In one respect he was extremely fortunate. If he was hampered by ill-health, he at least had ample means to make that ill-health as tolerable as possible. He did not know the misery of having to support yourself and your family and being physically unable to do it. Without wholly endorsing the sarcastic remark of Butler, ‘The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next his health, and the third his reputation,’ one can see some truth in it, especially when the possession of money serves to make the loss of health more endurable. Darwin’s father was very successful financially. He provided for all his children in the most liberal fashion during his life, and left them in comfortable circumstances after his death, and Darwin often refers to this with gratitude and appreciation. The son seems to have had abundant means to keep up a considerable establishment, to educate and provide for his own large family, to indulge in general benefaction, and to do if not all he wished, at least a great deal in the way of scientific investigation and experiment. In later years a considerable income from the published books was naturally added to the supply that was inherited. Darwin was proud of his earning in this way, and he had reason to be, although he could hardly boast of such returns as were received by his contemporary Trollope. One is chiefly impressed, however, with his extreme anxiety that others should be treated fairly, and that no one should suffer by his gains. Thus he writes to his publisher, in a tone which publishers will I think recognize as not usual: ‘You are really too generous about the, to me, scandalously heavy corrections. Are you acting fairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to share the £72 8s? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such badly composed MS to the printers.’[270]