Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

Autograph letter signed (‘Ch Darwin’) to [Henry Nottidge] Moseley, Down, Beckenham, Kent, 7 April 1882.

Three pages, 203 x 125mm, bifolium, headed notepaper. Provenance: by descent.

Subscribing to a memorial fund for the physician and zoologist George Rolleston. ‘I am much obliged to you for writing to me, for I would have been vexed not to have subscribed as a memorial of my respect for the man’: a financial error seems to have occurred, preventing the payment of his earlier cheque for two guineas. Originally, ‘I supposed that some memorial stone was to be erected’, but he now wishes to increase his contribution to ten guineas. He continues: ‘I most heartily hope that you find your position & employment satisfactory in Oxford & that you will raise many students in Natural Science worthy of their master’, before adding a postscript relating to his subscription cheque.

Darwin writes in response to a letter from Moseley, asking whether he intends to contribute to the Rolleston Memorial Fund, which will which will be used for a postgraduate prize at Oxford and Cambridge. As a student at Oxford, Moseley had studied under George Rolleston (1829-1881), the first Linacre Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, and had recently succeeded his friend and teacher in the post after Rolleston’s death.

Darwin Correspondence Project 13763

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.