From Hensleigh Wedgwood [1867–72]1
I think that a brown study is merely another version of the same metaphor which speaks of a sombre countenance, ein düsteres gesicht2 Heiter and düster express chearful and moody as being open to light and external influences or closed and shut up within itself.3
Footnotes
The date range is established from the relationship between this letter and the first letter from Hensleigh Wedgwood, [1867–72]
CD used the phrase ‘in a brown study’ for abstraction and meditation in Expression, p. 228.
Wedgwood was a philologist: the italicised words (except for ‘sombre’) are German.
Summary
Expression: derivation of the term "brown study".
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7042
- From
- Hensleigh Wedgwood
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 181: 54
- Physical description
- inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7042,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7042.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 20
letter
