DARWIN AT WESTMINSTER ABBEY


Printed card for the 'Funeral of Mr Darwin' at Westminster Abbey, held on Wednesday, 26 April 1882, admitting the bearer to the Chapter House at 12 o'clock ('N.B. – No Person will be admitted except in mourning'), issued by Dean Bradley and bearing an impression of the Dean's seal in black wax in the left-hand border and stamped on either side with a 'C.' and an 'H.', with black mourning borders, on stiff white card, 90 x 124mm., 26 April 1882
|'FUNERAL OF MR DARWIN'. Darwin had died at Down House on 19 April 1882, expecting to be buried in the local churchyard. Indeed, as Desmond and Moore put it, 'getting a freethinker into the Abbey was not easy' (Darwin, 1991, p.666). But as always Huxley stepped in, supported in Parliament by Darwin's neighbour Sir John Lubbock and by a press campaign led by the Standard. Dean Bradley was happy to acquiesce.The Chapter House, to which our card allows admission, is where those who were to follow the coffin into the Abbey assembled: ʻ[on] that grey day committees adjourned, judges put on mourning dress, and Parliament emptied as members trooped across the road. From embassies, scientific societies, and countless ordinary homes they came. Under leaden skies they converged on the Abbey, anticipating the awe and spectacle of a state occasion... In the Chapter House, where Parliament had once met, the elders of science, State, and Church, the nobility of birth and talent, stood waiting to file though the cloisters, behind the coffin. They were "the greatest gathering of intellect that was ever brought together in our country," said one' (p.672). Darwin was laid to rest beneath the monument to Newton, at the north end of the choir screen.