CAMBRIDGE 1828-1831.
“VOYAGE OF THE ‘BEAGLE’ FROM DECEMBER 27, 1831, TO OCTOBER 2, 1836.”
FROM MY RETURN TO ENGLAND (OCTOBER 2, 1836) TO MY MARRIAGE (JANUARY 29, 1839.)
FROM MY MARRIAGE, JANUARY 29, 1839, AND RESIDENCE IN UPPER GOWER STREET, TO OUR LEAVING LONDON AND SETTLING AT DOWN, SEPTEMBER 14, 1842.
RESIDENCE AT DOWN FROM SEPTEMBER 14, 1842, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1876.
MY SEVERAL PUBLICATIONS.
WRITTEN MAY 1ST, 1881.
[My father’s autobiographical recollections, given in the present
chapter, were written for his children,—and written without any thought
that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an
impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was
not only possible, but natural. The autobiography bears the heading,
‘Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character,’ and end
with the following note:—“Aug. 3, 1876. This sketch of my life was
begun about May 28th at Hopedene (Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood’s house in
Surrey.), and since then I have written for nearly an hour on most
afternoons.” It will easily be understood that, in a narrative of a
personal and intimate kind written for his wife and children, passages
should occur which must here be omitted; and I have not thought it
necessary to indicate where such omissions are made. It has been found
necessary to make a few corrections of obvious verbal slips, but the
number of such alterations has been kept down to the minimum.—F.D.]
A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development
of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have
thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my
children or their children. I know that it would have interested me
greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my
grandfather, written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how
he worked. I have attempted to write the following account of myself,
as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life.
Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I
have taken no pains about my style of writing.
I was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809, and my earliest
recollection goes back only to when I was a few months over four years
old, when we went to near Abergele for sea-bathing, and I recollect
some events and places there with some little distinctness.
My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old,
and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her
death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed
work-table. In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school
in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much
slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, and I believe that
I was in many ways a naughty boy.
By the time I went to this day-school (Kept by Rev. G. Case, minister
of the Unitarian Chapel in the High Street. Mrs. Darwin was a Unitarian
and attended Mr. Case’s chapel, and my father as a little boy went
there with his elder sisters. But both he and his brother were
christened and intended to belong to the Church of England; and after
his early boyhood he seems usually to have gone to church and not to
Mr. Case’s. It appears (“St. James’ Gazette”, Dec. 15, 1883) that a
mural tablet has been erected to his memory in the chapel, which is now
known as the ‘Free Christian Church.’) my taste for natural history,
and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make
out the names of plants (Rev. W.A. Leighton, who was a schoolfellow of
my father’s at Mr. Case’s school, remembers his bringing a flower to
school and saying that his mother had taught him how by looking at the
inside of the blossom the name of the plant could be discovered. Mr.
Leighton goes on, “This greatly roused my attention and curiosity, and
I enquired of him repeatedly how this could be done?”—but his lesson
was naturally enough not transmissible.—F.D.), and collected all sorts
of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for
collecting which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso,
or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of
my sisters or brother ever had this taste.
One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my
mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having been
afterwards sorely troubled by it; it is curious as showing that
apparently I was interested at this early age in the variability of
plants! I told another little boy (I believe it was Leighton, who
afterwards became a well-known lichenologist and botanist), that I
could produce variously coloured polyanthuses and primroses by watering
them with certain coloured fluids, which was of course a monstrous
fable, and had never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as
a little boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and
this was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance,
I once gathered much valuable fruit from my father’s trees and hid it
in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news
that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.
I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to the
school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake shop one day,
and bought some cakes for which he did not pay, as the shopman trusted
him. When we came out I asked him why he did not pay for them, and he
instantly answered, “Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great
sum of money to the town on condition that every tradesman should give
whatever was wanted without payment to any one who wore his old hat and
moved [it] in a particular manner?” and he then showed me how it was
moved. He then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked
for some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of
course obtained it without payment. When we came out he said, “Now if
you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well I remember its
exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you can get whatever you
like if you move the hat on your head properly.” I gladly accepted the
generous offer, and went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old hat
and was walking out of the shop, when the shopman made a rush at me, so
I dropped the cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being
greeted with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.
I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed this
entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed
whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of
collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a
bird’s nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for
their value, but from a sort of bravado.
I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for any number of hours
on the bank of a river or pond watching the float; when at Maer (The
house of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood.) I was told that I could kill the
worms with salt and water, and from that day I never spitted a living
worm, though at the expense probably of some loss of success.
Once as a very little boy whilst at the day school, or before that
time, I acted cruelly, for I beat a puppy, I believe, simply from
enjoying the sense of power; but the beating could not have been
severe, for the puppy did not howl, of which I feel sure, as the spot
was near the house. This act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown
by my remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It
probably lay all the heavier from my love of dogs being then, and for a
long time afterwards, a passion. Dogs seemed to know this, for I was an
adept in robbing their love from their masters.
I remember clearly only one other incident during this year whilst at
Mr. Case’s daily school,—namely, the burial of a dragoon soldier; and
it is surprising how clearly I can still see the horse with the man’s
empty boots and carbine suspended to the saddle, and the firing over
the grave. This scene deeply stirred whatever poetic fancy there was in
me.
In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr. Butler’s great school in
Shrewsbury, and remained there for seven years till Midsummer 1825,
when I was sixteen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I had
the great advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy; but as the
distance was hardly more than a mile to my home, I very often ran there
in the longer intervals between the callings over and before locking up
at night. This, I think, was in many ways advantageous to me by keeping
up home affections and interests. I remember in the early part of my
school life that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and
from being a fleet runner was generally successful; but when in doubt I
prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I
attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and
marvelled how generally I was aided.
I have heard my father and elder sister say that I had, as a very young
boy, a strong taste for long solitary walks; but what I thought about I
know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to
school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which
had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side,
I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or
eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my
mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was
astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I
believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable
amount of time.
Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr.
Butler’s school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being
taught, except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a
means of education to me was simply a blank. During my whole life I
have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial
attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I
had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses,
which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work
into any subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the
lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility,
learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst I was in
morning chapel; but this exercise was utterly useless, for every verse
was forgotten in forty-eight hours. I was not idle, and with the
exception of versification, generally worked conscientiously at my
classics, not using cribs. The sole pleasure I ever received from such
studies, was from some of the odes of Horace, which I admired greatly.
When I left the school I was for my age neither high nor low in it; and
I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a
very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my
deep mortification my father once said to me, “You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to
yourself and all your family.” But my father, who was the kindest man I
ever knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been
angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words.
Looking back as well as I can at my character during my school life,
the only qualities which at this period promised well for the future,
were, that I had strong and diversified tastes, much zeal for whatever
interested me, and a keen pleasure in understanding any complex subject
or thing. I was taught Euclid by a private tutor, and I distinctly
remember the intense satisfaction which the clear geometrical proofs
gave me. I remember, with equal distinctness, the delight which my
uncle gave me (the father of Francis Galton) by explaining the
principle of the vernier of a barometer with respect to diversified
tastes, independently of science, I was fond of reading various books,
and I used to sit for hours reading the historical plays of
Shakespeare, generally in an old window in the thick walls of the
school. I read also other poetry, such as Thomson’s ‘Seasons,’ and the
recently published poems of Byron and Scott. I mention this because
later in life I wholly lost, to my great regret, all pleasure from
poetry of any kind, including Shakespeare. In connection with pleasure
from poetry, I may add that in 1822 a vivid delight in scenery was
first awakened in my mind, during a riding tour on the borders of
Wales, and this has lasted longer than any other aesthetic pleasure.
Early in my school days a boy had a copy of the ‘Wonders of the World,’
which I often read, and disputed with other boys about the veracity of
some of the statements; and I believe that this book first gave me a
wish to travel in remote countries, which was ultimately fulfilled by
the voyage of the “Beagle”. In the latter part of my school life I
became passionately fond of shooting; I do not believe that any one
could have shown more zeal for the most holy cause than I did for
shooting birds. How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my
excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun
from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became
a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing up my
gun to my shoulder before a looking-glass to see that I threw it up
straight. Another and better plan was to get a friend to wave about a
lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on the nipple, and if
the aim was accurate the little puff of air would blow out the candle.
The explosion of the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the
tutor of the college remarked, “What an extraordinary thing it is, Mr.
Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horse-whip in his room, for I
often hear the crack when I pass under his windows.”
I had many friends amongst the schoolboys, whom I loved dearly, and I
think that my disposition was then very affectionate.
With respect to science, I continued collecting minerals with much
zeal, but quite unscientifically—all that I cared about was a
new-_named_ mineral, and I hardly attempted to classify them. I must
have observed insects with some little care, for when ten years old
(1819) I went for three weeks to Plas Edwards on the sea-coast in
Wales, I was very much interested and surprised at seeing a large black
and scarlet Hemipterous insect, many moths (Zygaena), and a Cicindela
which are not found in Shropshire. I almost made up my mind to begin
collecting all the insects which I could find dead, for on consulting
my sister I concluded that it was not right to kill insects for the
sake of making a collection. From reading White’s ‘Selborne,’ I took
much pleasure in watching the habits of birds, and even made notes on
the subject. In my simplicity I remember wondering why every gentleman
did not become an ornithologist.
Towards the close of my school life, my brother worked hard at
chemistry, and made a fair laboratory with proper apparatus in the
tool-house in the garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in
most of his experiments. He made all the gases and many compounds, and
I read with great care several books on chemistry, such as Henry and
Parkes’ ‘Chemical Catechism.’ The subject interested me greatly, and we
often used to go on working till rather late at night. This was the
best part of my education at school, for it showed me practically the
meaning of experimental science. The fact that we worked at chemistry
somehow got known at school, and as it was an unprecedented fact, I was
nicknamed “Gas.” I was also once publicly rebuked by the head-master,
Dr. Butler, for thus wasting my time on such useless subjects; and he
called me very unjustly a “poco curante,” and as I did not understand
what he meant, it seemed to me a fearful reproach.
As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took me away at a
rather earlier age than usual, and sent me (Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh
University with my brother, where I stayed for two years or sessions.
My brother was completing his medical studies, though I do not believe
he ever really intended to practise, and I was sent there to commence
them. But soon after this period I became convinced from various small
circumstances that my father would leave me property enough to subsist
on with some comfort, though I never imagined that I should be so rich
a man as I am; but my belief was sufficient to check any strenuous
efforts to learn medicine.
The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were
intolerably dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope; but
to my mind there are no advantages and many disadvantages in lectures
compared with reading. Dr. Duncan’s lectures on Materia Medica at 8
o’clock on a winter’s morning are something fearful to remember. Dr.——
made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the
subject disgusted me. It has proved one of the greatest evils in my
life that I was not urged to practise dissection, for I should soon
have got over my disgust; and the practice would have been invaluable
for all my future work. This has been an irremediable evil, as well as
my incapacity to draw. I also attended regularly the clinical wards in
the hospital. Some of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I still
have vivid pictures before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish
as to allow this to lessen my attendance. I cannot understand why this
part of my medical course did not interest me in a greater degree; for
during the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began attending some of
the poor people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury: I wrote down
as full an account as I could of the case with all the symptoms, and
read them aloud to my father, who suggested further inquiries and
advised me what medicines to give, which I made up myself. At one time
I had at least a dozen patients, and I felt a keen interest in the
work. My father, who was by far the best judge of character whom I ever
knew, declared that I should make a successful physician,—meaning by
this one who would get many patients. He maintained that the chief
element of success was exciting confidence; but what he saw in me which
convinced him that I should create confidence I know not. I also
attended on two occasions the operating theatre in the hospital at
Edinburgh, and saw two very bad operations, one on a child, but I
rushed away before they were completed. Nor did I ever attend again,
for hardly any inducement would have been strong enough to make me do
so; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two
cases fairly haunted me for many a long year.
My brother stayed only one year at the University, so that during the
second year I was left to my own resources; and this was an advantage,
for I became well acquainted with several young men fond of natural
science. One of these was Ainsworth, who afterwards published his
travels in Assyria; he was a Wernerian geologist, and knew a little
about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man,
prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards
published some good zoological articles. A third young man was Hardie,
who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early in India.
Lastly, Dr. Grant, my senior by several years, but how I became
acquainted with him I cannot remember; he published some first-rate
zoological papers, but after coming to London as Professor in
University College, he did nothing more in science, a fact which has
always been inexplicable to me. I knew him well; he was dry and formal
in manner, with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust. He one day,
when we were walking together, burst forth in high admiration of
Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment,
and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind. I had
previously read the ‘Zoonomia’ of my grandfather, in which similar
views are maintained, but without producing any effect on me.
Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such
views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under
a different form in my ‘Origin of Species.’ At this time I admired
greatly the ‘Zoonomia;’ but on reading it a second time after an
interval of ten or fifteen years, I was much disappointed; the
proportion of speculation being so large to the facts given.
Drs. Grant and Coldstream attended much to marine Zoology, and I often
accompanied the former to collect animals in the tidal pools, which I
dissected as well as I could. I also became friends with some of the
Newhaven fishermen, and sometimes accompanied them when they trawled
for oysters, and thus got many specimens. But from not having had any
regular practice in dissection, and from possessing only a wretched
microscope, my attempts were very poor. Nevertheless I made one
interesting little discovery, and read, about the beginning of the year
1826, a short paper on the subject before the Plinian Society. This was
that the so-called ova of Flustra had the power of independent movement
by means of cilia, and were in fact larvae. In another short paper I
showed that the little globular bodies which had been supposed to be
the young state of Fucus loreus were the egg-cases of the wormlike
Pontobdella muricata.
The Plinian Society was encouraged and, I believe, founded by Professor
Jameson: it consisted of students and met in an underground room in the
University for the sake of reading papers on natural science and
discussing them. I used regularly to attend, and the meetings had a
good effect on me in stimulating my zeal and giving me new congenial
acquaintances. One evening a poor young man got up, and after
stammering for a prodigious length of time, blushing crimson, he at
last slowly got out the words, “Mr. President, I have forgotten what I
was going to say.” The poor fellow looked quite overwhelmed, and all
the members were so surprised that no one could think of a word to say
to cover his confusion. The papers which were read to our little
society were not printed, so that I had not the satisfaction of seeing
my paper in print; but I believe Dr. Grant noticed my small discovery
in his excellent memoir on Flustra.
I was also a member of the Royal Medical Society, and attended pretty
regularly; but as the subjects were exclusively medical, I did not much
care about them. Much rubbish was talked there, but there were some
good speakers, of whom the best was the present Sir J.
Kay-Shuttleworth. Dr. Grant took me occasionally to the meetings of the
Wernerian Society, where various papers on natural history were read,
discussed, and afterwards published in the ‘Transactions.’ I heard
Audubon deliver there some interesting discourses on the habits of N.
American birds, sneering somewhat unjustly at Waterton. By the way, a
negro lived in Edinburgh, who had travelled with Waterton, and gained
his livelihood by stuffing birds, which he did excellently: he gave me
lessons for payment, and I used often to sit with him, for he was a
very pleasant and intelligent man.
Mr. Leonard Horner also took me once to a meeting of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, where I saw Sir Walter Scott in the chair as President,
and he apologised to the meeting as not feeling fitted for such a
position. I looked at him and at the whole scene with some awe and
reverence, and I think it was owing to this visit during my youth, and
to my having attended the Royal Medical Society, that I felt the honour
of being elected a few years ago an honorary member of both these
Societies, more than any other similar honour. If I had been told at
that time that I should one day have been thus honoured, I declare that
I should have thought it as ridiculous and improbable, as if I had been
told that I should be elected King of England.
During my second year at Edinburgh I attended ——’s lectures on Geology
and Zoology, but they were incredibly dull. The sole effect they
produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a
book on Geology, or in any way to study the science. Yet I feel sure
that I was prepared for a philosophical treatment of the subject; for
an old Mr. Cotton in Shropshire, who knew a good deal about rocks, had
pointed out to me two or three years previously a well-known large
erratic boulder in the town of Shrewsbury, called the “bell-stone”; he
told me that there was no rock of the same kind nearer than Cumberland
or Scotland, and he solemnly assured me that the world would come to an
end before any one would be able to explain how this stone came where
it now lay. This produced a deep impression on me, and I meditated over
this wonderful stone. So that I felt the keenest delight when I first
read of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders, and I gloried
in the progress of Geology. Equally striking is the fact that I, though
now only sixty-seven years old, heard the Professor, in a field lecture
at Salisbury Craigs, discoursing on a trapdyke, with amygdaloidal
margins and the strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all
around us, say that it was a fissure filled with sediment from above,
adding with a sneer that there were men who maintained that it had been
injected from beneath in a molten condition. When I think of this
lecture, I do not wonder that I determined never to attend to Geology.
From attending ——’s lectures, I became acquainted with the curator of
the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards published a large and
excellent book on the birds of Scotland. I had much interesting
natural-history talk with him, and he was very kind to me. He gave me
some rare shells, for I at that time collected marine mollusca, but
with no great zeal.
My summer vacations during these two years were wholly given up to
amusements, though I always had some book in hand, which I read with
interest. During the summer of 1826 I took a long walking tour with two
friends with knapsacks on our backs through North Wales. We walked
thirty miles most days, including one day the ascent of Snowdon. I also
went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a servant with
saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns were devoted to shooting
chiefly at Mr. Owen’s, at Woodhouse, and at my Uncle Jos’s (Josiah
Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria Works.) at Maer. My
zeal was so great that I used to place my shooting-boots open by my
bed-side when I went to bed, so as not to lose half a minute in putting
them on in the morning; and on one occasion I reached a distant part of
the Maer estate, on the 20th of August for black-game shooting, before
I could see: I then toiled on with the game-keeper the whole day
through thick heath and young Scotch firs.
I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot throughout the whole
season. One day when shooting at Woodhouse with Captain Owen, the
eldest son, and Major Hill, his cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, both
of whom I liked very much, I thought myself shamefully used, for every
time after I had fired and thought that I had killed a bird, one of the
two acted as if loading his gun, and cried out, “You must not count
that bird, for I fired at the same time,” and the gamekeeper,
perceiving the joke, backed them up. After some hours they told me the
joke, but it was no joke to me, for I had shot a large number of birds,
but did not know how many, and could not add them to my list, which I
used to do by making a knot in a piece of string tied to a button-hole.
This my wicked friends had perceived.
How I did enjoy shooting! But I think that I must have been
half-consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I tried to persuade myself
that shooting was almost an intellectual employment; it required so
much skill to judge where to find most game and to hunt the dogs well.
One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was memorable from meeting
there Sir J. Mackintosh, who was the best converser I ever listened to.
I heard afterwards with a glow of pride that he had said, “There is
something in that young man that interests me.” This must have been
chiefly due to his perceiving that I listened with much interest to
everything which he said, for I was as ignorant as a pig about his
subjects of history, politics, and moral philosophy. To hear of praise
from an eminent person, though no doubt apt or certain to excite
vanity, is, I think, good for a young man, as it helps to keep him in
the right course.
My visits to Maer during these two or three succeeding years were quite
delightful, independently of the autumnal shooting. Life there was
perfectly free; the country was very pleasant for walking or riding;
and in the evening there was much very agreeable conversation, not so
personal as it generally is in large family parties, together with
music. In the summer the whole family used often to sit on the steps of
the old portico, with the flower-garden in front, and with the steep
wooded bank opposite the house reflected in the lake, with here and
there a fish rising or a water-bird paddling about. Nothing has left a
more vivid picture on my mind than these evenings at Maer. I was also
attached to and greatly revered my Uncle Jos; he was silent and
reserved, so as to be a rather awful man; but he sometimes talked
openly with me. He was the very type of an upright man, with the
clearest judgment. I do not believe that any power on earth could have
made him swerve an inch from what he considered the right course. I
used to apply to him in my mind the well-known ode of Horace, now
forgotten by me, in which the words “nec vultus tyranni,* etc.,” come
in.
* Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida.