Charles Darwin 1870 · Down House
A simple tea
19:30 · start only
“had a simple tea at half-past seven (while we had dinner), with an egg or a small piece of meat.”
Verbatim excerpt · Francis Darwin
Line breaks and page markers omitted.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
Volume I · 1887
Chapter III, “Reminiscences of My Father’s Everyday Life”
Passage: Paragraph beginning “Latterly he gave up late dinner…”
Timing & context
Francis describes a later-life change from dinner to tea. The length of the meal is not recorded.
Weekday in the source
Sunday visits, in the memoir
“a number of visitors came over from Sir John Lubbock's for a Sunday afternoon call”
Chapter III, paragraph beginning ‘It was a great proof of the modesty…’ View passage ↗
Francis Darwin explicitly mentions a Sunday afternoon visit. This is his son's recollection, not Charles Darwin's diary, and it does not date the whole routine to Sunday. The calendar remains a general remembered routine.
His son Francis remembered this routine. Times are approximate; his health shaped the day.
1870 is a representative display year selected by Typical Tuesday. The source describes habits during the Down House years, 1842–1882, especially later life.