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.

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