ABSTRACT
Hewett Cottrell Watson spent the year 1832 in Edinburgh, active in both phrenology and botany. When he left in January 1833, he went to live with his sister, Louisa Judith, and her husband, Captain Gilbert Wakefield, near Barnstaple, Devon. Marion Cox was about a year older than Watson, and their breakfast-table relationship seems to be as close as he ever came to finding a woman to marry. Watson continued to turn over in his mind his own conflicting opinions, and five years after their initial correspondence on the subject he notified George Combe that he had changed his evaluation of marriage. That was a hint for Combe to ask for the new evaluation and he obliged. Watson's reply was partly a neurotic attempt to repair a non-existing damage to their relationship brought on by the earlier correspondence and partly an attempt to justify phrenologically the success of the Combe marriage.
