Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters

"I do not even find that the Collections care for receiving the unnamed specimens. The Zoological Museum[96 - The Museum of the Zoological Society, then at 33 Bruton Street. The collection was some years later broken up and dispersed.] is nearly full, and upwards of a thousand specimens remain unmounted. I dare say the British Museum would receive them, but I cannot feel, from all I hear, any great respect even for the present state of that establishment. Your plan will be not only the best, but the only one, namely, to come down to Cambridge, arrange and group together the different families, and then wait till people, who are already working in different branches, may want specimens…

"I have forgotten to mention Mr. Lonsdale,[97 - William Lonsdale, b. 1794, d. 1871, was originally in the army, and served at the battles of Salamanca and Waterloo. After the war he left the service and gave himself up to science. He acted as assistant-secretary to the Geological Society from 1829-42, when he resigned, owing to ill-health.] who gave me a most cordial reception, and with whom I had much most interesting conversation. If I was not much more inclined for geology than the other branches of Natural History, I am sure Mr. Lyell's and Lonsdale's kindness ought to fix me. You cannot conceive anything more thoroughly good-natured than the heart-and-soul manner in which he put himself in my place and thought what would be best to do."

A few days later he writes more cheerfully: "I became acquainted with Mr. Bell,[98 - T. Bell, F.R.S., formerly Professor of Zoology in King's College, London, and sometime secretary to the Royal Society. He afterwards described the reptiles for the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle.] who, to my surprise, expressed a good deal of interest about my crustacea and reptiles, and seems willing to work at them. I also heard that Mr. Broderip would be glad to look over the South American shells, so that things flourish well with me."

Again, on November 6: —

"All my affairs, indeed, are most prosperous; I find there are plenty who will undertake the description of whole tribes of animals, of which I know nothing."

As to his Geological Collection he was soon able to write: "I [have] disposed of the most important part [of] my collections, by giving all the fossil bones to the College of Surgeons, casts of them will be distributed, and descriptions published. They are very curious and valuable; one head belonged to some gnawing animal, but of the size of a Hippopotamus! Another to an ant-eater of the size of a horse!"

My father's specimens included (besides the above-mentioned Toxodon and Scelidotherium) the remains of Mylodon, Glossotherium, another gigantic animal allied to the ant-eater, and Macrauchenia. His discovery of these remains is a matter of interest in itself, but it has a special importance as a point in his own life, his speculation on the extinction of these extraordinary creatures[99 - I have often heard him speak of the despair with which he had to break off the projecting extremity of a huge, partly excavated bone, when the boat waiting for him would wait no longer.] and on their relationship to living forms having formed one of the chief starting-points of his views on the origin of species. This is shown in the following extract from his Pocket Book for this year (1837): "In July opened first note-book on Transmutation of Species. Had been greatly struck from about the month of previous March on character of South American fossils, and species on Galapagos Archipelago. These facts (especially latter), origin of all my views."

His affairs being thus so far prosperously managed he was able to put into execution his plan of living at Cambridge, where he settled on December 10th, 1836.

"Cambridge," he writes, "yet continues a very pleasant, but not half so merry a place as before. To walk through the courts of Christ's College, and not know an inhabitant of a single room, gave one a feeling half melancholy. The only evil I found in Cambridge was its being too pleasant: there was some agreeable party or another every evening, and one cannot say one is engaged with so much impunity there as in this great city."[100 - A trifling record of my father's presence in Cambridge occurs in the book kept in Christ's College Combination-room, in which fines and bets are recorded, the earlier entries giving a curious impression of the after-dinner frame of mind of the Fellows. The bets are not allowed to be made in money, but are, like the fines, paid in wine. The bet which my father made and lost is thus recorded: —"Feb. 23, 1837.– Mr. Darwin v. Mr. Baines, that the combination-room measures from the ceiling to the floor more than x feet."1 Bottle paid same day."The bets are usually recorded in such a way as not to preclude future speculation on a subject which has proved itself capable of supplying a discussion (and a bottle) to the Room, hence the x in the above quotation.]

Early in the spring of 1837 he left Cambridge for London, and a week later he was settled in lodgings at 36 Great Marlborough Street; and except for a "short visit to Shrewsbury" in June, he worked on till September, being almost entirely employed on his Journal, of which he wrote (March): —

"In your last letter you urge me to get ready the book. I am now hard at work and give up everything else for it. Our plan is as follows: Capt. Fitz-Roy writes two volumes out of the materials collected during the last voyage under Capt. King to Tierra del Fuego, and during our circumnavigation. I am to have the third volume, in which I intend giving a kind of journal of a naturalist, not following, however, always the order of time, but rather the order of position."

A letter to Fox (July) gives an account of the progress of his work: —

"I gave myself a holiday and a visit to Shrewsbury [in June], as I had finished my Journal. I shall now be very busy in filling up gaps and getting it quite ready for the press by the first of August. I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one. And, alas, there yet remains the worst part of all, correcting the press. As soon as ever that is done I must put my shoulder to the wheel and commence at the Geology. I have read some short papers to the Geological Society, and they were favourably received by the great guns, and this gives me much confidence, and I hope not a very great deal of vanity, though I confess I feel too often like a peacock admiring his tail. I never expected that my Geology would ever have been worth the consideration of such men as Lyell, who has been to me, since my return, a most active friend. My life is a very busy one at present, and I hope may ever remain so; though Heaven knows there are many serious drawbacks to such a life, and chief amongst them is the little time it allows one for seeing one's natural friends. For the last three years, I have been longing and longing to be living at Shrewsbury, and after all now in the course of several months, I see my good dear people at Shrewsbury for a week. Susan and Catherine have, however, been staying with my brother here for some weeks, but they had returned home before my visit."

In August he writes to Henslow to announce the success of the scheme for the publication of the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, through the promise of a grant of £1000 from the Treasury: "I had an interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.[101 - Spring Rice.] He appointed to see me this morning, and I had a long conversation with him, Mr. Peacock being present. Nothing could be more thoroughly obliging and kind than his whole manner. He made no sort of restriction, but only told me to make the most of the money, which of course I am right willing to do.

"I expected rather an awful interview, but I never found anything less so in my life. It will be my fault if I do not make a good work; but I sometimes take an awful fright that I have not materials enough. It will be excessively satisfactory at the end of some two years to find all materials made the most they were capable of."

Later in the autumn he wrote to Henslow: "I have not been very well of late, with an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart, and my doctors urge me strongly to knock off all work, and go and live in the country for a few weeks." He accordingly took a holiday of about a month at Shrewsbury and Maer, and paid Fox a visit in the Isle of Wight. It was, I believe, during this visit, at Mr. Wedgwood's house at Maer, that he made his first observations on the work done by earthworms, and late in the autumn he read a paper on the subject at the Geological Society.

Here he was already beginning to make his mark. Lyell wrote to Sedgwick (April 21, 1837): —

"Darwin is a glorious addition to any society of geologists, and is working hard and making way both in his book and in our discussions. I really never saw that bore Dr. Mitchell so successfully silenced, or such a bucket of cold water so dexterously poured down his back, as when Darwin answered some impertinent and irrelevant questions about South America. We escaped fifteen minutes of Dr. M.'s vulgar harangue in consequence…"

Early in the following year (1838), he was, much against his will, elected Secretary of the Geological Society, an office he held for three years. A chief motive for his hesitation in accepting the post was the condition of his health, the doctors having urged "me to give up entirely all writing and even correcting press for some weeks. Of late anything which flurries me completely knocks me up afterwards, and brings on a violent palpitation of the heart."

In the summer of 1838 he started on his expedition to Glen Roy, where he spent "eight good days" over the Parallel Roads. His Essay on this subject was written out during the same summer, and published by the Royal Society.[102 - Phil. Trans., 1839, pp. 39-82.] He wrote in his Pocket Book: "September 6 (1838). Finished the paper on 'Glen Roy,' one of the most difficult and instructive tasks I was ever engaged on." It will be remembered that in his Autobiography he speaks of this paper as a failure, of which he was ashamed.[103 - Sir Archibald Geikie has been so good as to allow me to quote a passage from a letter addressed to me (Nov. 19, 1884): – "Had the idea of transient barriers of glacier-ice occurred to him, he would have found the difficulties vanish from the lake-theory which he opposed, and he would not have been unconsciously led to minimise the altogether overwhelming objections to the supposition that the terraces are of marine origin."It may be added that the idea of the barriers being formed by glaciers could hardly have occurred to him, considering the state of knowledge at the time, and bearing in mind his want of opportunities of observing glacial action on a large scale.]

C. D. to Lyell. [August 9th, 1838.]

    36 Great Marlborough Street.

My dear Lyell – I did not write to you at Norwich, for I thought I should have more to say, if I waited a few more days. Very many thanks for the present of your Elements, which I received (and I believe the very first copy distributed) together with your note. I have read it through every word, and am full of admiration of it, and, as I now see no geologist, I must talk to you about it. There is no pleasure in reading a book if one cannot have a good talk over it; I repeat, I am full of admiration of it, it is as clear as daylight, in fact I felt in many parts some mortification at thinking how geologists have laboured and struggled at proving what seems, as you have put it, so evidently probable. I read with much interest your sketch of the secondary deposits; you have contrived to make it quite "juicy," as we used to say as children of a good story. There was also much new to me, and I have to copy out some fifty notes and references. It must do good, the heretics against common-sense must yield… By the way, do you recollect my telling you how much I disliked the manner X. referred to his other works, as much as to say, "You must, ought, and shall buy everything I have written." To my mind, you have somehow quite avoided this; your references only seem to say, "I can't tell you all in this work, else I would, so you must go to the Principles; and many a one, I trust, you will send there, and make them, like me, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking."[104 - In a letter of Sept. 13 he wrote: – "It will be a curious point to geologists hereafter to note how long a man's name will support a theory so completely exposed as that of De Beaumont has been by you; you say you 'begin to hope that the great principles there insisted on will stand the test of time.' Begin to hope: why, the possibility of a doubt has never crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very unphilosophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it."] You will see I am in a fit of enthusiasm, and good cause I have to be, when I find you have made such infinitely more use of my Journal than I could have anticipated. I will say no more about the book, for it is all praise. I must, however, admire the elaborate honesty with which you quote the words of all living and dead geologists.

My Scotch expedition answered brilliantly; my trip in the steam-packet was absolutely pleasant, and I enjoyed the spectacle, wretch that I am, of two ladies, and some small children quite sea-sick, I being well. Moreover, on my return from Glasgow to Liverpool, I triumphed in a similar manner over some full-grown men. I stayed one whole day in Edinburgh, or more truly on Salisbury Craigs; I want to hear some day what you think about that classical ground, – the structure was to me new and rather curious, – that is, if I understand it right. I crossed from Edinburgh in gigs and carts (and carts without springs, as I never shall forget) to Loch Leven. I was disappointed in the scenery, and reached Glen Roy on Saturday evening, one week after leaving Marlborough Street. Here I enjoyed five [?] days of the most beautiful weather with gorgeous sunsets, and all nature looking as happy as I felt. I wandered over the mountains in all directions, and examined that most extraordinary district. I think, without any exceptions, not even the first volcanic island, the first elevated beach, or the passage of the Cordillera, was so interesting to me as this week. It is far the most remarkable area I ever examined. I have fully convinced myself (after some doubting at first) that the shelves are sea-beaches, although I could not find a trace of a shell; and I think I can explain away most, if not all, the difficulties. I found a piece of a road in another valley, not hitherto observed, which is important; and I have some curious facts about erratic blocks, one of which was perched up on a peak 2200 feet above the sea. I am now employed in writing a paper on the subject, which I find very amusing work, excepting that I cannot anyhow condense it into reasonable limits. At some future day I hope to talk over some of the conclusions with you, which the examination of Glen Roy has led me to. Now I have had my talk out, I am much easier, for I can assure you Glen Roy has astonished me.

I am living very quietly, and therefore pleasantly, and am crawling on slowly but steadily with my work. I have come to one conclusion, which you will think proves me to be a very sensible man, namely, that whatever you say proves right; and as a proof of this, I am coming into your way of only working about two hours at a spell; I then go out and do my business in the streets, return and set to work again, and thus make two separate days out of one. The new plan answers capitally; after the second half day is finished I go and dine at the Athenæum like a gentleman, or rather like a lord, for I am sure the first evening I sat in that great drawing-room, all on a sofa by myself, I felt just like a duke. I am full of admiration at the Athenæum, one meets so many people there that one likes to see…

I have heard from more than one quarter that quarrelling is expected at Newcastle[105 - At the meeting of the British Association.]; I am sorry to hear it. I met old – this evening at the Athenæum, and he muttered something about writing to you or some one on the subject; I am however all in the dark. I suppose, however, I shall be illuminated, for I am going to dine with him in a few days, as my inventive powers failed in making any excuse. A friend of mine dined with him the other day, a party of four, and they finished ten bottles of wine – a pleasant prospect for me; but I am determined not even to taste his wine, partly for the fun of seeing his infinite disgust and surprise…

I pity you the infliction of this most unmerciful letter. Pray remember me most kindly to Mrs. Lyell when you arrive at Kinnordy. Tell Mrs. Lyell to read the second series of 'Mr. Slick of Slickville's Sayings.'… He almost beats 'Samivel,' that prince of heroes. Good night, my dear Lyell; you will think I have been drinking some strong drink to write so much nonsense, but I did not even taste Minerva's small beer to-day…

A record of what he wrote during the year 1838 would not give a true index of the most important work that was in progress – the laying of the foundation-stones of what was to be the achievement of his life. This is shown in the following passages from a letter to Lyell (September), and from a letter to Fox, written in June: —

"I wish with all my heart that my Geological book was out. I have every motive to work hard, and will, following your steps, work just that degree of hardness to keep well. I should like my volume to be out before your new edition of the Principles appears. Besides the Coral theory, the volcanic chapters will, I think, contain some new facts. I have lately been sadly tempted to be idle – that is, as far as pure geology is concerned – by the delightful number of new views which have been coming in thickly and steadily – on the classification and affinities and instincts of animals – bearing on the question of species. Note-book after note-book has been filled with facts which begin to group themselves clearly under sub-laws."

"I am delighted to hear you are such a good man as not to have forgotten my questions about the crossing of animals. It is my prime hobby, and I really think some day I shall be able to do something in that most intricate subject, species and varieties."

In the winter of 1839 (Jan. 29) my father was married to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood.[106 - Daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and grand-daughter of the founder of the Etruria Pottery Works.] The house in which they lived for the first few years of their married life, No. 12 Upper Gower Street, was a small common-place London house, with a drawing-room in front, and a small room behind, in which they lived for the sake of quietness. In later years my father used to laugh over the surpassing ugliness of the furniture, carpets, &c., of the Gower Street house. The only redeeming feature was a better garden than most London houses have, a strip as wide as the house, and thirty yards long. Even this small space of dingy grass made their London house more tolerable to its two country-bred inhabitants.

Of his life in London he writes to Fox (October 1839): "We are living a life of extreme quietness; Delamere itself, which you describe as so secluded a spot, is, I will answer for it, quite dissipated compared with Gower Street. We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if one is quiet in London, there is nothing like its quietness – there is a grandeur about its smoky fogs, and the dull distant sounds of cabs and coaches; in fact you may perceive I am becoming a thorough-paced Cockney, and I glory in the thought that I shall be here for the next six months."

The entries of ill health in the Diary increase in number during these years, and as a consequence the holidays become longer and more frequent.

The entry under August 1839 is: "Read a little, was much unwell and scandalously idle. I have derived this much good, that nothing is so intolerable as idleness."

At the end of 1839 his first child was born, and it was then that he began his observations ultimately published in the Expression of the Emotions. His book on this subject, and the short paper published in Mind,[107 - July 1877.] show how closely he observed his child. He seems to have been surprised at his own feeling for a young baby, for he wrote to Fox (July 1840): "He [i. e. the baby] is so charming that I cannot pretend to any modesty. I defy anybody to flatter us on our baby, for I defy anyone to say anything in its praise of which we are not fully conscious… I had not the smallest conception there was so much in a five-month baby. You will perceive by this that I have a fine degree of paternal fervour."

In 1841 some improvement in his health became apparent; he wrote in September: —

"I have steadily been gaining ground, and really believe now I shall some day be quite strong. I write daily for a couple of hours on my Coral volume, and take a little walk or ride every day. I grow very tired in the evenings, and am not able to go out at that time, or hardly to receive my nearest relations; but my life ceases to be burdensome now that I can do something."

The manuscript of Coral Reefs was at last sent to the printers in January 1842, and the last proof corrected in May. He thus writes of the work in his diary: —

"I commenced this work three years and seven months ago. Out of this period about twenty months (besides work during Beagle's voyage) has been spent on it, and besides it, I have only compiled the Bird part of Zoology; Appendix to Journal, paper on Boulders, and corrected papers on Glen Roy and earthquakes, reading on species, and rest all lost by illness."

The latter part of this year belongs to the period including the settlement at Down, and is therefore dealt with in another chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE AT DOWN.

1842-1854

"My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it."

    Letter to Captain Fitz-Roy, October, 1846.

Certain letters which, chronologically considered, belong to the period 1845-54 have been utilised in a later chapter where the growth of the Origin of Species is described. In the present chapter we only get occasional hints of the growth of my father's views, and we may suppose ourselves to be seeing his life, as it might have appeared to those who had no knowledge of the quiet development of his theory of evolution during this period.

On Sept. 14, 1842, my father left London with his family and settled at Down.[108 - I must not omit to mention a member of the household who accompanied him. This was his butler, Joseph Parslow, who remained in the family, a valued friend and servant, for forty years, and became, as Sir Joseph Hooker once remarked to me, "an integral part of the family, and felt to be such by all visitors at the house."] In the Autobiographical chapter, his motives for moving into the country are briefly given. He speaks of the attendance at scientific societies and ordinary social duties as suiting his health so "badly that we resolved to live in the country, which we both preferred and have never repented of." His intention of keeping up with scientific life in London is expressed in a letter to Fox (Dec., 1842): —

"I hope by going up to town for a night every fortnight or three weeks, to keep up my communication with scientific men and my own zeal, and so not to turn into a complete Kentish hog."

Visits to London of this kind were kept up for some years at the cost of much exertion on his part. I have often heard him speak of the wearisome drives of ten miles to or from Croydon or Sydenham – the nearest stations – with an old gardener acting as coachman, who drove with great caution and slowness up and down the many hills. In later years, regular scientific intercourse with London became, as before mentioned, an impossibility.

The choice of Down was rather the result of despair than of actual preference: my father and mother were weary of house-hunting, and the attractive points about the place thus seemed to them to counterbalance its somewhat more obvious faults. It had at least one desideratum, namely, quietness. Indeed it would have been difficult to find a more retired place so near to London. In 1842 a coach drive of some twenty miles was the usual means of access to Down; and even now that railways have crept closer to it, it is singularly out of the world, with nothing to suggest the neighbourhood of London, unless it be the dull haze of smoke that sometimes clouds the sky. The village stands in an angle between two of the larger high-roads of the country, one leading to Tunbridge and the other to Westerham and Edenbridge. It is cut off from the Weald by a line of steep chalk hills on the south, and an abrupt hill, now smoothed down by a cutting and embankment, must formerly have been something of a barrier against encroachments from the side of London. In such a situation, a village, communicating with the main lines of traffic, only by stony tortuous lanes, may well have preserved its retired character. Nor is it hard to believe in the smugglers and their strings of pack-horses making their way up from the lawless old villages of the Weald, of which the memory still existed when my father settled in Down. The village stands on solitary upland country, 500 to 600 feet above the sea – a country with little natural beauty, but possessing a certain charm in the shaws, or straggling strips of wood, capping the chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet ploughed lands of the valleys. The village, of three or four hundred inhabitants, consists of three small streets of cottages meeting in front of the little flint-built church. It is a place where new-comers are seldom seen, and the names occurring far back in the old church registers are still known in the village. The smock-frock is not yet quite extinct, though chiefly used as a ceremonial dress by the "bearers" at funerals; but as a boy I remember the purple or green smocks of the men at church.