Famous Men of Science

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"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."

He was the idol of his children, who used "to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours." "We all knew the sacredness of working time," says Mr. Darwin's daughter, "but that any one should resist sixpence seemed an impossibility.... 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?'... He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives with us in a way that very few fathers do."

His son says: "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.... 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 very fond of flowers, and also of dogs. When he had been absent from home, on his return his white fox-terrier, Polly, "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."

He was very tender-hearted. A friend who often visited at Down told me that Mrs. Darwin one day urged her husband to punish the little dog for some wrong-doing. He took the animal tenderly in his arms and carried her out-of-doors, patting her gently on the head. "Why, Charles," remonstrated the wife, "she did not feel it." He replied, "I could do no more."

"The remembrance of screams or other sounds heard in Brazil," says Francis Darwin, "when he was powerless to interfere with what he believed to be the torture of a slave, haunted him for years, especially at night. In smaller matters, when he could interfere, he did so vigorously. He returned one day from his walk pale and faint from having seen a horse ill-used, and from the agitation of violently remonstrating with the man. On another occasion he saw a horse-breaker teaching his son to ride. The little boy was frightened, and the man was rough. My father stopped, and, jumping out of the carriage, reproved the man in no measured terms....

"A visitor, driving from Orpington to Down, told the man to go faster. 'Why,' said the driver, 'if I had whipped the horse this much driving Mr. Darwin, he would have got out of the carriage and abused me well.'"

His manner was bright and animated, and his face glowed in conversation. He enjoyed fun, had a merry, ringing laugh, and a happy way of turning things. He said once, "Gray (Asa Gray of Harvard College) often takes me to task for making hasty generalizations; but the last time he was here talking that way, I said to him, 'Now, Gray, I have one more generalization to make, which is not hasty; and that is, the Americans are the most delightful people I know.'"

"He was particularly charming when 'chaffing' any one," says his son, "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....

"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."