Librarian / Happy Easter / X

April 5, 2022 2:41 PM

In November 2020, Cambridge University Library announced that two of Charles Darwin's notebooks, including his famous 'Tree of Life' sketch, were missing, believed stolen. (Previously on MetaFilter.) Now there's an update, and it's good news: the notebooks have returned, in a bright pink gift bag left outside the librarian's office with the printed message: Librarian / Happy Easter / X.
posted by verstegan (7 comments total)

I'm glad to see that in this particularly chaotic timeline, there are some threads that are coming together in unexpected GOOD ways. Thanks for posting this; it made my heart feel better.
posted by hippybear at 2:45 PM on April 5, 2022

Hooray!
posted by biogeo at 2:47 PM on April 5, 2022

Thank goodness. I can't help but wonder if the original thief died in the past 20 years (perhaps during a global pandemic), and family member decided to make amends, hoping to protect their relative.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:07 PM on April 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also, having watched a lot of British detective shows, someone somewhere is saying "That pink bag should be easy to spot on the CCTV".
posted by hydropsyche at 3:17 PM on April 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's my guess too, hydropsyche. I feel like someone who was the actual thief would have been much more cautious about returning it, more likely to be an anonymous brown envelope in the mail. Bright pink gift bag says to me someone who would like to keep out of it but isn't particularly worried if the cops show up at their door.
posted by tavella at 4:53 PM on April 5, 2022

Darwin's most famous doodle cited again; I guess its easier to read than his scraggy handwriting. Darwin was notably engaged with his many children, dragooning them to help him catch and mark humble bees or collect worm-casts in the garden at Down House. At least some of the doodles in the Darwin collection were contributed by his offspring. The Am Mus Nat Hist makes the case that some of the ms pages in the Darwin Collections were only preserved because the verso contained the children's pictures.
The pink gift bag is gold!
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:37 PM on April 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

The pink gift bag is gold!

It’s pink! It’s gold! It’s pink…
posted by profreader at 7:25 AM on April 6, 2022 [1 favorite]