1876-1880]                                                                              225
 

CHAPTER XVI

1876—1880

Bernard Darwin—Stone]ienge-—E. B. LitcMeld's illness at Lucerne
—Wniiam Darwin's marriage—My father's Honorary Degree
at Cambridge—^A round of visits—-Antliony Rich—The Darwin
pedigree—^A month at Coniston---Horace Darwin's marriage—
A fur-coat surprise—The Liberal victory.

In the autumn of 1876 my brother Francis, who was my
father's secretary, lost his wife and came with his new-born
baby, Bernard, to live in the old home. The shock and the
loss had a very deep effect on my mother and I think made
her permanently more fearful and anxious. The baby was
a great delight to both my parents, and my mother took up
the old nursery cares as if she were stUl a young woman.
Fortunately little Bernard was a healthy and good chUd so
there was not much anxiety, but it greatly changed her life.
She wrote: " Your father is taking a good deal to the Baby.
We think he (the Baby) is a sort of Grand Lama, he is so
solemn."

The foUowing letters were written to me at Kreuznach.
From now onwards the majority of the letters here given
are from my mother to me; when therefore there is no
heading, it is to be assumed that this is the case. She
wrote to me nearly every day when we were not together,
and I have kept all her letters. As years went on she used
so many contractions that her letters became almost a sort
of shorthand, but it would be both puzzling and tiresome
to reproduce these in print and it has seemed best to translate
them almost aU.
 

Leith Hill Place, Monday [June, 1877J.

. . . F. was made very happy by finding two very old
stones at the bottom of the field, and he has now got a man
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