Чарльз Дарвин
Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters
He had a keen feeling of the sense of honour that ought to reign among authors, and had a horror of any kind of laxness in quoting. He had a contempt for the love of honour and glory, and in his letters often blames himself for the pleasure he took in the success of his books, as though he were departing from his ideal – a love of truth and carelessness about fame. Often, when writing to Sir J. Hooker what he calls a boasting letter, he laughs at himself for his conceit and want of modesty. A wonderfully interesting letter is given in Chapter X. bequeathing to my mother, in case of his death, the care of publishing the manuscript of his first essay on evolution. This letter seems to me full of an intense desire that his theory should succeed as a contribution to knowledge, and apart from any desire for personal fame. He certainly had the healthy desire for success which a man of strong feelings ought to have. But at the time of the publication of the Origin it is evident that he was overwhelmingly satisfied with the adherence of such men as Lyell, Hooker, Huxley, and Asa Gray, and did not dream of or desire any such general fame as that to which he attained.
Connected with his contempt for the undue love of fame, was an equally strong dislike of all questions of priority. The letters to Lyell, at the time of the Origin, show the anger he felt with himself for not being able to repress a feeling of disappointment at what he thought was Mr. Wallace's forestalling of all his years of work. His sense of literary honour comes out strongly in these letters; and his feeling about priority is again shown in the admiration expressed in his Recollections of Mr. Wallace's self-annihilation.
His feeling about reclamations, including answers to attacks and all kinds of discussions, was strong. It is simply expressed in a letter to Falconer (1863): "If I ever felt angry towards you, for whom I have a sincere friendship, I should begin to suspect that I was a little mad. I was very sorry about your reclamation, as I think it is in every case a mistake and should be left to others. Whether I should so act myself under provocation is a different question." It was a feeling partly dictated by instinctive delicacy, and partly by a strong sense of the waste of time, energy, and temper thus caused. He said that he owed his determination not to get into discussions63 to the advice of Lyell, – advice which he transmitted to those among his friends who were given to paper warfare.
If the character of my father's working life is to be understood, the conditions of ill-health, under which he worked, must be constantly borne in mind. He bore his illness with such uncomplaining patience, that even his children can hardly, I believe, realise the extent of his habitual suffering. In their case the difficulty is heightened by the fact that, from the days of their earliest recollections, they saw him in constant ill-health, – and saw him, in spite of it, full of pleasure in what pleased them. Thus, in later life, their perception of what he endured had to be disentangled from the impression produced in childhood by constant genial kindness under conditions of unrecognised difficulty. No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming overtired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the life-long devotion which prompted all this constant and tender care. But it is, I repeat, a principal feature of his life, that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and strain of sickness. And this cannot be told without speaking of the one condition which enabled him to bear the strain and fight out the struggle to the end.
CHAPTER V.
CAMBRIDGE LIFE. – THE APPOINTMENT TO THE 'BEAGLE.'
My father's Cambridge life comprises the time between the Lent Term, 1828, when he came up to Christ's College as a Freshman, and the end of the May Term, 1831, when he took his degree64 and left the University.
He "kept" for a term or two in lodgings, over Bacon65 the tobacconist's; not, however, over the shop in the Market Place, so well known to Cambridge men, but in Sydney Street. For the rest of his time he had pleasant rooms on the south side of the first court of Christ's.66
What determined the choice of this college for his brother Erasmus and himself I have no means of knowing. Erasmus the elder, their grandfather, had been at St. John's, and this college might have been reasonably selected for them, being connected with Shrewsbury School. But the life of an undergraduate at St. John's seems, in those days, to have been a troubled one, if I may judge from the fact that a relative of mine migrated thence to Christ's to escape the harassing discipline of the place.
Darwin seems to have found no difficulty in living at peace with all men in and out of office at Lady Margaret's elder foundation. The impression of a contemporary of my father's is that Christ's in their day was a pleasant, fairly quiet college, with some tendency towards "horsiness"; many of the men made a custom of going to Newmarket during the races, though betting was not a regular practice. In this they were by no means discouraged by the Senior Tutor, Mr. Shaw, who was himself generally to be seen on the Heath on these occasions.
Nor were the ecclesiastical authorities of the College over strict. I have heard my father tell how at evening chapel the Dean used to read alternate verses of the Psalms, without making even a pretence of waiting for the congregation to take their share. And when the Lesson was a lengthy one, he would rise and go on with the Canticles after the scholar had read fifteen or twenty verses.
It is curious that my father often spoke of his Cambridge life as if it had been so much time wasted,67 forgetting that, although the set studies of the place were barren enough for him, he yet gained in the highest degree the best advantages of a University life – the contact with men and an opportunity for mental growth. It is true that he valued at its highest the advantages which he gained from associating with Professor Henslow and some others, but he seemed to consider this as a chance outcome of his life at Cambridge, not an advantage for which Alma Mater could claim any credit. One of my father's Cambridge friends was the late Mr. J. M. Herbert, County Court Judge for South Wales, from whom I was fortunate enough to obtain some notes which help us to gain an idea of how my father impressed his contemporaries. Mr. Herbert writes: —
"It would be idle for me to speak of his vast intellectual powers … but I cannot end this cursory and rambling sketch without testifying, and I doubt not all his surviving college friends would concur with me, that he was the most genial, warm-hearted, generous, and affectionate of friends; that his sympathies were with all that was good and true; and that he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonourable. He was not only great, but pre-eminently good, and just, and lovable."
Two anecdotes told by Mr. Herbert show that my father's feeling for suffering, whether of man or beast, was as strong in him as a young man as it was in later years: "Before he left Cambridge he told me that he had made up his mind not to shoot any more; that he had had two days' shooting at his friend's, Mr. Owen of Woodhouse; and that on the second day, when going over some of the ground they had beaten on the day before, he picked up a bird not quite dead, but lingering from a shot it had received on the previous day; and that it had made and left such a painful impression on his mind, that he could not reconcile it to his conscience to continue to derive pleasure from a sport which inflicted such cruel suffering."
To realise the strength of the feeling that led to this resolve, we must remember how passionate was his love of sport. We must recall the boy shooting his first snipe,68 and trembling with excitement so that he could hardly reload his gun. Or think of such a sentence as, "Upon my soul, it is only about a fortnight to the 'First,' then if there is a bliss on earth that is it."69
His old college friends agree in speaking with affectionate warmth of his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. From what they have been able to tell me, I gain the impression of a young man overflowing with animal spirits – leading a varied healthy life – not over-industrious in the set studies of the place, but full of other pursuits, which were followed with a rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, riding, shooting in the fens, suppers and card-playing, music at King's Chapel, engravings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, walks with Professor Henslow – all combined to fill up a happy life. He seems to have infected others with his enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert relates how, while on a reading-party at Barmouth, he was pressed into the service of "the science" – as my father called collecting beetles: —
"He armed me with a bottle of alcohol, in which I had to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common kind. I performed this duty with some diligence in my constitutional walks; but, alas! my powers of discrimination seldom enabled mo to secure a prize – the usual result, on his examining the contents of my bottle, being an exclamation, 'Well, old Cherbury'70(the nickname he gave me, and by which he usually addressed me), 'none of these will do.'" Again, the Rev. T. Butler, who was one of the Barmouth reading-party in 1828, says: "He inoculated me with a taste for Botany which has stuck by me all my life."
Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my father's, remembered him unearthing beetles in the willows between Cambridge and Grantchester, and speaks of a certain beetle the remembrance of whose name is "Crux major."71 How enthusiastically must my father have exulted over this beetle to have impressed its name on a companion so that he remembers it after half a century!
He became intimate with Henslow, the Professor of Botany, and through him with some other older members of the University. "But," Mr. Herbert writes, "he always kept up the closest connection with the friends of his own standing; and at our frequent social gatherings – at breakfast, wine or supper parties – he was ever one of the most cheerful, the most popular, and the most welcome."
My father formed one of a club for dining once a week, called the Glutton Club, the members, besides himself and Mr. Herbert (from whom I quote), being Whitley of St. John's, now Honorary Canon of Durham;72 Heaviside of Sydney, now Canon of Norwich; Lovett Cameron of Trinity, sometime vicar of Shoreham; R. Blane of Trinity,73 who held a high post during the Crimean war, H. Lowe74 (afterwards Sherbrooke) of Trinity Hall; and F. Watkins of Emmanuel, afterwards Archdeacon of York. The origin of the club's name seems already to have become involved in obscurity; it certainly implied no unusual luxury in the weekly gatherings.
At any rate, the meetings seemed to have been successful, and to have ended with "a game of mild vingt-et-un."
Mr. Herbert speaks strongly of my father's love of music, and adds, "What gave him the greatest delight was some grand symphony or overture of Mozart's or Beethoven's, with their full harmonies." On one occasion Herbert remembers "accompanying him to the afternoon service at King's, when we heard a very beautiful anthem. At the end of one of the parts, which was exceedingly impressive, he turned round to me and said, with a deep sigh, 'How's your backbone?'" He often spoke in later years of a feeling of coldness or shivering in his back on hearing beautiful music.
Besides a love of music, he had certainly at this time a love of fine literature; and Mr. Cameron tells me that my father took much pleasure in Shakespeare readings carried on in his rooms at Christ's. He also speaks of Darwin's "great liking for first-class line engravings, especially those of Raphael Morghen and Müller; and he spent hours in the Fitzwilliam Museum in looking over the prints in that collection."
My father's letters to Fox show how sorely oppressed he felt by the reading for an examination. His despair over mathematics must have been profound, when he expresses a hope that Fox's silence is due to "your being ten fathoms deep in the Mathematics; and if you are, God help you, for so am I, only with this difference, I stick fast in the mud at the bottom, and there I shall remain." Mr. Herbert says: "He had, I imagine, no natural turn for mathematics, and he gave up his mathematical reading before he had mastered the first part of algebra, having had a special quarrel with Surds and the Binomial Theorem."
We get some evidence from my father's letters to Fox of his intention of going into the Church. "I am glad," he writes,75 "to hear that you are reading divinity. I should like to know what books you are reading, and your opinions about them; you need not be afraid of preaching to me prematurely." Mr. Herbert's sketch shows how doubts arose in my father's mind as to the possibility of his taking Orders. He writes, "We had an earnest conversation about going into Holy Orders; and I remember his asking me, with reference to the question put by the Bishop in the Ordination Service, 'Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit, &c.,' whether I could answer in the affirmative, and on my saying I could not, he said, 'Neither can I, and therefore I cannot take orders.'" This conversation appears to have taken place in 1829, and if so, the doubts here expressed must have been quieted, for in May 1830, he speaks of having some thoughts of reading divinity with Henslow.
The greater number of his Cambridge letters are addressed by my father to his cousin, William Darwin Fox. My father's letters show clearly enough how genuine the friendship was. In after years, distance, large families, and ill-health on both sides, checked the intercourse; but a warm feeling of friendship remained. The correspondence was never quite dropped and continued till Mr. Fox's death in 1880. Mr. Fox took orders, and worked as a country clergyman until forced by ill-health to leave his living in Delamere Forest. His love of natural history was strong, and he became a skilled fancier of many kinds of birds, &c. The index to Animals and Plants, and my father's later correspondence, show how much help he received from his old College friend.
C. D. to J. M. Herbert. September 14, 1828.76
My dear old Cherbury, – I am about to fulfil my promise of writing to you, but I am sorry to add there is a very selfish motive at the bottom. I am going to ask you a great favour, and you cannot imagine how much you will oblige me by procuring some more specimens of some insects which I dare say I can describe. In the first place, I must inform you that I have taken some of the rarest of the British Insects, and their being found near Barmouth, is quite unknown to the Entomological world: I think I shall write and inform some of the crack entomologists.
But now for business. Several more specimens, if you can procure them without much trouble, of the following insects: – The violet-black coloured beetle, found on Craig Storm,77 under stones, also a large smooth black one very like it; a bluish metallic-coloured dung-beetle, which is very common on the hill-sides; also, if you would be so very kind as to cross the ferry, and you will find a great number under the stones on the waste land of a long, smooth, jet-black beetle (a great many of these); also, in the same situation, a very small pinkish insect, with black spots, with a curved thorax projecting beyond the head; also, upon the marshy land over the ferry, near the sea, under old sea weed, stones, &c., you will find a small yellowish transparent beetle, with two or four blackish marks on the back. Under these stones there are two sorts, one much darker than the other; the lighter coloured is that which I want. These last two insects are excessively rare, and you will really extremely oblige me by taking all this trouble pretty soon. Remember me most kindly to Butler,78 tell him of my success, and I dare say both of you will easily recognise these insects. I hope his caterpillars go on well. I think many of the Chrysalises are well worth keeping. I really am quite ashamed [of] so long a letter all about my own concerns; but do return good for evil, and send me a long account of all your proceedings.
In the first week I killed seventy-five head of game – a very contemptible number – but there are very few birds. I killed, however, a brace of black game. Since then I have been staying at the Fox's, near Derby; it is a very pleasant house, and the music meeting went off very well. I want to hear how Yates likes his gun, and what use he has made of it.
If the bottle is not large you can buy another for me, and when you pass through Shrewsbury you can leave these treasures, and I hope, if you possibly can, you will stay a day or two with me, as I hope I need not say how glad I shall be to see you again. Fox remarked what deuced good natured fellows your friends at Barmouth must be; and if I did not know that you and Butler were so, I would not think of giving you so much trouble.
In the following January we find him looking forward with pleasure to the beginning of another year of his Cambridge life: he writes to Fox, who had passed his examination: —
"I do so wish I were now in Cambridge (a very selfish wish, however, as I was not with you in all your troubles and misery), to join in all the glory and happiness, which dangers gone by can give. How we would talk, walk, and entomologise! Sappho should be the best of bitches, and Dash, of dogs; then should be 'peace on earth, good will to men,' – which, by the way, I always think the most perfect description of happiness that words can give."
Later on in the Lent term he writes to Fox: —
"I am leading a quiet everyday sort of a life; a little of Gibbon's History in the morning, and a good deal of Van John in the evening; this, with an occasional ride with Simcox and constitutional with Whitley, makes up the regular routine of my days. I see a good deal both of Herbert and Whitley, and the more I see of them increases every day the respect I have for their excellent understandings and dispositions. They have been giving some very gay parties, nearly sixty men there both evenings."
C. D. to W. D. Fox. Christ's College, April 1 [1829]
My dear Fox – In your letter to Holden you are pleased to observe "that of all the blackguards you ever met with I am the greatest." Upon this observation I shall make no remarks, excepting that I must give you all due credit for acting on it most rigidly. And now I should like to know in what one particular are you less of a blackguard than I am? You idle old wretch, why have you not answered my last letter, which I am sure I forwarded to Clifton nearly three weeks ago? If I was not really very anxious to hear what you are doing, I should have allowed you to remain till you thought it worth while to treat me like a gentleman. And now having vented my spleen in scolding you, and having told you, what you must know, how very much and how anxiously I want to hear how you and your family are getting on at Clifton, the purport of this letter is finished. If you did but know how often I think of you, and how often I regret your absence, I am sure I should have heard from you long enough ago.
I find Cambridge rather stupid, and as I know scarcely any one that walks, and this joined with my lips not being quite so well, has reduced me to a sort of hybernation… I have caught Mr. Harbour79 letting – have the first pick of the beetles; accordingly we have made our final adieus, my part in the affecting scene consisted in telling him he was a d – d rascal, and signifying I should kick him down the stairs if ever he appeared in my rooms again. It seemed altogether mightily to surprise the young gentleman. I have no news to tell you; indeed, when a correspondence has been broken off like ours has been, it is difficult to make the first start again. Last night there was a terrible fire at Linton, eleven miles from Cambridge. Seeing the reflection so plainly in the sky, Hall, Woodyeare, Turner, and myself thought we would ride and see it. We set out at half-past nine, and rode like incarnate devils there, and did not return till two in the morning. Altogether it was a most awful sight. I cannot conclude without telling you, that of all the blackguards I ever met with, you are the greatest and the best.
In July 1829 he had written to Fox: —
"I must read for my Little-go. Graham smiled and bowed so very civilly, when he told me that he was one of the six appointed to make the examination stricter, and that they were determined this would make it a very different thing from any previous examination, that from all this I am sure it will be the very devil to pay amongst all idle men and entomologists."
But things were not so bad as he feared, and in March 1830, he could write to the same correspondent: —
"I am through my Little-go!!! I am too much exalted to humble myself by apologising for not having written before. But I assure you before I went in, and when my nerves were in a shattered and weak condition, your injured person often rose before my eyes and taunted me with my idleness. But I am through, through, through. I could write the whole sheet full with this delightful word. I went in yesterday, and have just heard the joyful news. I shall not know for a week which class I am in. The whole examination is carried on in a different system. It has one grand advantage – being over in one day. They are rather strict, and ask a wonderful number of questions.
And now I want to know something about your plans; of course you intend coming up here: what fun we will have together; what beetles we will catch; it will do my heart good to go once more together to some of our old haunts. I have two very promising pupils in Entomology, and we will make regular campaigns into the Fens. Heaven protect the beetles and Mr. Jenyns, for we won't leave him a pair in the whole country. My new Cabinet is come down, and a gay little affair it is."
In August he was diligently amusing himself in North Wales, finding no time to write to Fox, because: —
"This is literally the first idle day I have had to myself; for on the rainy days I go fishing, on the good ones entomologising."
November found him preparing for his degree, of which process he writes dolefully: —
"I have so little time at present, and am so disgusted by reading, that I have not the heart to write to anybody. I have only written once home since I came up. This must excuse me for not having answered your three letters, for which I am really very much obliged…
"I have not stuck an insect this term, and scarcely opened a case. If I had time I would have sent you the insects which I have so long promised; but really I have not spirits or time to do anything. Reading makes me quite desperate; the plague of getting up all my subjects is next thing to intolerable, Henslow is my tutor, and a most admirable one he makes; the hour with him is the pleasantest in the whole day. I think he is quite the most perfect man I ever met with. I have been to some very pleasant parties there this term. His good-nature is unbounded."
The new year brought relief, and on January 23, 1831, he wrote to tell Fox that he was through his examination.
"I do not know why the degree should make one so miserable, both before and afterwards. I recollect you were sufficiently wretched before, and I can assure [you], I am now; and what makes it the more ridiculous is, I know not what about. I believe it is a beautiful provision of nature to make one regret the less leaving so pleasant a place as Cambridge; and amongst all its pleasures – I say it for once and for all – none so great as my friendship with you. I sent you a newspaper yesterday, in which you will see what a good place – tenth – I have got in the Poll. As for Christ's, did you ever see such a college for producing Captains and Apostles?80 There are no men either at Emmanuel or Christ's plucked. Cameron is gulfed,81 together with other three Trinity scholars! My plans are not at all settled. I think I shall keep this term, and then go and economise at Shrewsbury, return and take my degree.
"A man may be excused for writing so much about himself when he has just passed the examination; so you must excuse [me]. And on the same principle do you write a letter brimful of yourself and plans."
THE APPOINTMENT TO THE 'BEAGLE.'
In a letter addressed to Captain Fitz-Roy, before the Beagle sailed, my father wrote, "What a glorious day the 4th of November82 will be to me – my second life will then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my life."
Foremost in the chain of circumstances which led to his appointment to the Beagle, was his friendship with Professor Henslow, of which the autobiography gives a sufficient account.83
An extract from a pocket-book, in which Darwin briefly recorded the chief events of his life, gives the history of his introduction to that science which was so soon to be his chief occupation – geology.
"1831. Christmas.– Passed my examination for B.A. degree and kept the two following terms. During these months lived much with Professor Henslow, often dining with him and walking with him; became slightly acquainted with several of the learned men in Cambridge, which much quickened the zeal which dinner parties and hunting had not destroyed. In the spring Henslow persuaded me to think of Geology, and introduced me to Sedgwick. During Midsummer geologized a little in Shropshire."
This geological work was doubtless of importance as giving him some practical experience, and perhaps of more importance in helping to give him some confidence in himself. In July of the same year, 1831, he was "working like a tiger" at Geology, and trying to make a map of Shropshire, but not finding it "as easy as I expected."
In writing to Henslow about the same time, he gives some account of his work: —
"I have been working at so many things that I have not got on much with geology. I suspect the first expedition I take, clinometer and hammer in hand, will send me back very little wiser and a good deal more puzzled than when I started. As yet I have only indulged in hypotheses, but they are such powerful ones that I suppose, if they were put into action but for one day, the world would come to an end."
He was evidently most keen to get to work with Sedgwick, who had promised to take him on a geological tour in North Wales, for he wrote to Henslow: "I have not heard from Professor Sedgwick, so I am afraid he will not pay the Severn formations a visit. I hope and trust you did your best to urge him."
My father has given in his Recollections some account of this Tour; there too we read of the projected excursion to the Canaries.
In April 1831, he writes to Fox: "At present I talk, think, and dream of a scheme I have almost hatched of going to the Canary Islands. I have long had a wish of seeing tropical scenery and vegetation, and, according to Humboldt, Teneriffe is a very pretty specimen." And again in May: "As for my Canary scheme, it is rash of you to ask questions; my other friends most sincerely wish me there, I plague them so with talking about tropical scenery, &c. Eyton will go next summer, and I am learning Spanish."
Later on in the summer the scheme took more definite form, and the date seems to have been fixed for June 1832. He got information in London about passage-money, and in July was working at Spanish and calling Fox "un grandìsimo lebron," in proof of his knowledge of the language. But even then he seems to have had some doubts about his companions' zeal, for he writes to Henslow (July 27, 1831): "I hope you continue to fan your Canary ardour. I read and re-read Humboldt;84 do you do the same. I am sure nothing will prevent us seeing the Great Dragon Tree."
Geological work and Teneriffe dreams carried him through the summer, till on returning from Barmouth for the sacred 1st of September, he received the offer of appointment as Naturalist to the Beagle.
The following extract from the pocket-book will be a help in reading the letters: —
"Returned to Shrewsbury at end of August. Refused offer of voyage.
"September.– Went to Maer, returned with Uncle Jos. to Shrewsbury, thence to Cambridge. London.
"11th.– Went with Captain Fitz-Roy in steamer to Plymouth to see the Beagle.
"22nd.– Returned to Shrewsbury, passing through Cambridge.
"October 2nd.– Took leave of my home. Stayed in London.
"24th.– Reached Plymouth.
"October and November.– These months very miserable.
"December 10th.– Sailed, but were obliged to put back.
"21st.– Put to sea again, and were driven back.
"27th.– Sailed from England on our Circumnavigation."
George Peacock 85 to J. S. Henslow [1831]
My dear Henslow – Captain Fitz-Roy is going out to survey the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego, and afterwards to visit many of the South Sea Islands, and to return by the Indian Archipelago. The vessel is fitted out expressly for scientific purposes, combined with the survey; it will furnish, therefore, a rare opportunity for a naturalist, and it would be a great misfortune that it should be lost.
An offer has been made to me to recommend a proper person to go out as a naturalist with this expedition; he will be treated with every consideration. The Captain is a young man of very pleasing manners (a nephew of the Duke of Grafton), of great zeal in his profession, and who is very highly spoken of; if Leonard Jenyns could go, what treasures he might bring home with him, as the ship would be placed at his disposal whenever his inquiries made it necessary or desirable. In the absence of so accomplished a naturalist, is there any person whom you could strongly recommend? he must be such a person as would do credit to our recommendation. Do think of this subject; it would be a serious loss to the cause of natural science if this fine opportunity was lost.
