CHAS. R. DARWIN
harles Robert Darwin, the great naturalist and author of the "Darwinian theory," was the son of Dr. Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848) and grandson of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). He was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809. W. E. Gladstone, Alfred Tennyson, and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year. Charles Darwin was the youngest of a family of four, having an elder brother and two sisters. He was sent to a day school at Shrewsbury in the year of his mother's death, 1817. At this age he tells us that the passion for "collecting" which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in him, and was clearly innate, as none of his brothers or sisters had this taste. A year later he was removed to the Shrewsbury grammar school, where he profited little by the education in the dead languages administered, and incurred (as even to-day would be the case in English schools) the rebukes of the head-master Butler for "wasting his time" upon such unprofitable subjects as natural history and chemistry, which he pursued "out of school."
When Charles was sixteen his father sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine, but after two sessions there he was removed and sent to Cambridge (1828) with the intention that he should become a clergyman. In 1831 he took his B. A. degree as what is called a "pass-man." In those days the injurious system of competitive examinations had not laid hold of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge as it has since, and Darwin quietly took a pass degree whilst studying a variety of subjects of interest to him, without a thought of excelling in an examination. He was fond of all field sports, of dogs and horses, and also spent much time in excursions, collecting and observing with Henslow the professor of botany, and Sedgwick the celebrated geologist. An undergraduate friend of those days has declared that "he was the most genial, warm-hearted, generous and affectionate of friends; his sympathies were with all that was good and true; he had a cordial hatred for everything false, or vile, or cruel, or mean, or dishonorable. He was not only great but pre-eminently good, and just and lovable."
Through Henslow and the sound advice of his uncle Josiah Wedgwood (the son of the potter of Etruria) he accepted an offer to accompany Captain Fitzroy as naturalist on H. M. S. Beagle, which was to make an extensive surveying expedition. The voyage lasted from December 27th, 1831, to October 2d, 1836. It was, Darwin himself says, "by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career." He had great opportunities of making explorations on land whilst the ship was engaged in her surveying work in various parts of the southern hemisphere, and made extensive collections of plants and animals, fossil as well as living forms, terrestrial as well as marine. On his return he was busy with the description of these results, and took up his residence in London. His 'Journal of Researches' was published in 1839, and is now familiar to many readers in its third edition, published in 1860 under the title 'A Naturalist's Voyage; Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World, under the command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N.'
This was Darwin's first book, and is universally held to be one of the most delightful records of a naturalist's travels ever produced. It is to be placed alongside of Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative,' and is the model followed by the authors of other delightful books of travel of a later date, such as Wallace's 'Malay Archipelago,' Moseley's 'Naturalist on the Challenger,' and Belt's 'Naturalist in Nicaragua.' We have given in our selections from Darwin's writings the final pages of 'A Naturalist's Voyage' as an example of the style which characterizes the book. In it Darwin shows himself an ardent and profound lover of the luxuriant beauty of nature in the tropics, a kindly observer of men, whether missionaries or savages; an incessant student of natural things—rocks, plants, and animals; and one with a mind so keenly set upon explaining these things and assigning them to their causes, that none of his observations are trivial, but all of value and many of first-rate importance. The book is addressed, as are all of Darwin's books, to the general reader. It seemed to be natural to him to try and explain his observations and reasonings which led to them and followed from them to a wide circle of his fellow-men. The reader at once feels that Darwin is an honest and modest man, who desires his sympathy and seeks for his companionship in the enjoyment of his voyage and the interesting facts and theories gathered by him in distant lands. The quiet unassuming style of the narrative, and the careful explanation of details in such a way as to appeal to those who have little or no knowledge of natural history, gives a charm to the 'Naturalist's Voyage' which is possessed in no less a degree by his later books. A writer in the Quarterly Review in 1839 wrote, in reviewing the 'Naturalist's Voyage,' of the "charm arising from the freshness of heart which is thrown over these pages of a strong intellectual man and an acute and deep observer." The places visited in the course of the Beagle's voyage, concerning each of which Darwin has something to say, were the Cape Verd Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Fernando Noronha, parts of South America, Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos Islands, the Falkland Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Keeling Island, the Maldives, Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension. The most important discoveries recorded in the book—also treated at greater length in special scientific memoirs—are the explanation of the ring-like form of coral islands, the geological structure of St. Helena and other islands, and the relation of the living inhabitants—great tortoises, lizards, birds, and various plants—of the various islands of the Galapagos Archipelago to those of South America.
In 1839 (shortly before the publication of his journal) Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and in 1842 they took the country-house and little property of Down near Orpington in Kent, which remained his home and the seat of his labors for forty years; that is, until his death on April 19th, 1882. In a letter to his friend Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle, written in 1846, Darwin says, "My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it." Happily, he was possessed of ample private fortune, and never undertook any teaching work nor gave any of his strength to the making of money. He was able to devote himself entirely to the studies in which he took delight; and though suffering from weak health due to a hereditary form of dyspepsia, he presented the rare spectacle of a man of leisure more fully occupied, more absorbed in constant and exhausting labors, than many a lawyer, doctor, professor, or man of letters. His voyage seems to have satisfied once for all his need for traveling, and his absences from Down were but few and brief during the rest of his life. Here most of his children were born, five sons and three daughters. One little girl died in childhood; the rest grew up around him and remained throughout his life in the closest terms of intimacy and affection with him and their mother. Here he carried on his experiments in greenhouse, garden, and paddock; here he collected his library and wrote his great books. He became a man of well-considered habits and method, carefully arranging his day's occupation so as to give so many hours to noting the results of experiments, so many to writing and reading, and an hour or two to exercise in his grounds or a ride, and playing with his children. Frequently he was stopped for days and even weeks from all intellectual labor by attacks of vomiting and giddiness. Great, as were his sufferings on account of ill health, it is not improbable that the retirement of life which was thus forced on him, to a very large extent determined his wonderful assiduity in study and led to the production by him of so many great works.
In later years these attacks were liable to ensue upon prolonged conversation with visitors, if a subject of scientific interest were discussed. His wife, who throughout their long and happy union devoted herself to the care of her husband so as to enable him to do a maximum amount of work with least suffering in health, would come and fetch him away after half an hour's talk, that he might lie down alone in a quiet room. Then after an hour or so he would return with a smile, like a boy released from punishment, and launch again with a merry laugh into talk. Never was there an invalid who bore his maladies so cheerfully, or who made so light of a terrible burden. Although he was frequently seasick during the voyage of the Beagle, he did not attribute his condition in later life in any way to that experience, but to inherited weakness. During the hours passed in his study he found it necessary to rest at intervals, and adopted regularly the plan of writing for an hour and of then lying down for half an hour, whilst his wife or daughter read to him a novel! After half an hour he would again resume his work, and again after an hour return to the novel. In this way he got through the greater part of the circulating libraries' contents. He declared that he had no taste for literature, but liked a story, especially about a pretty girl; and he would only read those in which all ended well. Authors of stories ending in death and failure ought, he declared, to be hung!