Darwin

by Gamaliel Bradford

The form of art which meant most to Darwin and into which he seemed to enter with the nearest approach to ecstasy was music. Here again, there is a good deal of theoretical discussion, which at times appears of a nature to dampen emotional enjoyment. But there can be no question that with Darwin as a young man the emotional enjoyment was there, and sincere, and profound, even at times overmastering. He does indeed confess that his musical ear was not fine or perfect: ‘I am so utterly destitute of an ear, that I cannot perceive a discord, or keep time and hum a tune correctly; and it is a mystery how I could possibly have derived pleasure from music.’[338] But it is manifest that he did derive such pleasure, and went out of his way to seek it: ‘I also got into a musical set.... From associating with these men, and hearing them play I acquired a strong taste for music, and used very often to time my walks so as to hear on week days the anthem in King’s College Chapel.’[339]

The love was for good music, too, not by any means for what was trashy or cheap. He liked Beethoven and Händel, had the natural instinct for the high and fine, in this as in other matters. Mrs. Darwin took him to classical concerts and he responded much more heartily than to the theater. He liked to have his wife and his sisters play to him, and when he was absent with the Beagle, he wrote: ‘I hope your musical tastes continue in due force. I shall be ravenous for the pianoforte.’[340]

And the enjoyment was not merely perfunctory, but went deep, and took hold of the nerves. ‘At the end of one of the parts, which was exceedingly impressive, he turned round to me and said, with a deep sigh, “How’s your backbone?” He often spoke of coldness or shivering in his back on hearing beautiful music.’[341] The references to this thrill, this tension of nervous musical excitement, occur occasionally even in Darwin’s more scientific works.

And then there is the recurring doubt, the mistrust of one’s sincerity, the desperate dread of sentimental convention in these artistic matters: ‘This gave me intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes shiver. I am sure that there was no affectation or mere imitation in this taste, for I used generally to go by myself to King’s College, and I sometimes hired the chorister boys to sing in my rooms.’[342]

But, affectation or not, the musical enthusiasm vanished, and the encroaching, all-absorbing growth of the scientific preoccupation crowded it out. Indeed, any one who is susceptible to musical delight, appreciates how elusive it is, how much it depends upon favorable conditions and surroundings, and how peculiarly its delicate and subtle quality is subject to erasure by distractions of a different order. And Darwin’s comment on the disappearance of his pleasure in music is: ‘I have said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight.... I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure.’[343]

With the enjoyment of beauty in literary forms, Darwin’s sense of loss was quite as keen as with music. Of the higher and finer elements of style and imagination there is little evidence that he was conscious. Such consciousness would not seem very compatible with his remark about Buckle: ‘To my taste he is the very best writer of the English language that ever lived, let the other be who he may.’[344]

In this connection it is interesting to consider Darwin’s own style, as it appears in the vast mass of his production, running probably, letters and all, to over two million words. In this mass there are occasional passages of appealing beauty or startling effectiveness, for example, the charming sentence, written in age, ‘I should very much like to see you again, but you would find a visit here very dull, for we feel very old and have no amusement, and lead a solitary life,’[345] or the much earlier passage: ‘This letter is a most untidy one, but my mind is untidy with joy.’[346]

But Darwin, in writing, would have bestowed no thought or care on such qualities as these. He had a great discovery to give to the world. His one desire was to give it accurately, lucidly, and in a form that would convince, and it was his despair that he thought nature had not endowed him with the gifts for doing this. He envies the admirable literary skill of Huxley and Spencer and deplores his own inability to get his thoughts and ideas into a shape that would force mankind to read and understand them: ‘I do not believe any man in England naturally writes so vile a style as I do.’[347]

Which is a gross exaggeration and belongs to the humility so manifest in other and more important matters. It is true that there are curious lapses from mere formal correctness, as in the rather attractive misuse of ‘like,’ which occasionally occurs: ‘Few have observed like you have done.’[348] It is true, also, that Darwin had not the swift and eloquent vigor of Huxley, which has sometimes virile energy enough to make force of statement appear like truth of fact. But no one, I think, can read Darwin at all widely without getting to feel a singular charm in the absolute simplicity of his manner of expressing himself. To be sure, Huxley suggests that the very simplicity is sometimes misleading: ‘A somewhat delusive simplicity of style, which tends to disguise the complexity and difficulty of the subject.’[275] But when so many writers make simple subjects difficult, it would surely be ungracious to complain of one who makes a difficult subject simple. As I have before suggested, Darwin’s perfect candor, his absolute sincerity, his intense and obvious effort to have you think with him, seem to take the place of great literary qualities and to give his prose a revealing directness which is quite lacking to some who are more highly skilled.

Especially is this the case with the correspondence, where finish and technical perfection are of less importance than the power of spontaneous spiritual contact. In maintaining this contact there are few letter-writers who can surpass Darwin, and his four solid volumes, technical and scientific as they are, have a singular and persistent appeal to those who have a taste for that kind of writing.