Rustic Sounds, and Other Studies in Literature and Natural History

by Sir Francis Darwin

I am also grateful for having been made to learn Shakespeare by heart, although we had to do it before breakfast. I do not imagine that I now remember any of it, but it gave me some idea of the beauty of literature, which I hardly gained at all from the classics. It also started me reading Shakespeare out of school. I believe this is the easiest way of supplying some modicum of literature to a boy who cannot get it out of Latin and Greek. And a kind of Cowper-Temple Shakespeare, without note or comment, is more effective than regular so-called literary lessons, and the worrying of boys about the metre or the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. A boy does not want to understand everything, and he likes to get his poetry in a book which looks as if it were meant for reading, not for cramming or for holiday tasks.

Personally, I also resent that I was not taught at school to read music by the sol-fa system, which is another of the things that can be poured into most children not only easily but with pleasure to themselves. I have been assured by a learned musician, that in the 17th century reading music was as much a sign of culture as reading a book. There was recently an excellent letter in the Times [82] on public school music, pleading that boys should be allowed to drop, let us say greek iambics, and devote the time to serious musical study. The writer describes how at a certain school a good professional orchestra gives a concert once in each term, for which the boys are prepared by having the themes of the movements, e.g. of a Beethoven symphony, played over to them on the piano and expounded. He describes how an athletic boy, a member of the football team, declared, when the concert was over, that there was nothing to live for during the rest of the half, apparently not even football. No wonder that the writer of this letter should respectfully deride a former Head Master of Eton for his approval of choral singing, on account of its “moral and political value.”

I have always felt that the best teaching I received was in two practical matters, viz., how to play the flute, and how to use a microscope. It may be said that these were subjects in which I took a natural and spontaneous interest, and were therefore easily taught. This is no doubt partly true, but I do not think it depended on any special attraction

for music or microscopy, but on something wider—on the novelty of being taught to do something physical, something with one’s hands and ears and eyes. I am sure boys ought to have more practical teaching—not necessarily in science, but such things as mild carpentering, the tying of knots, and such exercise in rough weighing and measuring as would form a basis for a little elementary physics. The same is true of girls, and in one way they need handiwork more than boys. I found, in my Cambridge class of practical plant-physiology, that the girls had not such ‘deft fingers’ as their brothers; I believe the difference is largely due to the boys having played with string and knives, etc., for many idle hours. Both boys and girls must be taught to use, not only their hands, but their eyes. It seems to me piteous that when I was at school there was absolutely nothing done to keep alive the natural sharp-eyedness of children. I remember vividly the intense pleasure which my father gave me (a very small boy) by showing surprise at my knowledge of common trees and shrubs in a winter coppice. I am sure that school did much to kill the power of observation in me.

It may be that observation is an essentially transitory quality, a fleeting ancestral reminiscence, a trail of glory, like other savage traits in children. But more than now survives might be preserved to us by training at school. It ought not to be possible for a boy to come up to a University so blind and helpless as to describe a wall-flower (which has six obvious stamens arranged in a striking pattern) as having “about five stamens.”

Yet this I experienced in an examination of medical students. Describing an object placed before him is excellent training in observation for a boy. And the capacity of describing an object by memory should also be cultivated. Remember what Dr. Noel says in Stevenson’s story of the Saratoga Trunk, and how we may fail in a question of life and death because we cannot describe the mysterious stranger who dogs our footsteps.

To return for a moment to the description of an object. It not only practises the power of observation, but is also excellent exercise in writing English, far better as it seems to me than the usual essay on the usual subjects. In describing a given object the pupil has not to seek for material—it is there before him. He need not recall his feelings during a country walk, or the way he spent his time in the Christmas holidays, or vainly search for facts on the character of Oliver Cromwell. He can concentrate on arrangement, on directness and clearness. My experience of the essays set to candidates in the Natural Science Tripos was most depressing. A man who could write a good plain answer to an ordinary examination question becomes ornate and tiresome when he is told to write an essay. Such candidates have clearly never heard the admirable statement by Canon Ainger of the style expected in writers in the Dictionary of Natural Biography, “No flowers by request.” Nor can they have known that other bit of advice, “You have no idea what strength it gives to your style to leave out every other word.” I have heard suggested another method of checking the natural

diffuseness of the youthful essayist, namely, to make him confine himself to a definite number of words, I have even heard an essay on a post card recommended.

For myself, I believe the best exercise in English I ever had was the correction of my father’s proof-sheets. What I found so educational was the necessity of having to explain clearly and exactly why I objected to a given sentence, since I naturally could not baldly express my disapproval. It was not only good training, but as has been well said by my sister (who also helped in this way), “It was inexpressibly exhilarating to work for him”—and she continues—referring to the generous way in which he took our suggestions, “I think I felt the singular modesty and graciousness of his nature through thus working for him in a way I should never otherwise have done.”

How far every boy ought to be made to do mathematics (beyond simple arithmetic) I cannot say. I know that I am extremely grateful for the small amount of mathematics forced into me. I am even thankful for a very mechanical side of the subject, namely, the use of mathematical tables in general, and for being compelled to work out innumerable sums by logarithms, which we had to do in a “neat tabular form” to quote our precise master’s words.