This morning, after a class meeting, we took a private coach to Down House, the home of Charles Darwin. We arrived right when they opened at 10am, and the people working at the museum were kind enough to let us bump our tour time up from 11. An enthusiastic volunteer took us through the main level of the home, where Darwin lived with his wife, Emma, who was an accomplished pianist and really ran the household, and their ten children. The guide showed us the family dining room, their drawing room, Darwin's old study, and Darwin's billiards room. There were many family portraits on the wall, but also those of other scientists, including his friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker. We stopped by the staircase and learned that was occasionally converted to a slide for
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