Dear Mr. Darwin

Your letter and its enclosure took us by surprise.¹

You talk of being allowed to treat us as relatives—but it is rarely that relatives are so magnificent in their gifts— We can but accept yours, with a thousand tender feelings, which thanks would coldly represent. & that which makes us so easily able to do so—in the knowledge of your and your dear wife’s love for us—and ours for you.—

You disclaim all feeling for poetry—& cry out—with wonder when others admire it but you are like the man—who had been all his life talking prose without knowing it and in this more than brotherly kindness—& many another make poetry of your life.

With our united love to your two selves | Ever | Yours affectionately | Henrietta Huxley.

Hal says—that there now only remains for him to buy up all the “Origin of Species”, & to paper the new walls with them!

Seen & approved by me Commander in chief (T. H. H.) only not so well expressed as I should have put it

I don’t know whether I ought to be dignified or not but I am not going to be—on the contrary I have only to say how much pleasure your kind thought of us has given me & how heartily I subscribe myself

One of the family