II
The drawback to Darwin’s social life, as to his power of work, was in the limitations of health, and if we would fully appreciate not only the heroism of his achievement, but the charm of his character, we must understand how great and far-reaching those limitations were. The natural strength and vigor of his sturdily constructed frame endured through youth and in the main through the Beagle voyage, in spite of the persistent sea-sickness; but from shortly after his return to England on, his life was nothing but a more or less relieved and varying chronic invalidism.
The effect of this upon his scientific labors I have indicated earlier. It hampered them at every step. He could work but a few hours in the morning and after that the constant effort and lesson was in the endeavor to forget; ‘It is so weariful, killing the whole afternoon, after 12 o’clock, doing nothing whatever.’[258] A piece of investigation, which required perhaps the most nice and constant watchfulness, had to be abandoned in the middle, because recurring and increasing symptoms absolutely demanded that complete rest should be taken. It was necessary not only to stop working, but to stop thinking, and for a brain eager and absorbed as Darwin’s was, this was enormously difficult.
With social life the limitation was equally vexatious. It is true that there are certain compensations about such a state of things. A successful and prominent man who has his health is expected to meet all sorts of social demands and strains which consume his time to little purpose, and if he is not extremely careful of himself and does not sometimes push insistence even to the point of rudeness, he finds his work interfered with almost as much as by ill-health, or it may be even more. There are many times when delicate health is a convenient and useful excuse, and Darwin recognized this very fully: ‘Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement.’[259]
But the compensation was not always appreciated. When indigestion preserved you from boredom, you might be grateful; but when it cut you off from seeing your best friends, when it deprived you of that exchange of scientific ideas which is the keenest and most fruitful stimulus for achievement, then you could not but repine a little. The excitement, the enthusiasm of eager talk, made you forget yourself and your symptoms for the time. But there was the inevitable afterwards, and gradually you learned that restraint was necessary. ‘Even talking of an evening for less than two hours has twice recently brought on such violent vomiting and trembling that I dread coming up to London.’[260] Simple comments like this, often repeated, show how intense and how crippling the weakness was.
What is notable about this matter of Darwin’s ill-health is that it bred no bitterness. There is an occasional sigh of regret, a touch of humorous complaint over the deprivations and the inability to accomplish all that was desired: ‘Adios, my dear Hooker; do be wise and good, and be careful of your stomach, within which, as I know full well, lie intellect, conscience, temper, and the affections.’[261] But there is not one trace of that sour pessimism, that crabbed outcry against the dispositions of Providence and of the universe which chronic invalidism is so apt to produce.
When we come to look for the cause of Darwin’s troubles, it is evident that at this distance of time we can hardly get a clear enough account of the symptoms and the conditions to conjecture with great definiteness, though the enlarged medical knowledge of to-day might interpret matters that were then obscure. There was sometimes a disposition to attribute the whole recurring misery of later years to the Beagle sea-sickness. But Darwin himself rejected this explanation and his son points out that the settled illness came on only gradually some years after his return.[262] Darwin believed that his bad health was due ‘to the hereditary fault which came out as gout in some of the past generations.’[263] The specialists of that day were quite at sea. ‘Dr. Brinton has been here,’ says Darwin; ‘he does not believe my brain or heart primarily affected, but I have been so steadily going down hill, I cannot help doubting whether I can ever crawl a little uphill again.’[264] It is amusing to see how later speculators have exercised their wits upon the case. Dr. George M. Gould, in his brilliant ‘Biographic Clinics,’ grouped Darwin with Huxley, Tennyson, Browning, and a dozen others, as a victim of eye-strain, and believed all his trouble could have been disposed of by properly refracting glasses. With the development of glandular theories, Darwin’s thyroid, pituitary, and adrenal secretions have been set down as excessive or deficient. With his build, he would certainly have been a promising subject for the experiments of the orthopædist, while the dietitian would have prescribed unlimited spinach and carrots, the osteopath would have discovered disastrous subluxations in the spine, and the psycho-analyst would see the foundation of the whole trouble in disordered complexes. And all of them would have some symptomatic justification, and all of them would have been eager to work over the poor man, as they have done over many another such, with mountains of expectation and promise and outlay, and too often a pitiful mouse of result.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the specialist was not quite so rampant in Darwin’s day, and while later scientific developments might, or might not, have cured him, he escaped a good deal of unprofitable discomfort. The water cure was fashionable at that time and he was duly put through it, with some annoyance, and perhaps with a little improvement: ‘One most singular effect of the treatment is that it induces in most people, and eminently in my case, the most complete stagnation of mind. I have ceased to think even of barnacles.’[265]
But pending the discovery of some miraculous cure, the only help seemed to be in persistent care, self-control, and discipline. It was necessary to be careful as to eating, and here Darwin appears to have been generally abstemious, though he had a taste for sweets, which he sometimes indulged with humorous excuses and a clear prevision of the bad results that were likely to follow, and did. As to alcohol, even in his earlier years when boisterous excess in drinking was common enough, Darwin was not much inclined to anything of the sort. He does indeed tell of gay supper-parties, where too much wine was drunk. His son records his confession, in answer to a query as to early habits, that ‘he was ashamed to say he had once drunk too much at Cambridge.’[266] And Grant Duff mentions a curious remark, which seems well vouched for but is hard to believe: ‘Hooker, who is staying here, amused us by saying that Darwin had told him that he had got drunk three times in early life, and thought intoxication the greatest of all pleasures.’[267] Whether he thought so or not, he did not often indulge in it. And as he grew older, he abandoned wine almost entirely, so that when she was engaged his future wife could write: ‘I don’t think it of as much consequence as she does that Charles drinks no wine, but I think it a pleasant thing.’[268] He smoked cigarettes more or less, and found them restful, but he certainly did not overdo the habit. His favorite indulgence was snuff-taking, which was given up and renewed much after the fashion of Lamb’s tobacco. Of his efforts in this direction he writes, with humor: ‘I am personally in a state of utmost confusion also, for my cruel wife has persuaded me to leave off snuff for a month; and I am most lethargic, stupid, and melancholy in consequence.’[269]
The chief element in Darwin’s care of his health, however, was persistent rest. All his days were systematically planned, the few hours that could be given to it set apart for work, and the rest devoted to some form of relaxation or needed repose. There were long nights, if not for sleep, at least for physical tranquillity, and there were afternoons and evenings spent largely on the sofa, in chat or in listening to music or to stories of purely diverting quality. Any interruption of this carefully arranged schedule was avoided, if possible, and almost always had to be paid for. Thus, by persistent, systematic, rigid self-control, and by sacrificing days and months and years to a comparatively tedious indolence, Darwin gained the few hours that were essential for the work that shook the world.
In one respect he was extremely fortunate. If he was hampered by ill-health, he at least had ample means to make that ill-health as tolerable as possible. He did not know the misery of having to support yourself and your family and being physically unable to do it. Without wholly endorsing the sarcastic remark of Butler, ‘The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next his health, and the third his reputation,’ one can see some truth in it, especially when the possession of money serves to make the loss of health more endurable. Darwin’s father was very successful financially. He provided for all his children in the most liberal fashion during his life, and left them in comfortable circumstances after his death, and Darwin often refers to this with gratitude and appreciation. The son seems to have had abundant means to keep up a considerable establishment, to educate and provide for his own large family, to indulge in general benefaction, and to do if not all he wished, at least a great deal in the way of scientific investigation and experiment.
In later years a considerable income from the published books was naturally added to the supply that was inherited. Darwin was proud of his earning in this way, and he had reason to be, although he could hardly boast of such returns as were received by his contemporary Trollope. One is chiefly impressed, however, with his extreme anxiety that others should be treated fairly, and that no one should suffer by his gains. Thus he writes to his publisher, in a tone which publishers will I think recognize as not usual: ‘You are really too generous about the, to me, scandalously heavy corrections. Are you acting fairly towards yourself? Would it not be better at least to share the £72 8s? I shall be fully satisfied, for I had no business to send, though quite unintentionally and unexpectedly, such badly composed MS to the printers.’[270]
One of the consequences of Darwin’s delicate health was, that he was more or less anxious about money. When you can count on your physical strength for fighting circumstance, you can float cheerfully out into the world and let your daily support come where you can get it. But if you are weak, crippled, and hampered, if you are absolutely dependent upon the comforts which others merely enjoy but can do without, you look with dread upon the possibility of losing what alone assures you of the indispensable. Darwin was not altogether free from this feeling, and his son tells us that he was haunted by the fear that his children would not have health to earn their own living yet might be obliged to do so.[271] In consequence he was always thoughtful and careful in money matters. He looked after his investments with shrewd intelligence, and respected the faculty of making money and keeping it. He was not above saving a penny where it could be done, and especially he was exact and systematic about his expenditure. His biographer says that ‘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 check paid, as though he were in a hurry to get it entered before he had forgotten it.’[272] An interesting contradiction to this financial exactitude and to Darwin’s ordinary habits of accuracy is his inveterate carelessness in not dating or not fully dating his letters.
The financial exactitude and anxiety do not for a moment imply that he was not liberal and generous in the highest degree, as perhaps the wisest, and even the largest generosity, comes with such prevision and forethought. He spent freely on his current living, and he was particularly considerate, not only in giving to his family, but in the manner of giving, which sometimes seems to count for even more. His son speaks of his thoughtful kindness in attending to financial arrangements, and emphasizes his generosity in paying college debts, ‘making it almost seem a virtue in me to have told him of them.’[273] Nor was the generosity confined to his family. It was broad and luminous in its working, and there are constant references to the causes to which Darwin sent his check, with no ostentation, but with the earnest desire to do good. His limitations of strength made it difficult for him to go about largely in his home neighborhood, but the poor people knew him and loved him, and he was ready and glad to assist them when possible. As Bryce says, ‘he was a kind and helpful neighbor to the humble folk who lived round him at Down.’[274] Especially he was glad to give not only his time and his limited strength, but his money, to aiding those who were doing scientific work of any sort. And in brief, in this connection of general kindliness it is worth while to note the remark of the devout old woman who was told that Darwin would go to hell for his wicked doctrines and answered: ‘God Almighty can’t afford to do without so good a man.’[194]