June n.y. [?1876].
One page, 203 x 125mm, bifolium, headed notepaper. Provenance: by descent.
Declining an invitation on the grounds of ill-health. Darwin is ‘very much obliged for your kind invitation, which I am extremely sorry to say that the state of my health renders it impossible for me to accept’.
Darwin suffered intermittently from bouts of illness – the cause of which was never diagnosed – for over forty years, although his general health improved in his final decade. Enforced periods of seclusion at Down House, however, may have aided him in his work: in 1876 he noted in his autobiography that ‘Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement’.
Not published in the Darwin Correspondence Project.
Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.
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