Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter Part 13

No vessel ever left England with such a set of Chronometers, viz.

twenty-four, all very good ones. In short, everything is well, and I have only now to pray for the sickness to moderate its fierceness, and I shall do very well. Yet I should not call it one of the very best opportunities for natural history that has ever occurred. The absolute want of room is an evil that nothing can surmount. I think L. Jenyns did very wisely in not coming, that is judging from my own feelings, for I am sure if I had left college some few years, or been those years older I _never_ could have endured it. The officers (excepting the Captain) are like the freshest freshmen, that is in their manners, in everything else widely different. Remember me most kindly to him, and tell him if ever he dreams in the night of palm-trees, he may in the morning comfort himself with the a.s.surance that the voyage would not have suited him.

I am much obliged for your advice, _de Mathematicis_. I suspect when I am struggling with a triangle, I shall often wish myself in your room, and as for those wicked sulky surds, I do not know what I shall do without you to conjure them. My time pa.s.ses away very pleasantly. I know one or two pleasant people, foremost of whom is Mr.

Thunder-and-lightning Harris,[88] whom I dare say you have heard of. My chief employment is to go on board the _Beagle_, and try to look as much like a sailor as I can. I have no evidence of having taken in man, woman or child.

I am going to ask you to do one more commission, and I trust it will be the last. When I was in Cambridge, I wrote to Mr. Ash, asking him to send my College account to my father, after having subtracted about 30 for my furniture. This he has forgotten to do, and my father has paid the bill, and I want to have the furniture-money transmitted to my father. Perhaps you would be kind enough to speak to Mr. Ash. I have cost my father so much money, I am quite ashamed of myself.

I will write once again before sailing, and perhaps you will write to me before then.

Believe me, yours affectionately,

_C. D. to J. S. Henslow._ Devonport [December 3, 1831].

MY DEAR HENSLOW--It is now late in the evening, and to-night I am going to sleep on board. On Monday we most certainly sail, so you may guess in what a desperate state of confusion we are all in. If you were to hear the various exclamations of the officers, you would suppose we had scarcely had a week's notice. I am just in the same way taken all _aback_, and in such a bustle I hardly know what to do. The number of things to be done is infinite. I look forward even to sea-sickness with something like satisfaction, anything must be better than this state of anxiety. I am very much obliged for your last kind and affectionate letter. I always like advice from you, and no one whom I have the luck to know is more capable of giving it than yourself. Recollect, when you write, that I am a sort of _protege_ of yours, and that it is your bounden duty to lecture me.

I will now give you my direction: it is at first, Rio; but if you will send me a letter on the first Tuesday (when the packet sails) in February, directed to Monte Video, it will give me very great pleasure: I shall so much enjoy hearing a little Cambridge news. Poor dear old _Alma Mater_! I am a very worthy son in as far as affection goes. I have little more to write about.... I cannot end this without telling you how cordially I feel grateful for the kindness you have shown me during my Cambridge life. Much of the pleasure and utility which I may have derived from it is owing to you. I long for the time when we shall again meet, and till then believe me, my dear Henslow,

Your affectionate and obliged friend, CH. DARWIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] "On Tuesday last Charles Darwin, of Christ's College, was admitted B.A."--_Cambridge Chronicle_, Friday, April 29th, 1831.

[66] Readers of Calverley (another Christ's man) will remember his tobacco poem ending "Hero's to thee, Bacon."

[67] The rooms are on the first floor, on the west side of the middle staircase. A medallion (given by my brother) has recently been let into the wall of the sitting-room.

[68] For instance in a letter to Hooker (1817):--"Many thanks for your welcome note from Cambridge, and I am glad you like my _Alma Mater_, which I despise heartily as a place of education, but love from many most pleasant recollections."

[69] Autobiography p. 10.

[70] From a letter to W. D. Fox.

[71] No doubt in allusion to the t.i.tle of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

[72] _Panagaeus crux-major._

[73] Formerly Reader in Natural Philosophy at Durham University.

[74] Blane was afterwards, I believe, in the Life Guards; he was in the Crimean War, and afterwards Military Attache at St. Petersburg. I am indebted to Mr. Hamilton for information about some of my father's contemporaries.

[75] Brother of Lord Sherbrooke.

[76] March 18, 1829.

[77] The postmark being Derby seems to show that the letter was written from his cousin, W. D. Fox's house, Osmaston, near Derby.

[78] The top of the hill immediately behind Barmouth was called Craig-Storm, a hybrid Cambro-English word.

[79] Rev. T. Butler, a son of the former head master of Shrewsbury School.

[80] No doubt a paid collector.

[81] The "Captain" is at the head of the "Poll": the "Apostles" are the last twelve in the Mathematical Tripos.

[82] For an explanation of the word "gulfed" or "gulphed," see Mr. W. W.

Rouse b.a.l.l.s' interesting _History of the Study of Mathematics at Cambridge_ (1889), p. 160.

[83] The _Beagle_ should have started on Nov. 4, but was delayed until Dec. 27.

[84] See, too, a sketch by my father of his old master, in the Rev. L.

Blomefield's _Memoir of Professor Henslow_.

[85] The copy of Humboldt given by Henslow to my father, which is in my possession, is a double memento of the two men--the author and the donor, who so greatly influenced his life.

[86] Formerly Dean of Ely, and Lowndean Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.

[87] Josiah Wedgwood.

[88] William Snow Harris, the Electrician.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE 'BEAGLE' LAID ASh.o.r.e, RIVER SANTA CRUZ.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE VOYAGE.

"There is a natural good-humoured energy in his letters just like himself."--From a letter of Dr. R. W. Darwin's to Professor Henslow.

The object of the _Beagle_ voyage is briefly described in my father's _Journal of Researches_, p. 1, as being "to complete the Survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830; to survey the sh.o.r.es of Chile, Peru, and some islands in the Pacific; and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world."

The _Beagle_ is described[89] as a well-built little vessel, of 235 tons, rigged as a barque, and carrying six guns. She belonged to the old cla.s.s of ten-gun brigs, which were nicknamed "coffins," from their liability to go down in severe weather. They were very "deep-waisted,"

that is, their bulwarks were high in proportion to their size, so that a heavy sea breaking over them might be highly dangerous. Nevertheless, she had already lived through five years' work, in the most stormy regions in the world, under Commanders Stokes and Fitz-Roy without a serious accident. When re-commissioned in 1831 for her second voyage, she was found (as I learned from the late Admiral Sir James Sulivan) to be so rotten that she had practically to be rebuilt, and it was this that caused the long delay in refitting.

She was fitted out for the expedition with all possible care: to quote my father's description, written from Devonport, November 17, 1831: "Everybody, who can judge, says it is one of the grandest voyages that has almost ever been sent out. Everything is on a grand scale.... In short, everything is as prosperous as human means can make it." The twenty-four chronometers and the mahogany fittings seem to have been especially admired, and are more than once alluded to.

Owing to the smallness of the vessel, every one on board was cramped for room, and my father's accommodation seems to have been narrow enough.

Yet of this confined s.p.a.ce he wrote enthusiastically, September 17, 1831:--"When I wrote last, I was in great alarm about my cabin. The cabins were not then marked out, but when I left they were, and mine is a capital one, certainly next best to the Captain's and remarkably light. My companion most luckily, I think, will turn out to be the officer whom I shall like best. Captain Fitz-Roy says he will take care that one corner is so fitted up that I shall be comfortable in it and shall consider it my home, but that also I shall have the run of his. My cabin is the drawing one; and in the middle is a large table, on which we two sleep in hammocks. But for the first two months there will be no drawing to be done, so that it will be quite a luxurious room, and a good deal larger than the Captain's cabin."

My father used to say that it was the absolute necessity of tidiness in the cramped s.p.a.ce on the _Beagle_ that helped "to give him his methodical habits of working." On the _Beagle_, too, he would say, that he learned what he considered the golden rule for saving time; _i.e._, taking care of the minutes.

In a letter to his sister (July 1832), he writes contentedly of his manner of life at sea:--"I do not think I have ever given you an account of how the day pa.s.ses. We breakfast at eight o'clock. The invariable maxim is to throw away all politeness--that is, never to wait for each other, and bolt off the minute one has done eating, &c. At sea, when the weather is calm, I work at marine animals, with which the whole ocean abounds. If there is any sea up I am either sick or contrive to read some voyage or travels. At one we dine. You sh.o.r.e-going people are lamentably mistaken about the manner of living on board. We have never yet (nor shall we) dined off salt meat. Rice and peas and _calavanses_ are excellent vegetables, and, with good bread, who could want more?