Darwin's granddaughter, Gwen Raverat, wrote and illustrated one of my favorite memoirs, Period Piece. She never knew her grandfather, but the book is full of wonderful family stories:
As a child, "Uncle Lenny was found jumping up and down on the springs of the new sofa, an exercise which had been forbidden. His father said: 'Oh, Lenny, Lenny!' to which Lenny replied: 'I think you had better go out of the room.'"
And then there was Aunt Etty: "And when there were colds about she often wore a kind of gas-mask of her own invention. It was an ordinary wire kitchen-strainer, stuffed with antiseptic cotton-wool, and tied on like a snout, with elastic over her ears. In this she would receive her visitors and discuss politics in a hollow voice out of her eucalyptus-scented seclusion...If the window had to be opened to air the room in cold weather, Aunt Etty covered [Uncle Richard] up entirely with a dust sheet for fear of draughts; and he sat there patient as a statue, till he could be unveiled."
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As a child, "Uncle Lenny was found jumping up and down on the springs of the new sofa, an exercise which had been forbidden. His father said: 'Oh, Lenny, Lenny!' to which Lenny replied: 'I think you had better go out of the room.'"
And then there was Aunt Etty: "And when there were colds about she often wore a kind of gas-mask of her own invention. It was an ordinary wire kitchen-strainer, stuffed with antiseptic cotton-wool, and tied on like a snout, with elastic over her ears. In this she would receive her visitors and discuss politics in a hollow voice out of her eucalyptus-scented seclusion...If the window had to be opened to air the room in cold weather, Aunt Etty covered [Uncle Richard] up entirely with a dust sheet for fear of draughts; and he sat there patient as a statue, till he could be unveiled."
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