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OCR Rendition - approximate
Characterisation, especially by Letters 603 I read your excellent Geographical appeal for funds for a larger house*, and shall in due time send my quota. Just at this moment I am rather entangled with prospective obligations, or fancy that I am. What an eventful Geographical Presidency you have had. I am very glad of it for your sake. With every appropriate New Year wish to you and your wife. Ever sincerely yours, FRANCIS GALTON. THE RECTORY, HASLEMERE. January 25, 1910. MY DEAR EVA, By all means let Sir G. Frampton send the bust to the Royal Academy. My poor shrunken nose ! I feel like Wee Ling looking into a glass. The little beast is as merry as can be, and we have a grand game of bob-sugar after dinner. He has grown disdainful of bob-indiarubber-ball. Yes, ask Pan and Hesketh for Feb. 5-7. Dr Barnardo must have been a wonderfully good organiser. I should be glad of particulars. Milly dragonises well. Sir A. Geikie tea-ed here yesterday and told me much in the scientific way. His book about Seneca's philosophy is printed, but held back until the election turmoil has subsided. Major Norris has got me a good account of Daddy Tin Whisker from Australia. It is aluminium, rubbed by an amalgam (= a metal combined with mercury). Its filamentous growth has been noticed, but no explanation is given. I can fancy a scab being produced, but don't understand the hairy growth. I am quite in "my usual" again,-and Miss Jones is busy at Miss Baden-Powell's silhouettes (which you traced for me)-but I was trembling on the verge of being bad three days ago. Drives on two successive days, and an hour in the shed on the third, were too much for me. Milly seems quite happy, and I gather that you are also. Give much love from me to the Brees. I am wearing Adele's mufletees with much sense of comfort. The partial discolouration has been washed out by Charman. Ever affectionately, FRANCIS CALTON. Have you news of Bessiet yet? THE RECTORY, HASLEMERE. March 13, 1910. (42, Rutland Gate, S.W. on and after Monday 21st.) MY DEAR MILLY, Your spring is a full week in advance of ours, I think. Here are lots of crocuses, but no green tips yet to the trees. William Darwin :J: is here with his motor for the week-end. Edward Wheler comes on Wednesday for a night or two. Then we pack up and send off most things by Gifi on Friday. Eva, man-nurse and I by motor on Monday, and the one remaining maid by train on that day. Amy and Guy will enjoy their Loxton picnic. Poor Frank! A man, Mr M. W., who was in office in the Cape, married a wealthy lady here and has now returned, did not speak in the same gloomy terms that Frank does. Probably he got his foot early in the stirrup and mounted a good horse, and so pushed forwards. Col. Melville spoke strongly in favour of Mr Haldane§, who he thinks has done and is doing wonders in the face of great difficulties of tradition, organisation and the like. Eva sends her best love to you all, so do I. Ever affectionately, FRANCIS GALTON. 42, RUTLAND GATE, S.W. March 27, 1910. MY DEAR MILLY, Somewhat battered by coughing, mostly asthmatic, here I am, settled in home again. Everything looks homely and suggests old associations. Dim's portrait, in photo, stands conspicuously on the chimney-piece opposite. But the room has to be rearranged, owing to structural alterations in the form of a built partition between the front drawing-room, now myonly drawing-room, and the back one, now my bedroom. It will take time to make it all comfortable, new bells, etc. I understood from a line in Lucy's letter that a picture of Ravenscourt is in this week's Queen newspaper. I will order it as soon as Bank Holiday is past. We are trying Coalite, said to burn more purely and with less heat than coal; a desideratum for my small bedroom. Do you ever use it? A friend comes to-day to show off his hearing apparatus, which, when in good I Major Leonard Darwin was at this time President of the Royal Geographical Society. t Now Mrs Simmons, Evelyne Biggs' former maid. Charles Darwin's eldest son. § Afterwards Lord Haldane, then at the War Office. 76-2
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