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74   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

with the other articles a great quantity of impressions of different seals, for a great many Boys are always asking me to give them the seals of my letters (as I have the most) for gum seals, which indeed are very pretty. I quite long to see my gallant desk

arrive. Edward Fisher is not come to schooL Schonswar is very kind to me, and he always gives me wafers when I want them, but now in the Evens we are not allowed to stir from our places, and in the morning he is doing French.

So good bye, and believe me,

Your affectionate Son,

Flu cis GALTON.

The last letter undated is written two weeks before the Christmas holidays, again to be spent away from home. Clearly Frank had heard of the coming change to Leamington. "I wish very much indeed"-he writes to his father--"just to go to Birmingham again and to see the Larches and Dudson-and other parts of Birmingham again." In the following year, when Frank came home for his holidays in June, he left Boulogne for good. But besides the change of home to Leamington, other marked changes occurred for the Galtons in 1832. Towards the end of January Grandmother Darwin-Elizabeth Collier -became ill and-died on the fifth of February. She had always been a marked feature of the Galton circle. The visits to Breadsall Priory (see Plates XLIII and XLIV) were frequent', and Grandmother Darwin's visits to Birmingham were much appreciated ; thus her death was a source of great sorrow to her grandchildren. She had had 12 children, 41 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren and at her death 60 descendants survived her. On the 10th of June of the same year Grandfather Galton also died ; he was buried in the Quaker ground at Bull Street. Thus the visits to Duddeston, made by the grandchildren hitherto two or three times a week, came to an end, and the influential Quaker element2 disappeared from their lives. With the death of his father Samuel, Tertius Galton-already a fairly wealthy man-became more so, and the future independence of the members of his family was assured. It was largely the wealth acquired by his grandfather Samuel Galton the second, that freed Francis Galton from any necessity

1 Francis with his father, mother and sisters had had a very happy visit there in 1827. One evening they got up a country dance, their grandmother Elizabeth Collierthen in her 80th year-joined in and heartily enjoyed it.

2 The influences were of an intellectual kind also. The drawing room and dining room at Duddeston were large rooms, three sides of the latter and part of the former were lined with books of history, botany, natural history, poetry, etc., and the grandchildren had the. advantage of being allowed to borrow any book they liked.


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