CHAPTER 1.III.
REMINISCENCES OF MY FATHER'S EVERYDAY LIFE.
It is my wish in the present chapter to give some idea of my father's
everyday life. It has seemed to me that I might carry out this object in
the form of a rough sketch of a day's life at Down, interspersed with such
recollections as are called up by the record. Many of these recollections,
which have a meaning for those who knew my father, will seem colourless or
trifling to strangers. Nevertheless, I give them in the hope that they may
help to preserve that impression of his personality which remains on the
minds of those who knew and loved him--an impression at once so vivid and
so untranslatable into words.
Of his personal appearance (in these days of multiplied photographs) it is
hardly necessary to say much. He was about six feet in height, but
scarcely looked so tall, as he stooped a good deal; in later days he
yielded to the stoop; but I can remember seeing him long ago swinging his
arms back to open out his chest, and holding himself upright with a jerk.
He gave one the idea that he had been active rather than strong; his
shoulders were not broad for his height, though certainly not narrow. As a
young man he must have had much endurance, for on one of the shore
excursions from the "Beagle", when all were suffering from want of water,
he was one of the two who were better able than the rest to struggle on in
search of it. As a boy he was active, and could jump a bar placed at the
height of the "Adam's apple" in his neck.
He walked with a swinging action, using a stick heavily shod with iron,
which he struck loudly against the ground, producing as he went round the
"Sand-walk" at Down, a rhythmical click which is with all of us a very
distinct remembrance. As he returned from the midday walk, often carrying
the waterproof or cloak which had proved too hot, one could see that the
swinging step was kept up by something of an effort. Indoors his step was
often slow and laboured, and as he went upstairs in the afternoon he might
be heard mounting the stairs with a heavy footfall, as if each step were an
effort. When interested in his work he moved about quickly and easily
enough, and often in the middle of dictating he went eagerly into the hall
to get a pinch of snuff, leaving the study door open, and calling out the
last words of his sentence as he went. Indoors he sometimes used an oak
stick like a little alpenstock, and this was a sign that he felt giddiness.
In spite of his strength and activity, I think he must always have had a
clumsiness of movement. He was naturally awkward with his hands, and was
unable to draw at all well. (The figure representing the aggregated cell-
contents in 'Insectivorous Plants' was drawn by him.) This he always
regretted much, and he frequently urged the paramount necessity of a young
naturalist making himself a good draughtsman.
He could dissect well under the simple microscope, but I think it was by
dint of his great patience and carefulness. It was characteristic of him
that he thought many little bits of skilful dissection something almost
superhuman. He used to speak with admiration of the skill with which he
saw Newport dissect a humble bee, getting out the nervous system with a few
cuts of a fine pair of scissors, held, as my father used to show, with the
elbow raised, and in an attitude which certainly would render great
steadiness necessary. He used to consider cutting sections a great feat,
and in the last year of his life, with wonderful energy, took the pains to
learn to cut sections of roots and leaves. His hand was not steady enough
to hold the object to be cut, and he employed a common microtome, in which
the pith for holding the object was clamped, and the razor slid on a glass
surface in making the sections. He used to laugh at himself, and at his
own skill in section-cutting, at which he would say he was "speechless with
admiration." On the other hand, he must have had accuracy of eye and power
of co-ordinating his movements, since he was a good shot with a gun as a
young man, and as a boy was skilful in throwing. He once killed a hare
sitting in the flower-garden at Shrewsbury by throwing a marble at it, and,
as a man, he once killed a cross-beak with a stone. He was so unhappy at
having uselessly killed the cross-beak that he did not mention it for
years, and then explained that he should never have thrown at it if he had
not felt sure that his old skill had gone from him.
When walking he had a fidgetting movement with his fingers, which he has
described in one of his books as the habit of an old man. When he sat
still he often took hold of one wrist with the other hand; he sat with his
legs crossed, and from being so thin they could be crossed very far, as may
be seen in one of the photographs. He had his chair in the study and in
the drawing-room raised so as to be much higher than ordinary chairs; this
was done because sitting on a low or even an ordinary chair caused him some
discomfort. We used to laugh at him for making his tall drawing-room chair
still higher by putting footstools on it, and then neutralising the result
by resting his feet on another chair.
His beard was full and almost untrimmed, the hair being grey and white,
fine rather than coarse, and wavy or frizzled. His moustache was somewhat
disfigured by being cut short and square across. He became very bald,
having only a fringe of dark hair behind.
His face was ruddy in colour, and this perhaps made people think him less
of an invalid than he was. He wrote to Dr. Hooker (June 13, 1849), "Every
one tells me that I look quite blooming and beautiful; and most think I am
shamming, but you have never been one of those." And it must be remembered
that at this time he was miserably ill, far worse than in later years. His
eyes were bluish grey under deep overhanging brows, with thick bushy
projecting eyebrows. His high forehead was much wrinkled, but otherwise
his face was not much marked or lined. His expression showed no signs of
the continual discomfort he suffered.
When he was excited with pleasant talk his whole manner was wonderfully
bright and animated, and his face shared to the full in the general
animation. His laugh was a free and sounding peal, like that of a man who
gives himself sympathetically and with enjoyment to the person and the
thing which have amused him. He often used some sort of gesture with his
laugh, lifting up his hands or bringing one down with a slap. I think,
generally speaking, he was given to gesture, and often used his hands in
explaining anything (e.g. the fertilisation of a flower) in a way that
seemed rather an aid to himself than to the listener. He did this on
occasions when most people would illustrate their explanations by means of
a rough pencil sketch.
He wore dark clothes, of a loose and easy fit. Of late years he gave up
the tall hat even in London, and wore a soft black one in winter, and a big
straw hat in summer. His usual out-of-doors dress was the short cloak in
which Elliot and Fry's photograph represents him leaning against the pillar
of the verandah. Two peculiarities of his indoor dress were that he almost
always wore a shawl over his shoulders, and that he had great loose cloth
boots lined with fur which he could slip on over his indoor shoes. Like
most delicate people he suffered from heat as well as from chilliness; it
was as if he could not hit the balance between too hot and too cold; often
a mental cause would make him too hot, so that he would take off his coat
if anything went wrong in the course of his work.
He rose early, chiefly because he could not lie in bed, and I think he
would have liked to get up earlier than he did. He took a short turn
before breakfast, a habit which began when he went for the first time to a
water-cure establishment. This habit he kept up till almost the end of his
life. I used, as a little boy, to like going out with him, and I have a
vague sense of the red of the winter sunrise, and a recollection of the
pleasant companionship, and a certain honour and glory in it. He used to
delight me as a boy by telling me how, in still earlier walks, on dark
winter mornings, he had once or twice met foxes trotting home at the
dawning.
After breakfasting alone about 7.45, he went to work at once, considering
the 1 1/2 hour between 8 and 9.30 one of his best working times. At 9.30
he came into the drawing-room for his letters--rejoicing if the post was a
light one and being sometimes much worried if it was not. He would then
hear any family letters read aloud as he lay on the sofa.
The reading aloud, which also included part of a novel, lasted till about
half-past ten, when he went back to work till twelve or a quarter past. By
this time he considered his day's work over, and would often say, in a
satisfied voice, "I'VE done a good day's work." He then went out of doors
whether it was wet or fine; Polly, his white terrier, went with him in fair
weather, but in rain she refused or might be seen hesitating in the
verandah, with a mixed expression of disgust and shame at her own want of
courage; generally, however, her conscience carried the day, and as soon as
he was evidently gone she could not bear to stay behind.
My father was always fond of dogs, and as a young man had the power of
stealing away the affections of his sister's pets; at Cambridge, he won the
love of his cousin W.D. Fox's dog, and this may perhaps have been the
little beast which used to creep down inside his bed and sleep at the foot
every night. My father had a surly dog, who was devoted to him, but
unfriendly to every one else, and when he came back from the "Beagle"
voyage, the dog remembered him, but in a curious way, which my father was
fond of telling. He went into the yard and shouted in his old manner; the
dog rushed out and set off with him on his walk, showing no more emotion or
excitement than if the same thing had happened the day before, instead of
five years ago. This story is made use of in the 'Descent of Man,' 2nd
Edition, page 74.
In my memory there were only two dogs which had much connection with my
father. One was a large black and white half-bred retriever, called Bob,
to which we, as children, were much devoted. He was the dog of whom the
story of the "hot-house face" is told in the 'Expression of the Emotions.'
But the dog most closely associated with my father was the above-mentioned
Polly, a rough, white fox-terrier. She was a sharp-witted, affectionate
dog; when her master was going away on a journey, she always discovered the
fact by the signs of packing going on in the study, and became low-spirited
accordingly. She began, too, to be excited by seeing the study prepared
for his return home. She was a cunning little creature, and used to
tremble or put on an air of misery when my father passed, while she was
waiting for dinner, just as if she knew that he would say (as he did often
say) that "she was famishing." My father used to make her catch biscuits
off her nose, and had an affectionate and mock-solemn way of explaining to
her before-hand that she must "be a very good girl." She had a mark on her
back where she had been burnt, and where the hair had re-grown red instead
of white, and my father used to commend her for this tuft of hair as being
in accordance with his theory of pangenesis; her father had been a red
bull-terrier, thus the red hair appearing after the burn showed the
presence of latent red gemmules. He was delightfully tender to Polly, and
never showed any impatience at the attentions she required, such as to be
let in at the door, or out at the verandah window, to bark at "naughty
people," a self-imposed duty she much enjoyed. She died, or rather had to
be killed, a few days after his death. (The basket in which she usually
lay curled up near the fire in his study is faithfully represented in Mr.
Parson's drawing, "The Study at Down.")
My father's midday walk generally began by a call at the greenhouse, where
he looked at any germinating seeds or experimental plants which required a
casual examination, but he hardly ever did any serious observing at this
time. Then he went on for his constitutional--either round the "Sand-
walk," or outside his own grounds in the immediate neighbourhood of the
house. The "Sand-walk" was a narrow strip of land 1 1/2 acres in extent,
with a gravel-walk round it. On one side of it was a broad old shaw with
fair-sized oaks in it, which made a sheltered shady walk; the other side
was separated from a neighbouring grass field by a low quickset hedge, over
which you could look at what view there was, a quiet little valley losing
itself in the upland country towards the edge of the Westerham hill, with
hazel coppice and larch wood, the remnants of what was once a large wood,
stretching away to the Westerham road. I have heard my father say that the
charm of this simple little valley helped to make him settle at Down.
The Sand-walk was planted by my father with a variety of trees, such as
hazel, alder, lime, hornbeam, birch, privet, and dogwood, and with a long
line of hollies all down the exposed side. In earlier times he took a
certain number of turns every day, and used to count them by means of a
heap of flints, one of which he kicked out on the path each time he passed.
Of late years I think he did not keep to any fixed number of turns, but
took as many as he felt strength for. The Sand-walk was our play-ground as
children, and here we continually saw my father as he walked round. He
liked to see what we were doing, and was ever ready to sympathize in any
fun that was going on. It is curious to think how, with regard to the
Sand-walk in connection with my father, my earliest recollections coincide
with my latest; it shows how unvarying his habits have been.
Sometimes when alone he stood still or walked stealthily to observe birds
or beasts. It was on one of these occasions that some young squirrels ran
up his back and legs, while their mother barked at them in an agony from
the tree. He always found birds' nests even up to the last years of his
life, and we, as children, considered that he had a special genius in this
direction. In his quiet prowls he came across the less common birds, but I
fancy he used to conceal it from me, as a little boy, because he observed
the agony of mind which I endured at not having seen the siskin or
goldfinch, or whatever it might have been. He used to tell us how, when he
was creeping noiselessly along in the "Big-Woods," he came upon a fox
asleep in the daytime, which was so much astonished that it took a good
stare at him before it ran off. A Spitz dog which accompanied him showed
no sign of excitement at the fox, and he used to end the story by wondering
how the dog could have been so faint-hearted.
Another favourite place was "Orchis Bank," above the quiet Cudham valley,
where fly- and musk-orchis grew among the junipers, and Cephalanthera and
Neottia under the beech boughs; the little wood "Hangrove," just above
this, he was also fond of, and here I remember his collecting grasses, when
he took a fancy to make out the names of all the common kinds. He was fond
of quoting the saying of one of his little boys, who, having found a grass
that his father had not seen before, had it laid by his own plate during
dinner, remarking, "I are an extraordinary grass-finder!"
My father much enjoyed wandering slowly in the garden with my mother or
some of his children, or making one of a party, sitting out on a bench on
the lawn; he generally sat, however, on the grass, and I remember him often
lying under one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green mound at
its foot. In dry summer weather, when we often sat out, the big fly-wheel
of the well was commonly heard spinning round, and so the sound became
associated with those pleasant days. He used to like to watch us playing
at lawn-tennis, and often knocked up a stray ball for us with the curved
handle of his stick.
Though he took no personal share in the management of the garden, he had
great delight in the beauty of flowers--for instance, in the mass of
Azaleas which generally stood in the drawing-room. I think he sometimes
fused together his admiration of the structure of a flower and of its
intrinsic beauty; for instance, in the case of the big pendulous pink and
white flowers of Dielytra. In the same way he had an affection, half-
artistic, half-botanical, for the little blue Lobelia. In admiring
flowers, he would often laugh at the dingy high-art colours, and contrast
them with the bright tints of nature. I used to like to hear him admire
the beauty of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself,
and a personal love for its delicate form and colour. I seem to remember
him gently touching a flower he delighted in; it was the same simple
admiration that a child might have.
He could not help personifying natural things. This feeling came out in
abuse as well as in praise--e.g. of some seedlings--"The little beggars are
doing just what I don't want them to." He would speak in a half-provoked,
half-admiring way of the ingenuity of a Mimosa leaf in screwing itself out
of a basin of water in which he had tried to fix it. One must see the same
spirit in his way of speaking of Sundew, earth-worms, etc. (Cf. Leslie
Stephen's 'Swift,' 1882, page 200, where Swift's inspection of the manners
and customs of servants are compared to my father's observations on worms,
"The difference is," says Mr. Stephen, "that Darwin had none but kindly
feelings for worms.")
Within my memory, his only outdoor recreation, besides walking, was riding,
which he took to on the recommendation of Dr. Bence Jones, and we had the
luck to find for him the easiest and quietest cob in the world, named
"Tommy." He enjoyed these rides extremely, and devised a number of short
rounds which brought him home in time for lunch. Our country is good for
this purpose, owing to the number of small valleys which give a variety to
what in a flat country would be a dull loop of road. He was not, I think,
naturally fond of horses, nor had he a high opinion of their intelligence,
and Tommy was often laughed at for the alarm he showed at passing and
repassing the same heap of hedge-clippings as he went round the field. I
think he used to feel surprised at himself, when he remembered how bold a
rider he had been, and how utterly old age and bad health had taken away
his nerve. He would say that riding prevented him thinking much more
effectually than walking--that having to attend to the horse gave him
occupation sufficient to prevent any really hard thinking. And the change
of scene which it gave him was good for spirits and health.
Unluckily, Tommy one day fell heavily with him on Keston common. This, and
an accident with another horse, upset his nerves, and he was advised to
give up riding.
If I go beyond my own experience, and recall what I have heard him say of
his love for sport, etc., I can think of a good deal, but much of it would
be a repetition of what is contained in his 'Recollections.' At school he
was fond of bat-fives, and this was the only game at which he was skilful.
He was fond of his gun as quite a boy, and became a good shot; he used to
tell how in South America he killed twenty-three snipe in twenty-four
shots. In telling the story he was careful to add that he thought they
were not quite so wild as English snipe.
Luncheon at Down came after his midday walk; and here I may say a word or
two about his meals generally. He had a boy-like love of sweets, unluckily
for himself, since he was constantly forbidden to take them. He was not
particularly successful in keeping the "vows," as he called them, which he
made against eating sweets, and never considered them binding unless he
made them aloud.
He drank very little wine, but enjoyed, and was revived by, the little he
did drink. He had a horror of drinking, and constantly warned his boys
that any one might be led into drinking too much. I remember, in my
innocence as a small boy, asking him if he had been ever tipsy; and he
answered very gravely that he was ashamed to say he had once drunk too much
at Cambridge. I was much impressed, so that I know now the place where the
question was asked.
After his lunch, he read the newspaper, lying on the sofa in the drawing-
room. I think the paper was the only non-scientific matter which he read
to himself. Everything else, novels, travels, history, was read aloud to
him. He took so wide an interest in life, that there was much to occupy
him in newspapers, though he laughed at the wordiness of the debates;
reading them, I think, only in abstract. His interest in politics was
considerable, but his opinion on these matters was formed rather by the way
than with any serious amount of thought.
After he read his paper, came his time for writing letters. These, as well
as the MS. of his books, were written by him as he sat in a huge horse-hair
chair by the fire, his paper supported on a board resting on the arms of
the chair. When he had many or long letters to write, he would dictate
them from a rough copy; these rough copies were written on the backs of
manuscript or of proof-sheets, and were almost illegible, sometimes even to
himself. He made a rule of keeping ALL letters that he received; this was
a habit which he learnt from his father, and which he said had been of
great use to him.
He received many letters from foolish, unscrupulous people, and all of
these received replies. He used to say that if he did not answer them, he
had it on his conscience afterwards, and no doubt it was in great measure
the courtesy with which he answered every one, which produced the universal
and widespread sense of his kindness of nature, which was so evident on his
death.
He was considerate to his correspondents in other and lesser things, for
instance when dictating a letter to a foreigner he hardly ever failed to
say to me, "You'd better try and write well, as it's to a foreigner." His
letters were generally written on the assumption that they would be
carelessly read; thus, when he was dictating, he was careful to tell me to
make an important clause begin with an obvious paragraph "to catch his
eye," as he often said. How much he thought of the trouble he gave others
by asking questions, will be well enough shown by his letters. It is
difficult to say anything about the general tone of his letters, they will
speak for themselves. The unvarying courtesy of them is very striking. I
had a proof of this quality in the feeling with which Mr. Hacon, his
solicitor, regarded him. He had never seen my father, yet had a sincere
feeling of friendship for him, and spoke especially of his letters as being
such as a man seldom receives in the way of business:--"Everything I did
was right, and everything was profusely thanked for."
He had a printed form to be used in replying to troublesome correspondents,
but he hardly ever used it; I suppose he never found an occasion that
seemed exactly suitable. I remember an occasion on which it might have
been used with advantage. He received a letter from a stranger stating
that the writer had undertaken to uphold Evolution at a debating society,
and that being a busy young man, without time for reading, he wished to
have a sketch of my father's views. Even this wonderful young man got a
civil answer, though I think he did not get much material for his speech.
His rule was to thank the donors of books, but not of pamphlets. He
sometimes expressed surprise that so few people thanked him for his books
which he gave away liberally; the letters that he did receive gave him much
pleasure, because he habitually formed so humble an estimate of the value
of all his works, that he was generally surprised at the interest which
they excited.
In money and business matters he was remarkably careful and exact. He kept
accounts with great care, classifying them, and balancing at the end of the
year like a merchant. I remember the quick way in which he would reach out
for his account-book to enter each cheque paid, as though he were in a
hurry to get it entered before he had forgotten it. His father must have
allowed him to believe that he would be poorer than he really was, for some
of the difficulty experienced in finding a house in the country must have
arisen from the modest sum he felt prepared to give. Yet he knew, of
course, that he would be in easy circumstances, for in his 'Recollections'
he mentions this as one of the reasons for his not having worked at
medicine with so much zeal as he would have done if he had been obliged to
gain his living.
He had a pet economy in paper, but it was rather a hobby than a real
economy. All the blank sheets of letters received were kept in a portfolio
to be used in making notes; it was his respect for paper that made him
write so much on the backs of his old MS., and in this way, unfortunately,
he destroyed large parts of the original MS. of his books. His feeling
about paper extended to waste paper, and he objected, half in fun, to the
careless custom of throwing a spill into the fire after it had been used
for lighting a candle.
My father was wonderfully liberal and generous to all his children in the
matter of money, and I have special cause to remember his kindness when I
think of the way in which he paid some Cambridge debts of mine--making it
almost seem a virtue in me to have told him of them. In his later years he
had the kind and generous plan of dividing his surplus at the year's end
among his children.
He had a great respect for pure business capacity, and often spoke with
admiration of a relative who had doubled his fortune. And of himself would
often say in fun that what he really WAS proud of was the money he had
saved. He also felt satisfaction in the money he made by his books. His
anxiety to save came in a great measure from his fears that his children
would not have health enough to earn their own livings, a foreboding which
fairly haunted him for many years. And I have a dim recollection of his
saying, "Thank God, you'll have bread and cheese," when I was so young that
I was rather inclined to take it literally.
When letters were finished, about three in the afternoon, he rested in his
bedroom, lying on the sofa and smoking a cigarette, and listening to a
novel or other book not scientific. He only smoked when resting, whereas
snuff was a stimulant, and was taken during working hours. He took snuff
for many years of his life, having learnt the habit at Edinburgh as a
student. He had a nice silver snuff-box given him by Mrs. Wedgwood of
Maer, which he valued much--but he rarely carried it, because it tempted
him to take too many pinches. In one of his early letters he speaks of
having given up snuff for a month, and describes himself as feeling "most
lethargic, stupid, and melancholy." Our former neighbour and clergyman,
Mr. Brodie Innes, tells me that at one time my father made a resolve not to
take snuff except away from home, "a most satisfactory arrangement for me,"
he adds, "as I kept a box in my study to which there was access from the
garden without summoning servants, and I had more frequently, than might
have been otherwise the case, the privilege of a few minutes' conversation
with my dear friend." He generally took snuff from a jar on the hall
table, because having to go this distance for a pinch was a slight check;
the clink of the lid of the snuff jar was a very familiar sound. Sometimes
when he was in the drawing-room, it would occur to him that the study fire
must be burning low, and when some of us offered to see after it, it would
turn out that he also wished to get a pinch of snuff.
Smoking he only took to permanently of late years, though on his Pampas
rides he learned to smoke with the Gauchos, and I have heard him speak of
the great comfort of a cup of mate and a cigarette when he halted after a
long ride and was unable to get food for some time.
The reading aloud often sent him to sleep, and he used to regret losing
parts of a novel, for my mother went steadily on lest the cessation of the
sound might wake him. He came down at four o'clock to dress for his walk,
and he was so regular that one might be quite certain it was within a few
minutes of four when his descending steps were heard.
>From about half-past four to half-past five he worked; then he came to the
drawing-room, and was idle till it was time (about six) to go up for
another rest with novel-reading and a cigarette.
Latterly he gave up late dinner, and had a simple tea at half-past seven
(while we had dinner), with an egg or a small piece of meat. After dinner
he never stayed in the room, and used to apologise by saying he was an old
woman, who must be allowed to leave with the ladies. This was one of the
many signs and results of his constant weakness and ill-health. Half an
hour more or less conversation would make to him the difference of a
sleepless night, and of the loss perhaps of half the next day's work.
After dinner he played backgammon with my mother, two games being played
every night; for many years a score of the games which each won was kept,
and in this score he took the greatest interest. He became extremely
animated over these games, bitterly lamenting his bad luck and exploding
with exaggerated mock-anger at my mother's good fortune.
After backgammon he read some scientific book to himself, either in the
drawing-room, or, if much talking was going on, in the study.
In the evening, that is, after he had read as much as his strength would
allow, and before the reading aloud began, he would often lie on the sofa
and listen to my mother playing the piano. He had not a good ear, yet in
spite of this he had a true love of fine music. He used to lament that his
enjoyment of music had become dulled with age, yet within my recollection,
his love of a good tune was strong. I never heard him hum more than one
tune, the Welsh song "Ar hyd y nos," which he went through correctly; he
used also, I believe, to hum a little Otaheitan song. From his want of ear
he was unable to recognize a tune when he heard it again, but he remained
constant to what he liked, and would often say, when an old favourite was
played, "That's a fine thing; what is it?" He liked especially parts of
Beethoven's symphonies, and bits of Handel. He made a little list of all
the pieces which he especially liked among those which my mother played--
giving in a few words the impression that each one made on him--but these
notes are unfortunately lost. He was sensitive to differences in style,
and enjoyed the late Mrs. Vernon Lushington's playing intensely, and in
June 1881, when Hans Richter paid a visit at Down, he was roused to strong
enthusiasm by his magnificent performance on the piano. He much enjoyed
good singing, and was moved almost to tears by grand or pathetic songs.
His niece Lady Farrer's singing of Sullivan's "Will he come" was a never-
failing enjoyment to him. He was humble in the extreme about his own
taste, and correspondingly pleased when he found that others agreed with
him.
He became much tired in the evenings, especially of late years, when he
left the drawing-room about ten, going to bed at half-past ten. His nights
were generally bad, and he often lay awake or sat up in bed for hours,
suffering much discomfort. He was troubled at night by the activity of his
thoughts, and would become exhausted by his mind working at some problem
which he would willingly have dismissed. At night, too, anything which had
vexed or troubled him in the day would haunt him, and I think it was then
that he suffered if he had not answered some troublesome person's letter.
The regular readings, which I have mentioned, continued for so many years,
enabled him to get through a great deal of lighter kinds of literature. He
was extremely fond of novels, and I remember well the way in which he would
anticipate the pleasure of having a novel read to him, as he lay down, or
lighted his cigarette. He took a vivid interest both in plot and
characters, and would on no account know beforehand, how a story finished;
he considered looking at the end of a novel as a feminine vice. He could
not enjoy any story with a tragical end, for this reason he did not keenly
appreciate George Eliot, though he often spoke warmly in praise of 'Silas
Marner.' Walter Scott, Miss Austen, and Mrs. Gaskell, were read and re-
read till they could be read no more. He had two or three books in hand at
the same time--a novel and perhaps a biography and a book of travels. He
did not often read out-of-the-way or old standard books, but generally kept
to the books of the day obtained from a circulating library.
I do not think that his literary tastes and opinions were on a level with
the rest of his mind. He himself, though he was clear as to what he
thought good, considered that in matters of literary taste, he was quite
outside the pale, and often spoke of what those within it liked or
disliked, as if they formed a class to which he had no claim to belong.
In all matters of art he was inclined to laugh at professed critics, and
say that their opinions were formed by fashion. Thus in painting, he would
say how in his day every one admired masters who are now neglected. His
love of pictures as a young man is almost a proof that he must have had an
appreciation of a portrait as a work of art, not as a likeness. Yet he
often talked laughingly of the small worth of portraits, and said that a
photograph was worth any number of pictures, as if he were blind to the
artistic quality in a painted portrait. But this was generally said in his
attempts to persuade us to give up the idea of having his portrait painted,
an operation very irksome to him.
This way of looking at himself as an ignoramus in all matters of art, was
strengthened by the absence of pretence, which was part of his character.
With regard to questions of taste, as well as to more serious things, he
always had the courage of his opinions. I remember, however, an instance
that sounds like a contradiction to this: when he was looking at the
Turners in Mr. Ruskin's bedroom, he did not confess, as he did afterwards,
that he could make out absolutely nothing of what Mr. Ruskin saw in them.
But this little pretence was not for his own sake, but for the sake of
courtesy to his host. He was pleased and amused when subsequently Mr.
Ruskin brought him some photographs of pictures (I think Vandyke
portraits), and courteously seemed to value my father's opinion about them.
Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this was a great labour
to him; in reading a book after him, I was often struck at seeing, from the
pencil-marks made each day where he left off, how little he could read at a
time. He used to call German the "Verdammte," pronounced as if in English.
He was especially indignant with Germans, because he was convinced that
they could write simply if they chose, and often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand
for writing German which was as clear as French. He sometimes gave a
German sentence to a friend, a patriotic German lady, and used to laugh at
her if she did not translate it fluently. He himself learnt German simply
by hammering away with a dictionary; he would say that his only way was to
read a sentence a great many times over, and at last the meaning occurred
to him. When he began German long ago, he boasted of the fact (as he used
to tell) to Sir J. Hooker, who replied, "Ah, my dear fellow, that's
nothing; I've begun it many times."
In spite of his want of grammar, he managed to get on wonderfully with
German, and the sentences that he failed to make out were generally really
difficult ones. He never attempted to speak German correctly, but
pronounced the words as though they were English; and this made it not a
little difficult to help him, when he read out a German sentence and asked
for a translation. He certainly had a bad ear for vocal sounds, so that he
found it impossible to perceive small differences in pronunciation.
His wide interest in branches of science that were not specially his own
was remarkable. In the biological sciences his doctrines make themselves
felt so widely that there was something interesting to him in most
departments of it. He read a good deal of many quite special works, and
large parts of text books, such as Huxley's 'Invertebrate Anatomy,' or such
a book as Balfour's 'Embryology,' where the detail, at any rate, was not
specially in his own line. And in the case of elaborate books of the
monograph type, though he did not make a study of them, yet he felt the
strongest admiration for them.
In the non-biological sciences he felt keen sympathy with work of which he
could not really judge. For instance, he used to read nearly the whole of
'Nature,' though so much of it deals with mathematics and physics. I have
often heard him say that he got a kind of satisfaction in reading articles
which (according to himself) he could not understand. I wish I could
reproduce the manner in which he would laugh at himself for it.
It was remarkable, too, how he kept up his interest in subjects at which he
had formerly worked. This was strikingly the case with geology. In one of
his letters to Mr. Judd he begs him to pay him a visit, saying that since
Lyell's death he hardly ever gets a geological talk. His observations,
made only a few years before his death, on the upright pebbles in the drift
at Southampton, and discussed in a letter to Mr. Geikie, afford another
instance. Again, in the letters to Dr. Dohrn, he shows how his interest in
barnacles remained alive. I think it was all due to the vitality and
persistence of his mind--a quality I have heard him speak of as if he felt
that he was strongly gifted in that respect. Not that he used any such
phrases as these about himself, but he would say that he had the power of
keeping a subject or question more or less before him for a great many
years. The extent to which he possessed this power appears when we
consider the number of different problems which he solved, and the early
period at which some of them began to occupy him.
It was a sure sign that he was not well when he was idle at any times other
than his regular resting hours; for, as long as he remained moderately
well, there was no break in the regularity of his life. Week-days and
Sundays passed by alike, each with their stated intervals of work and rest.
It is almost impossible, except for those who watched his daily life, to
realise how essential to his well-being was the regular routine that I have
sketched: and with what pain and difficulty anything beyond it was
attempted. Any public appearance, even of the most modest kind, was an
effort to him. In 1871 he went to the little village church for the
wedding of his elder daughter, but he could hardly bear the fatigue of
being present through the short service. The same may be said of the few
other occasions on which he was present at similar ceremonies.
I remember him many years ago at a christening; a memory which has remained
with me, because to us children it seemed an extraordinary and abnormal
occurrence. I remember his look most distinctly at his brother Erasmus's
funeral, as he stood in the scattering of snow, wrapped in a long black
funeral cloak, with a grave look of sad reverie.
When, after an interval of many years, he again attended a meeting of the
Linnean Society, it was felt to be, and was in fact, a serious undertaking;
one not to be determined on without much sinking of heart, and hardly to be
carried into effect without paying a penalty of subsequent suffering. In
the same way a breakfast-party at Sir James Paget's, with some of the
distinguished visitors to the Medical Congress (1881), was to him a severe
exertion.
The early morning was the only time at which he could make any effort of
the kind, with comparative impunity. Thus it came about that the visits he
paid to his scientific friends in London were by preference made as early
as ten in the morning. For the same reason he started on his journeys by
the earliest possible train, and used to arrive at the houses of relatives
in London when they were beginning their day.
He kept an accurate journal of the days on which he worked and those on
which his ill health prevented him from working, so that it would be
possible to tell how many were idle days in any given year. In this
journal--a little yellow Lett's Diary, which lay open on his mantel-piece,
piled on the diaries of previous years--he also entered the day on which he
started for a holiday and that of his return.
The most frequent holidays were visits of a week to London, either to his
brother's house (6 Queen Anne Street), or to his daughter's (4 Bryanston
Street). He was generally persuaded by my mother to take these short
holidays, when it became clear from the frequency of "bad days," or from
the swimming of his head, that he was being overworked. He went
unwillingly, and tried to drive hard bargains, stipulating, for instance,
that he should come home in five days instead of six. Even if he were
leaving home for no more than a week, the packing had to be begun early on
the previous day, and the chief part of it he would do himself. The
discomfort of a journey to him was, at least latterly, chiefly in the
anticipation, and in the miserable sinking feeling from which he suffered
immediately before the start; even a fairly long journey, such as that to
Coniston, tired him wonderfully little, considering how much an invalid he
was; and he certainly enjoyed it in an almost boyish way, and to a curious
extent.
Although, as he has said, some of his aesthetic tastes had suffered a
gradual decay, his love of scenery remained fresh and strong. Every walk
at Coniston was a fresh delight, and he was never tired of praising the
beauty of the broken hilly country at the head of the lake.
One of the happy memories of this time [1879] is that of a delightful visit
to Grasmere: "The perfect day," my sister writes, "and my father's vivid
enjoyment and flow of spirits, form a picture in my mind that I like to
think of. He could hardly sit still in the carriage for turning round and
getting up to admire the view from each fresh point, and even in returning
he was full of the beauty of Rydal Water, though he would not allow that
Grasmere at all equalled his beloved Coniston."
Besides these longer holidays, there were shorter visits to various
relatives--to his brother-in-law's house, close to Leith Hill, and to his
son near Southampton. He always particularly enjoyed rambling over rough
open country, such as the commons near Leith Hill and Southampton, the
heath-covered wastes of Ashdown Forest, or the delightful "Rough" near the
house of his friend Sir Thomas Farrer. He never was quite idle even on
these holidays, and found things to observe. At Hartfield he watched
Drosera catching insects, etc.; at Torquay he observed the fertilisation of
an orchid (Spiranthes), and also made out the relations of the sexes in
Thyme.
He was always rejoiced to get home after his holidays; he used greatly to
enjoy the welcome he got from his dog Polly, who would get wild with
excitement, panting, squeaking, rushing round the room, and jumping on and
off the chairs; and he used to stoop down, pressing her face to his,
letting her lick him, and speaking to her with a peculiarly tender,
caressing voice.
My father had the power of giving to these summer holidays a charm which
was strongly felt by all his family. The pressure of his work at home kept
him at the utmost stretch of his powers of endurance, and when released
from it, he entered on a holiday with a youthfulness of enjoyment that made
his companionship delightful; we felt that we saw more of him in a week's
holiday than in a month at home.
Some of these absences from home, however, had a depressing effect on him;
when he had been previously much overworked it seemed as though the absence
of the customary strain allowed him to fall into a peculiar condition of
miserable health.
Besides the holidays which I have mentioned, there were his visits to
water-cure establishments. In 1849, when very ill, suffering from constant
sickness, he was urged by a friend to try the water-cure, and at last
agreed to go to Dr. Gully's establishment at Malvern. His letters to Mr.
Fox show how much good the treatment did him; he seems to have thought that
he had found a cure for his troubles, but, like all other remedies, it had
only a transient effect on him. However, he found it, at first, so good
for him that when he came home he built himself a douche-bath, and the
butler learnt to be his bathman.
He paid many visits to Moor Park, Dr. Lane's water-cure establishment in
Surrey, not far from Aldershot. These visits were pleasant ones, and he
always looked back to them with pleasure. Dr. Lane has given his
recollections of my father in Dr. Richardson's 'Lecture on Charles Darwin,'
October 22, 1882, from which I quote:--
"In a public institution like mine, he was surrounded, of course, by
multifarious types of character, by persons of both sexes, mostly very
different from himself--commonplace people, in short, as the majority are
everywhere, but like to him at least in this, that they were fellow-
creatures and fellow-patients. And never was any one more genial, more
considerate, more friendly, more altogether charming than he universally
was."...He "never aimed, as too often happens with good talkers, at
monopolising the conversation. It was his pleasure rather to give and
take, and he was as good a listener as a speaker. He never preached nor
prosed, but his talk, whether grave or gay (and it was each by turns), was
full of life and salt--racy, bright, and animated."
Some idea of his relation to his family and his friends may be gathered
from what has gone before; it would be impossible to attempt a complete
account of these relationships, but a slightly fuller outline may not be
out of place. Of his married life I cannot speak, save in the briefest
manner. In his relationship towards my mother, his tender and sympathetic
nature was shown in its most beautiful aspect. In her presence he found
his happiness, and through her, his life,--which might have been
overshadowed by gloom,--became one of content and quiet gladness.
The 'Expression of the Emotions' shows how closely he watched his children;
it was characteristic of him that (as I have heard him tell), although he
was so anxious to observe accurately the expression of a crying child, his
sympathy with the grief spoiled his observation. His note-book, in which
are recorded sayings of his young children, shows his pleasure in them. He
seemed to retain a sort of regretful memory of the childhoods which had
faded away, and thus he wrote in his 'Recollections':--"When you were very
young it was my delight to play with you all, and I think with a sigh that
such days can never return."
I may quote, as showing the tenderness of his nature, some sentences from
an account of his little daughter Annie, written a few days after her
death:--
"Our poor child, Annie, was born in Gower Street, on March 2, 1841, and
expired at Malvern at mid-day on the 23rd of April, 1851.
"I write these few pages, as I think in after years, if we live, the
impressions now put down will recall more vividly her chief
characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main feature
in her disposition which at once rises before me, is her buoyant
joyousness, tempered by two other characteristics, namely, her
sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger, and
her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her
whole countenance, and rendered every movement elastic and full of life and
vigour. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now
rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running downstairs with a
stolen pinch of snuff for me her whole form radiant with the pleasure of
giving pleasure. Even when playing with her cousins, when her joyousness
almost passed into boisterousness, a single glance of my eye, not of
displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast one on her), but of want of
sympathy, would for some minutes alter her whole countenance.
"The other point in her character, which made her joyousness and spirits so
delightful, was her strong affection, which was of a most clinging,
fondling nature. When quite a baby, this showed itself in never being easy
without touching her mother, when in bed with her; and quite lately she
would, when poorly, fondle for any length of time one of her mother's arms.
When very unwell, her mother lying down beside her seemed to soothe her in
a manner quite different from what it would have done to any of our other
children. So, again, she would at almost any time spend half an hour in
arranging my hair, 'making it,' as she called it, 'beautiful,' or in
smoothing, the poor dear darling, my collar or cuffs--in short, in fondling
me.
"Beside her joyousness thus tempered, she was in her manners remarkably
cordial, frank, open, straightforward, natural, and without any shade of
reserve. Her whole mind was pure and transparent. One felt one knew her
thoroughly and could trust her. I always thought, that come what might, we
should have had in our old age at least one loving soul which nothing could
have changed. All her movements were vigorous, active, and usually
graceful. When going round the Sand-walk with me, although I walked fast,
yet she often used to go before, pirouetting in the most elegant way, her
dear face bright all the time with the sweetest smiles. Occasionally she
had a pretty coquettish manner towards me, the memory of which is charming.
She often used exaggerated language, and when I quizzed her by exaggerating
what she had said, how clearly can I now see the little toss of the head,
and exclamation of 'Oh, papa what a shame of you!' In the last short
illness her conduct in simple truth was angelic. She never once
complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others, and was
thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her.
When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that
was given her, and said some tea 'was beautifully good.' When I gave her
some water she said, 'I quite thank you;' and these, I believe, were the
last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me.
"We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age. She
must have known how we loved her. Oh, that she could now know how deeply,
how tenderly, we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face!
Blessings on her!
"April 30, 1851."
We his children all took especial pleasure in the games he played at with
us, but I do not think he romped much with us; I suppose his health
prevented any rough play. He used sometimes to tell us stories, which were
considered especially delightful, partly on account of their rarity.
The way he brought us up is shown by a little story about my brother
Leonard, which my father was fond of telling. He came into the drawing-
room and found Leonard dancing about on the sofa, which was forbidden, for
the sake of the springs, and said, "Oh, Lenny, Lenny, that's against all
rules," and received for answer, "Then I think you'd better go out of the
room." I do not believe he ever spoke an angry word to any of his children
in his life; but I am certain that it never entered our heads to disobey
him. I well remember one occasion when my father reproved me for a piece
of carelessness; and I can still recall the feeling of depression which
came over me, and the care which he took to disperse it by speaking to me
soon afterwards with especial kindness. He kept up his delightful,
affectionate manner towards us all his life. I sometimes wonder that he
could do so, with such an undemonstrative race as we are; but I hope he
knew how much we delighted in his loving words and manner. How often, when
a man, I have wished when my father was behind my chair, that he would pass
his hand over my hair, as he used to do when I was a boy. He allowed his
grown-up children to laugh with and at him, and was, generally speaking, on
terms of perfect equality with us.
He was always full of interest about each one's plans or successes. We
used to laugh at him, and say he would not believe in his sons, because,
for instance, he would be a little doubtful about their taking some bit of
work for which he did not feel sure that they had knowledge enough. On the
other hand, he was only too much inclined to take a favourable view of our
work. When I thought he had set too high a value on anything that I had
done, he used to be indignant and inclined to explode in mock anger. His
doubts were part of his humility concerning what was in any way connected
with himself; his too favourable view of our work was due to his
sympathetic nature, which made him lenient to every one.
He kept up towards his children his delightful manner of expressing his
thanks; and I never wrote a letter, or read a page aloud to him, without
receiving a few kind words of recognition. His love and goodness towards
his little grandson Bernard were great; and he often spoke of the pleasure
it was to him to see "his little face opposite to him" at luncheon. He and
Bernard used to compare their tastes; e.g., in liking brown sugar better
than white, etc.; the result being, "We always agree, don't we?"
My sister writes:--
"My first remembrances of my father are of the delights of his playing with
us. He was passionately attached to his own children, although he was not
an indiscriminate child-lover. To all of us he was the most delightful
play-fellow, and the most perfect sympathiser. Indeed it is impossible
adequately to describe how delightful a relation his was to his family,
whether as children or in their later life.
"It is a proof of the terms on which we were, and also of how much he was
valued as a play-fellow, that one of his sons when about four years old
tried to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours. We all
knew the sacredness of working-time, but that any one should resist
sixpence seemed an impossibility.
"He must have been the most patient and delightful of nurses. I remember
the haven of peace and comfort it seemed to me when I was unwell, to be
tucked up on the study sofa, idly considering the old geological map hung
on the wall. This must have been in his working hours, for I always
picture him sitting in the horsehair arm-chair by the corner of the fire.
"Another mark of his unbounded patience was the way in which we were
suffered to make raids into the study when we had an absolute need of
sticking-plaster, string, pins, scissors, stamps, foot-rule, or hammer.
These and other such necessaries were always to be found in the study, and
it was the only place where this was a certainty. We used to feel it wrong
to go in during work-time; still, when the necessity was great we did so.
I remember his patient look when he said once, 'Don't you think you could
not come in again, I have been interrupted very often.' We used to dread
going in for sticking-plaster, because he disliked to see that we had cut
ourselves, both for our sakes and on account of his acute sensitiveness to
the sight of blood. I well remember lurking about the passage till he was
safe away, and then stealing in for the plaster.
"Life seems to me, as I look back upon it, to have been very regular in
those early days, and except relations (and a few intimate friends), I do
not think any one came to the house. After lessons, we were always free to
go where we would, and that was chiefly in the drawing-room and about the
garden, so that we were very much with both my father and mother. We used
to think it most delightful when he told us any stories about the 'Beagle',
or about early Shrewsbury days--little bits about school-life and his
boyish tastes. Sometimes too he read aloud to his children such books as
Scott's novels, and I remember a few little lectures on the steam-engine.
"I was more or less ill during the five years between my thirteenth and
eighteenth years, and for a long time (years it seems to me) he used to
play a couple of games of backgammon with me every afternoon. He played
them with the greatest spirit, and I remember we used at one time to keep
account of the games, and as this record came out in favour of him, we kept
a list of the doublets thrown by each, as I was convinced that he threw
better than myself.
"His patience and sympathy were boundless during this weary illness, and
sometimes when most miserable I felt his sympathy to be almost too keen.
When at my worst, we went to my aunt's house at Hartfield, in Sussex, and
as soon as we had made the move safely he went on to Moor Park for a
fortnight's water-cure. I can recall now how on his return I could hardly
bear to have him in the room, the expression of tender sympathy and emotion
in his face was too agitating, coming fresh upon me after his little
absence.
"He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives with us
in a way that very few fathers do. But I am certain that none of us felt
that this intimacy interfered the least with our respect or obedience.
Whatever he said was absolute truth and law to us. He always put his whole
mind into answering any of our questions. One trifling instance makes me
feel how he cared for what we cared for. He had no special taste for cats,
though he admired the pretty ways of a kitten. But yet he knew and
remembered the individualities of my many cats, and would talk about the
habits and characters of the more remarkable ones years after they had
died.
"Another characteristic of his treatment of his children was his respect
for their liberty, and for their personality. Even as quite a girl, I
remember rejoicing in this sense of freedom. Our father and mother would
not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to
tell. He always made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose
opinions and thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was best
in us came out in the sunshine of his presence.
"I do not think his exaggerated sense of our good qualities, intellectual
or moral, made us conceited, as might perhaps have been expected, but
rather more humble and grateful to him. The reason being no doubt that the
influence of his character, of his sincerity and greatness of nature, had a
much deeper and more lasting effect than any small exaltation which his
praises or admiration may have caused to our vanity."
As head of a household he was much loved and respected; he always spoke to
servants with politeness, using the expression, "would you be so good," in
asking for anything. He was hardly ever angry with his servants; it shows
how seldom this occurred, that when, as a small boy, I overheard a servant
being scolded, and my father speaking angrily, it impressed me as an
appalling circumstance, and I remember running up stairs out of a general
sense of awe. He did not trouble himself about the management of the
garden, cows, etc. He considered the horses so little his concern, that he
used to ask doubtfully whether he might have a horse and cart to send to
Keston for Drosera, or to the Westerham nurseries for plants, or the like.
As a host my father had a peculiar charm: the presence of visitors excited
him, and made him appear to his best advantage. At Shrewsbury, he used to
say, it was his father's wish that the guests should be attended to
constantly, and in one of the letters to Fox he speaks of the impossibility
of writing a letter while the house was full of company. I think he always
felt uneasy at not doing more for the entertainment of his guests, but the
result was successful; and, to make up for any loss, there was the gain
that the guests felt perfectly free to do as they liked. The most usual
visitors were those who stayed from Saturday till Monday; those who
remained longer were generally relatives, and were considered to be rather
more my mother's affair than his.
Besides these visitors, there were foreigners and other strangers, who came
down for luncheon and went away in the afternoon. He used conscientiously
to represent to them the enormous distance of Down from London, and the
labour it would be to come there, unconsciously taking for granted that
they would find the journey as toilsome as he did himself. If, however,
they were not deterred, he used to arrange their journeys for them, telling
them when to come, and practically when to go. It was pleasant to see the
way in which he shook hands with a guest who was being welcomed for the
first time; his hand used to shoot out in a way that gave one the feeling
that it was hastening to meet the guest's hands. With old friends his hand
came down with a hearty swing into the other hand in a way I always had
satisfaction in seeing. His good-bye was chiefly characterised by the
pleasant way in which he thanked his guests, as he stood at the door, for
having come to see him.
These luncheons were very successful entertainments, there was no drag or
flagging about them, my father was bright and excited throughout the whole
visit. Professor De Candolle has described a visit to Down, in his
admirable and sympathetic sketch of my father. ('Darwin considere au point
de vue des causes de son succes.'--Geneva, 1882.) He speaks of his manner
as resembling that of a "savant" of Oxford or Cambridge. This does not
strike me as quite a good comparison; in his ease and naturalness there was
more of the manner of some soldiers; a manner arising from total absence of
pretence or affectation. It was this absence of pose, and the natural and
simple way in which he began talking to his guests, so as to get them on
their own lines, which made him so charming a host to a stranger. His
happy choice of matter for talk seemed to flow out of his sympathetic
nature, and humble, vivid interest in other people's work.
To some, I think, he caused actual pain by his modesty; I have seen the
late Francis Balfour quite discomposed by having knowledge ascribed to
himself on a point about which my father claimed to be utterly ignorant.
It is difficult to seize on the characteristics of my father's
conversation.
He had more dread than have most people of repeating his stories, and
continually said, "You must have heard me tell," or "I dare say I've told
you." One peculiarity he had, which gave a curious effect to his
conversation. The first few words of a sentence would often remind him of
some exception to, or some reason against, what he was going to say; and
this again brought up some other point, so that the sentence would become a
system of parenthesis within parenthesis, and it was often impossible to
understand the drift of what he was saying until he came to the end of his
sentence. He used to say of himself that he was not quick enough to hold
an argument with any one, and I think this was true. Unless it was a
subject on which he was just then at work, he could not get the train of
argument into working order quickly enough. This is shown even in his
letters; thus, in the case of two letters to Prof. Semper about the effect
of isolation, he did not recall the series of facts he wanted until some
days after the first letter had been sent off.
When puzzled in talking, he had a peculiar stammer on the first word of a
sentence. I only recall this occurring with words beginning with w;
possibly he had a special difficulty with this letter, for I have heard him
say that as a boy he could not pronounce w, and that sixpence was offered
him if he could say "white wine," which he pronounced "rite rine."
Possibly he may have inherited this tendency from Erasmus Darwin, who
stammered. (My father related a Johnsonian answer of Erasmus Darwin's:
"Don't you find it very inconvenient stammering, Dr. Darwin?" "No, sir,
because I have time to think before I speak, and don't ask impertinent
questions.")
He sometimes combined his metaphors in a curious way, using such a phrase
as "holding on like life,"--a mixture of "holding on for his life," and
"holding on like grim death." It came from his eager way of putting
emphasis into what he was saying. This sometimes gave an air of
exaggeration where it was not intended; but it gave, too, a noble air of
strong and generous conviction; as, for instance, when he gave his evidence
before the Royal Commission on vivisection and came out with his words
about cruelty, "It deserves detestation and abhorrence." When he felt
strongly about any similar question, he could hardly trust himself to
speak, as he then easily became angry, a thing which he disliked
excessively. He was conscious that his anger had a tendency to multiply
itself in the utterance, and for this reason dreaded (for example) having
to scold a servant.
It was a great proof of the modesty of his style of talking, that, when,
for instance, a number of visitors came over from Sir John Lubbock's for a
Sunday afternoon call he never seemed to be preaching or lecturing,
although he had so much of the talk to himself. He was particularly
charming when "chaffing" any one, and in high spirits over it. His manner
at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement of nature
came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who pleased and
amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his manner was
delightful to see.
When my father had several guests he managed them well, getting a talk with
each, or bringing two or three together round his chair. In these
conversations there was always a good deal of fun, and, speaking generally,
there was either a humorous turn in his talk, or a sunny geniality which
served instead. Perhaps my recollection of a pervading element of humour
is the more vivid, because the best talks were with Mr. Huxley, in whom
there is the aptness which is akin to humour, even when humour itself is
not there. My father enjoyed Mr. Huxley's humour exceedingly, and would
often say, "What splendid fun Huxley is!" I think he probably had more
scientific argument (of the nature of a fight) with Lyell and Sir Joseph
Hooker.
He used to say that it grieved him to find that for the friends of his
later life he had not the warm affection of his youth. Certainly in his
early letters from Cambridge he gives proofs of very strong friendship for
Herbert and Fox; but no one except himself would have said that his
affection for his friends was not, throughout life, of the warmest possible
kind. In serving a friend he would not spare himself, and precious time
and strength were willingly given. He undoubtedly had, to an unusual
degree, the power of attaching his friends to him. He had many warm
friendships, but to Sir Joseph Hooker he was bound by ties of affection
stronger than we often see among men. He wrote in his 'Recollections,' "I
have known hardly any man more lovable than Hooker."
His relationship to the village people was a pleasant one; he treated them,
one and all, with courtesy, when he came in contact with them, and took an
interest in all relating to their welfare. Some time after he came to live
at Down he helped to found a Friendly Club, and served as treasurer for
thirty years. He took much trouble about the club, keeping its accounts
with minute and scrupulous exactness, and taking pleasure in its prosperous
condition. Every Whit-Monday the club used to march round with band and
banner, and paraded on the lawn in front of the house. There he met them,
and explained to them their financial position in a little speech seasoned
with a few well worn jokes. He was often unwell enough to make even this
little ceremony an exertion, but I think he never failed to meet them.
He was also treasurer of the Coal Club, which gave him some work, and he
acted for some years as a County Magistrate.
With regard to my father's interest in the affairs of the village, Mr.
Brodie Innes has been so good as to give me his recollections:--
"On my becoming Vicar of Down in 1846, we became friends, and so continued
till his death. His conduct towards me and my family was one of unvarying
kindness, and we repaid it by warm affection.
"In all parish matters he was an active assistant; in matters connected
with the schools, charities, and other business, his liberal contribution
was ever ready, and in the differences which at times occurred in that, as
in other parishes, I was always sure of his support. He held that where
there was really no important objection, his assistance should be given to
the clergyman, who ought to know the circumstances best, and was chiefly
responsible."
His intercourse with strangers was marked with scrupulous and rather formal
politeness, but in fact he had few opportunities of meeting strangers.
Dr. Lane has described (Lecture by Dr. B.W. Richardson, in St. George's
Hall, October 22, 1882.) how, on the rare occasion of my father attending a
lecture (Dr. Sanderson's) at the Royal Institution, "the whole
assembly...rose to their feet to welcome him," while he seemed "scarcely
conscious that such an outburst of applause could possibly be intended for
himself." The quiet life he led at Down made him feel confused in a large
society; for instance, at the Royal Society's soirees he felt oppressed by
the numbers. The feeling that he ought to know people, and the difficulty
he had in remembering faces in his latter years, also added to his
discomfort on such occasions. He did not realise that he would be
recognised from his photographs, and I remember his being uneasy at being
obviously recognised by a stranger at the Crystal Palace Aquarium.
I must say something of his manner of working: one characteristic of it
was his respect for time; he never forgot how precious it was. This was
shown, for instance, in the way in which he tried to curtail his holidays;
also, and more clearly, with respect to shorter periods. He would often
say, that saving the minutes was the way to get work done; he showed his
love of saving the minutes in the difference he felt between a quarter of
an hour and ten minutes' work; he never wasted a few spare minutes from
thinking that it was not worth while to set to work. I was often struck by
his way of working up to the very limit of his strength, so that he
suddenly stopped in dictating, with the words, "I believe I mustn't do any
more." The same eager desire not to lose time was seen in his quick
movements when at work. I particularly remember noticing this when he was
making an experiment on the roots of beans, which required some care in
manipulation; fastening the little bits of card upon the roots was done
carefully and necessarily slowly, but the intermediate movements were all
quick; taking a fresh bean, seeing that the root was healthy, impaling it
on a pin, fixing it on a cork, and seeing that it was vertical, etc; all
these processes were performed with a kind of restrained eagerness. He
always gave one the impression of working with pleasure, and not with any
drag. I have an image, too, of him as he recorded the result of some
experiment, looking eagerly at each root, etc., and then writing with equal
eagerness. I remember the quick movement of his head up and down as he
looked from the object to the notes.
He saved a great deal of time through not having to do things twice.
Although he would patiently go on repeating experiments where there was any
good to be gained, he could not endure having to repeat an experiment which
ought, if complete care had been taken, to have succeeded the first time--
and this gave him a continual anxiety that the experiment should not be
wasted; he felt the experiment to be sacred, however slight a one it was.
He wished to learn as much as possible from an experiment, so that he did
not confine himself to observing the single point to which the experiment
was directed, and his power of seeing a number of other things was
wonderful. I do not think he cared for preliminary or rough observation
intended to serve as guides and to be repeated. Any experiment done was to
be of some use, and in this connection I remember how strongly he urged the
necessity of keeping the notes of experiments which failed, and to this
rule he always adhered.
In the literary part of his work he had the same horror of losing time, and
the same zeal in what he was doing at the moment, and this made him careful
not to be obliged unnecessarily to read anything a second time.
His natural tendency was to use simple methods and few instruments. The
use of the compound microscope has much increased since his youth, and this
at the expense of the simple one. It strikes us nowadays as extraordinary
that he should have had no compound microscope when he went his "Beagle"
voyage; but in this he followed the advice of Robt. Brown, who was an
authority in such matters. He always had a great liking for the simple
microscope, and maintained that nowadays it was too much neglected, and
that one ought always to see as much as possible with the simple before
taking to the compound microscope. In one of his letters he speaks on this
point, and remarks that he always suspects the work of a man who never uses
the simple microscope.
His dissecting table was a thick board, let into a window of the study; it
was lower than an ordinary table, so that he could not have worked at it
standing; but this, from wishing to save his strength, he would not have
done in any case. He sat at his dissecting-table on a curious low stool
which had belonged to his father, with a seat revolving on a vertical
spindle, and mounted on large castors, so that he could turn easily from
side to side. His ordinary tools, etc., were lying about on the table, but
besides these a number of odds and ends were kept in a round table full of
radiating drawers, and turning on a vertical axis, which stood close by his
left side, as he sat at his microscope-table. The drawers were labelled,
"best tools," "rough tools," "specimens," "preparations for specimens,"
etc. The most marked peculiarity of the contents of these drawers was the
care with which little scraps and almost useless things were preserved; he
held the well-known belief, that if you threw a thing away you were sure to
want it directly--and so things accumulated.
If any one had looked at his tools, etc., lying on the table, he would have
been struck by an air of simpleness, make-shift, and oddness.
At his right hand were shelves, with a number of other odds and ends,
glasses, saucers, tin biscuit boxes for germinating seeds, zinc labels,
saucers full of sand, etc., etc. Considering how tidy and methodical he
was in essential things, it is curious that he bore with so many make-
shifts: for instance, instead of having a box made of a desired shape, and
stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted and
get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care to have glass
covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds, but used broken bits
of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle sticking uselessly out on
one side. But so much of his experimenting was of a simple kind, that he
had no need for any elaboration, and I think his habit in this respect was
in great measure due to his desire to husband his strength, and not waste
it on inessential things.
His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he had a number of
things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, etc., he tied threads of
different colours round them. In particular he used this method when he
had only two classes of objects to distinguish; thus in the case of crossed
and self-fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with black and one
with white thread, tied round the stalk of the flower. I remember well the
look of two sets of capsules, gathered and waiting to be weighed, counted,
etc., with pieces of black and of white thread to distinguish the trays in
which they lay. When he had to compare two sets of seedlings, sowed in the
same pot, he separated them by a partition of zinc-plate; and the zinc
label, which gave the necessary details about the experiment, was always
placed on a certain side, so that it became instinctive with him to know
without reading the label which were the "crossed" and which were the
"self-fertilised."
His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal not to lose the
fruit of it, came out markedly in these crossing experiments--in the
elaborate care he took not to make any confusion in putting capsules into
wrong trays, etc., etc. I can recall his appearance as he counted seeds
under the simple microscope with an alertness not usually characterising
such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified each seed as a
small demon trying to elude him by getting into the wrong heap, or jumping
away altogether; and this gave to the work the excitement of a game. He
had great faith in instruments, and I do not think it naturally occurred to
him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or measuring glass, etc. He was
astonished when we found that one of his micrometers differed from the
other. He did not require any great accuracy in most of his measurements,
and had not good scales; he had an old three-foot rule, which was the
common property of the household, and was constantly being borrowed,
because it was the only one which was certain to be in its place--unless,
indeed, the last borrower had forgotten to put it back. For measuring the
height of plants he had a seven-foot deal rod, graduated by the village
carpenter. Latterly he took to using paper scales graduated to
millimeters. For small objects he used a pair of compasses and an ivory
protractor. It was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains in
making measurements with his somewhat rough scales. A trifling example of
his faith in authority is that he took his "inch in terms of millimeters"
from an old book, in which it turned out to be inaccurately given. He had
a chemical balance which dated from the days when he worked at chemistry
with his brother Erasmus. Measurements of capacity were made with an
apothecary's measuring glass: I remember well its rough look and bad
graduation. With this, too, I remember the great care he took in getting
the fluid-line on to the graduation. I do not mean by this account of his
instruments that any of his experiments suffered from want of accuracy in
measurement, I give them as examples of his simple methods and faith in
others--faith at least in instrument-makers, whose whole trade was a
mystery to him.
A few of his mental characteristics, bearing especially on his mode of
working, occur to me. There was one quality of mind which seemed to be of
special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was
the power of never letting exceptions pass unnoticed. Everybody notices a
fact as an exception when it is striking or frequent, but he had a special
instinct for arresting an exception. A point apparently slight and
unconnected with his present work is passed over by many a man almost
unconsciously with some half-considered explanation, which is in fact no
explanation. It was just these things that he seized on to make a start
from. In a certain sense there is nothing special in this procedure, many
discoveries being made by means of it. I only mention it because, as I
watched him at work, the value of this power to an experimenter was so
strongly impressed upon me.
Another quality which was shown in his experimental works was his power of
sticking to a subject; he used almost to apologise for his patience, saying
that he could not bear to be beaten, as if this were rather a sign of
weakness on his part. He often quoted the saying, "It's dogged as does
it;" and I think doggedness expresses his frame of mind almost better than
perseverance. Perseverance seems hardly to express his almost fierce
desire to force the truth to reveal itself. He often said that it was
important that a man should know the right point at which to give up an
inquiry. And I think it was his tendency to pass this point that inclined
him to apologise for his perseverance, and gave the air of doggedness to
his work.
He often said that no one could be a good observer unless he was an active
theoriser. This brings me back to what I said about his instinct for
arresting exceptions: it was as though he were charged with theorising
power ready to flow into any channel on the slightest disturbance, so that
no fact, however small, could avoid releasing a stream of theory, and thus
the fact became magnified into importance. In this way it naturally
happened that many untenable theories occurred to him; but fortunately his
richness of imagination was equalled by his power of judging and condemning
the thoughts that occurred to him. He was just to his theories, and did
not condemn them unheard; and so it happened that he was willing to test
what would seem to most people not at all worth testing. These rather wild
trials he called "fool's experiments," and enjoyed extremely. As an
example I may mention that finding the cotyledons of Biophytum to be highly
sensitive to vibrations of the table, he fancied that they might perceive
the vibrations of sound, and therefore made me play my bassoon close to a
plant. (This is not so much an example of superabundant theorising from a
small cause, but only of his wish to test the most improbable ideas.)
The love of experiment was very strong in him, and I can remember the way
he would say, "I shan't be easy till I have tried it," as if an outside
force were driving him. He enjoyed experimenting much more than work which
only entailed reasoning, and when he was engaged on one of his books which
required argument and the marshalling of facts, he felt experimental work
to be a rest or holiday. Thus, while working upon the 'Variations of
Animals and Plants,' in 1860-61, he made out the fertilisation of Orchids,
and thought himself idle for giving so much time to them. It is
interesting to think that so important a piece of research should have been
undertaken and largely worked out as a pastime in place of more serious
work. The letters to Hooker of this period contain expressions such as,
"God forgive me for being so idle; I am quite sillily interested in this
work." The intense pleasure he took in understanding the adaptations for
fertilisation is strongly shown in these letters. He speaks in one of his
letters of his intention of working at Drosera as a rest from the 'Descent
of Man.' He has described in his 'Recollections' the strong satisfaction
he felt in solving the problem of heterostylism. And I have heard him
mention that the Geology of South America gave him almost more pleasure
than anything else. It was perhaps this delight in work requiring keen
observation that made him value praise given to his observing powers almost
more than appreciation of his other qualities.
For books he had no respect, but merely considered them as tools to be
worked with. Thus he did not bind them, and even when a paper book fell to
pieces from use, as happened to Muller's 'Befruchtung,' he preserved it
from complete dissolution by putting a metal clip over its back. In the
same way he would cut a heavy book in half, to make it more convenient to
hold. He used to boast that he made Lyell publish the second edition of
one of his books in two volumes instead of one, by telling him how he had
been obliged to cut it in half. Pamphlets were often treated even more
severely than books, for he would tear out, for the sake of saving room,
all the pages except the one that interested him. The consequence of all
this was, that his library was not ornamental, but was striking from being
so evidently a working collection of books.
He was methodical in his manner of reading books and pamphlets bearing on
his own work. He had one shelf on which were piled up the books he had not
yet read, and another to which they were transferred after having been
read, and before being catalogued. He would often groan over his unread
books, because there were so many which he knew he should never read. Many
a book was at once transferred to the other heap, either marked with a
cypher at the end, to show that it contained no marked passages, or
inscribed, perhaps, "not read," or "only skimmed." The books accumulated
in the "read" heap until the shelves overflowed, and then, with much
lamenting, a day was given up to the cataloguing. He disliked this work,
and as the necessity of undertaking the work became imperative, would often
say, in a voice of despair, "We really must do these books soon."
In each book, as he read it, he marked passages bearing on his work. In
reading a book or pamphlet, etc., he made pencil-lines at the side of the
page, often adding short remarks, and at the end made a list of the pages
marked. When it was to be catalogued and put away, the marked pages were
looked at, and so a rough abstract of the book was made. This abstract
would perhaps be written under three or four headings on different sheets,
the facts being sorted out and added to the previously collected facts in
different subjects. He had other sets of abstracts arranged, not according
to subject, but according to periodical. When collecting facts on a large
scale, in earlier years, he used to read through, and make abstracts, in
this way, of whole series of periodicals.
In some of his early letters he speaks of filling several note-books with
facts for his book on species; but it was certainly early that he adopted
his plan of using portfolios as described in the 'Recollections.' (The
racks on which the portfolios were placed are shown in the illustration,
"The Study at Down," in the recess at the right-hand side of the fire-
place.) My father and M. de Candolle were mutually pleased to discover
that they had adopted the same plan of classifying facts. De Candolle
describes the method in his 'Phytologie,' and in his sketch of my father
mentions the satisfaction he felt in seeing it in action at Down.
Besides these portfolios, of which there are some dozens full of notes,
there are large bundles of MS. marked "used" and put away. He felt the
value of his notes, and had a horror of their destruction by fire. I
remember, when some alarm of fire had happened, his begging me to be
especially careful, adding very earnestly, that the rest of his life would
be miserable if his notes and books were to be destroyed.
He shows the same feeling in writing about the loss of a manuscript, the
purport of his words being, "I have a copy, or the loss would have killed
me." In writing a book he would spend much time and labour in making a
skeleton or plan of the whole, and in enlarging and sub-classing each
heading, as described in his 'Recollections.' I think this careful
arrangement of the plan was not at all essential to the building up of his
argument, but for its presentment, and for the arrangement of his facts.
In his 'Life of Erasmus Darwin,' as it was first printed in slips, the
growth of the book from a skeleton was plainly visible. The arrangement
was altered afterwards, because it was too formal and categorical, and
seemed to give the character of his grandfather rather by means of a list
of qualities than as a complete picture.
It was only within the last few years that he adopted a plan of writing
which he was convinced suited him best, and which is described in the
'Recollections;' namely, writing a rough copy straight off without the
slightest attention to style. It was characteristic of him that he felt
unable to write with sufficient want of care if he used his best paper, and
thus it was that he wrote on the backs of old proofs or manuscript. The
rough copy was then reconsidered, and a fair copy was made. For this
purpose he had foolscap paper ruled at wide intervals, the lines being
needed to prevent him writing so closely that correction became difficult.
The fair copy was then corrected, and was recopied before being sent to the
printers. The copying was done by Mr. E. Norman, who began this work many
years ago when village schoolmaster at Down. My father became so used to
Mr. Norman's hand-writing, that he could not correct manuscript, even when
clearly written out by one of his children, until it had been recopied by
Mr. Norman. The MS., on returning from Mr. Norman was once more corrected,
and then sent off to the printers. Then came the work of revising and
correcting the proofs, which my father found especially wearisome.
It was at this stage that he first seriously considered the style of what
he had written. When this was going on he usually started some other piece
of work as a relief. The correction of slips consisted in fact of two
processes, for the corrections were first written in pencil, and then re-
considered and written in ink.
When the book was passing through the "slip" stage he was glad to have
corrections and suggestions from others. Thus my mother looked over the
proofs of the 'Origin.' In some of the later works my sister, Mrs.
Litchfield, did much of the correction. After my sister's marriage perhaps
most of the work fell to my share.
My sister, Mrs. Litchfield, writes:--
"This work was very interesting in itself, and it was inexpressibly
exhilarating to work for him. He was always so ready to be convinced that
any suggested alteration was an improvement, and so full of gratitude for
the trouble taken. I do not think that he ever used to forget to tell me
what improvement he thought that I had made, and he used almost to excuse
himself if he did not agree with any correction. I think I felt the
singular modesty and graciousness of his nature through thus working for
him in a way I never should otherwise have done.
"He did not write with ease, and was apt to invert his sentences both in
writing and speaking, putting the qualifying clause before it was clear
what it was to qualify. He corrected a great deal, and was eager to
express himself as well as he possibly could."
Perhaps the commonest corrections needed were of obscurities due to the
omission of a necessary link in the reasoning, something which he had
evidently omitted through familiarity with the subject. Not that there was
any fault in the sequence of the thoughts, but that from familiarity with
his argument he did not notice when the words failed to reproduce his
thought. He also frequently put too much matter into one sentence, so that
it had to be cut up into two.
On the whole, I think the pains which my father took over the literary part
of the work was very remarkable. He often laughed or grumbled at himself
for the difficulty which he found in writing English, saying, for instance,
that if a bad arrangement of a sentence was possible, he should be sure to
adopt it. He once got much amusement and satisfaction out of the
difficulty which one of the family found in writing a short circular. He
had the pleasure of correcting and laughing at obscurities, involved
sentences, and other defects, and thus took his revenge for all the
criticism he had himself to bear with. He used to quote with astonishment
Miss Martineau's advice to young authors, to write straight off and send
the MS. to the printer without correction. But in some cases he acted in a
somewhat similar manner. When a sentence got hopelessly involved, he would
ask himself, "now what DO you want to say?" and his answer written down,
would often disentangle the confusion.
His style has been much praised; on the other hand, at least one good judge
has remarked to me that it is not a good style. It is, above all things,
direct and clear; and it is characteristic of himself in its simplicity,
bordering on naivete, and in its absence of pretence. He had the strongest
disbelief in the common idea that a classical scholar must write good
English; indeed, he thought that the contrary was the case. In writing, he
sometimes showed the same tendency to strong expressions as he did in
conversation. Thus in the 'Origin,' page 440, there is a description of a
larval cirripede, "with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs,
a pair of magnificent compound eyes, and extremely complex antennae." We
used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an
advertisement. This tendency to give himself up to the enthusiastic turn
of his thought, without fear of being ludicrous, appears elsewhere in his
writings.
His courteous and conciliatory tone towards his reader is remarkable, and
it must be partly this quality which revealed his personal sweetness of
character to so many who had never seen him. I have always felt it to be a
curious fact, that he who had altered the face of Biological Science, and
is in this respect the chief of the moderns, should have written and worked
in so essentially a non-modern spirit and manner. In reading his books one
is reminded of the older naturalists rather than of the modern school of
writers. He was a Naturalist in the old sense of the word, that is, a man
who works at many branches of the science, not merely a specialist in one.
Thus it is, that, though he founded whole new divisions of special
subjects--such as the fertilisation of flowers, insectivorous plants,
dimorphism, etc.--yet even in treating these very subjects he does not
strike the reader as a specialist. The reader feels like a friend who is
being talked to by a courteous gentleman, not like a pupil being lectured
by a professor. The tone of such a book as the 'Origin' is charming, and
almost pathetic; it is the tone of a man who, convinced of the truth of his
own views, hardly expects to convince others; it is just the reverse of the
style of a fanatic, who wants to force people to believe. The reader is
never scorned for any amount of doubt which he may be imagined to feel, and
his scepticism is treated with patient respect. A sceptical reader, or
perhaps even an unreasonable reader, seems to have been generally present
to his thoughts. It was in consequence of this feeling, perhaps, that he
took much trouble over points which he imagined would strike the reader, or
save him trouble, and so tempt him to read.
For the same reason he took much interest in the illustrations of his
books, and I think rated rather too highly their value. The illustrations
for his earlier books were drawn by professional artists. This was the
case in 'Animals and Plants,' the 'Descent of Man,' and the 'Expression of
the Emotions.' On the other hand, 'Climbing Plants,' 'Insectivorous
Plants,' the 'Movements of Plants,' and 'Forms of Flowers,' were, to a
large extent, illustrated by some of his children--my brother George having
drawn by far the most. It was delightful to draw for him, as he was
enthusiastic in his praise of very moderate performances. I remember well
his charming manner of receiving the drawings of one of his daughters-in-
law, and how he would finish his words of praise by saying, "Tell A--,
Michael Angelo is nothing to it." Though he praised so generously, he
always looked closely at the drawing, and easily detected mistakes or
carelessness.
He had a horror of being lengthy, and seems to have been really much
annoyed and distressed when he found how the 'Variations of Animals and
Plants' was growing under his hands. I remember his cordially agreeing
with 'Tristram Shandy's' words, "Let no man say, 'Come, I'll write a
duodecimo.'"
His consideration for other authors was as marked a characteristic as his
tone towards his reader. He speaks of all other authors as persons
deserving of respect. In cases where, as in the case of --'s experiments
on Drosera, he thought lightly of the author, he speaks of him in such a
way that no one would suspect it. In other cases he treats the confused
writings of ignorant persons as though the fault lay with himself for not
appreciating or understanding them. Besides this general tone of respect,
he had a pleasant way of expressing his opinion on the value of a quoted
work, or his obligation for a piece of private information.
His respectful feeling was not only morally beautiful, but was I think of
practical use in making him ready to consider the ideas and observations of
all manner of people. He used almost to apologise for this, and would say
that he was at first inclined to rate everything too highly.
It was a great merit in his mind that, in spite of having so strong a
respectful feeling towards what he read, he had the keenest of instincts as
to whether a man was trustworthy or not. He seemed to form a very definite
opinion as to the accuracy of the men whose books he read; and made use of
this judgment in his choice of facts for use in argument or as
illustrations. I gained the impression that he felt this power of judging
of a man's trustworthiness to be of much value.
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. There is a
wonderfully interesting letter which he wrote to my mother bequeathing to
her, in case of his death, the care of publishing the manuscript of his
first essay on evolution. This letter seems to me full of the 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 wide and
general fame as he attained to.
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
discussions (He departed from his rule in his "Note on the Habits of the
Pampas Woodpecker, Colaptes campestris," 'Proc. Zool. Soc.,' 1870, page
705: also in a letter published in the 'Athenaeum' (1863, page 554), in
which case he afterwards regretted that he had not remained silent. His
replies to criticisms, in the later editions of the 'Origin,' can hardly be
classed as infractions of his rule.) 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.
LETTERS.
The earliest letters to which I have access are those written by my father
when an undergraduate at Cambridge.
The history of his life, as told in his correspondence, must therefore
begin with this period.
