few husbands seem to find it difficult to effect this. Since my return I
have taken several looks, as you will readily believe, into the drawing-
room; I suppose my taste [for] harmonious colours is already deteriorated,
for I declare the room begins to look less ugly. I take so much pleasure
in the house (10/1. No. 12, Upper Gower Street, is now No. 110, Gower
Street, and forms part of a block inhabited by Messrs. Shoolbred's
employes. We are indebted, for this information, to Mr. Wheatley, of the
Society of Arts.), I declare I am just like a great overgrown child with a
new toy; but then, not like a real child, I long to have a co-partner and
possessor.

(10/2. The following passage is taken from the MS. copy of the
"Autobiography;" it was not published in the "Life and Letters" which
appeared in Mrs. Darwin's lifetime:--)

You all know your mother, and what a good mother she has ever been to all
of you. She has been my greatest blessing, and I can declare that in my
whole life I have never heard her utter one word I would rather have been
unsaid. She has never failed in kindest sympathy towards me, and has borne
with the utmost patience my frequent complaints of ill-health and
discomfort. I do not believe she has ever missed an opportunity of doing a
kind action to any one near her. I marvel at my good fortune that she, so
infinitely my superior in every single moral quality, consented to be my
wife. She has been my wise adviser and cheerful comforter throughout life,
which without her would have been during a very long period a miserable one
from ill-health. She has earned the love of every soul near her.


LETTER 11. C. LYELL TO C. DARWIN.
[July?, 1841?].