Charles Darwin: His Life in an Autobiographical Chapter Part 17

The bets are usually recorded in such a way as not to preclude future speculation on a subject which has proved itself capable of supplying a discussion (and a bottle) to the Room, hence the _x_ in the above quotation.

[102] Spring Rice.

[103] _Phil. Trans._, 1839, pp. 39-82.

[104] Sir Archibald Geikie has been so good as to allow me to quote a pa.s.sage from a letter addressed to me (Nov. 19, 1884):--"Had the idea of transient barriers of glacier-ice occurred to him, he would have found the difficulties vanish from the lake-theory which he opposed, and he would not have been unconsciously led to minimise the altogether overwhelming objections to the supposition that the terraces are of marine origin."

It may be added that the idea of the barriers being formed by glaciers could hardly have occurred to him, considering the state of knowledge at the time, and bearing in mind his want of opportunities of observing glacial action on a large scale.

[105] In a letter of Sept. 13 he wrote:--"It will be a curious point to geologists hereafter to note how long a man's name will support a theory so completely exposed as that of De Beaumont has been by you; you say you 'begin to hope that the great principles there insisted on will stand the test of time.' _Begin to hope_: why, the _possibility_ of a doubt has never crossed my mind for many a day. This may be very unphilosophical, but my geological salvation is staked on it."

[106] At the meeting of the British a.s.sociation.

[107] Daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and grand-daughter of the founder of the Etruria Pottery Works.

[108] July 1877.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE AT DOWN.

1842-1854.

"My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it."

Letter to Captain Fitz-Roy, October, 1846.

Certain letters which, chronologically considered, belong to the period 1845-54 have been utilised in a later chapter where the growth of the _Origin of Species_ is described. In the present chapter we only get occasional hints of the growth of my father's views, and we may suppose ourselves to be seeing his life, as it might have appeared to those who had no knowledge of the quiet development of his theory of evolution during this period.

On Sept. 14, 1842, my father left London with his family and settled at Down.[109] In the Autobiographical chapter, his motives for moving into the country are briefly given. He speaks of the attendance at scientific societies and ordinary social duties as suiting his health so "badly that we resolved to live in the country, which we both preferred and have never repented of." His intention of keeping up with scientific life in London is expressed in a letter to Fox (Dec., 1842):--

"I hope by going up to town for a night every fortnight or three weeks, to keep up my communication with scientific men and my own zeal, and so not to turn into a complete Kentish hog."

Visits to London of this kind were kept up for some years at the cost of much exertion on his part. I have often heard him speak of the wearisome drives of ten miles to or from Croydon or Sydenham--the nearest stations--with an old gardener acting as coachman, who drove with great caution and slowness up and down the many hills. In later years, regular scientific intercourse with London became, as before mentioned, an impossibility.

The choice of Down was rather the result of despair than of actual preference: my father and mother were weary of house-hunting, and the attractive points about the place thus seemed to them to counterbalance its somewhat more obvious faults. It had at least one desideratum, namely, quietness. Indeed it would have been difficult to find a more retired place so near to London. In 1842 a coach drive of some twenty miles was the usual means of access to Down; and even now that railways have crept closer to it, it is singularly out of the world, with nothing to suggest the neighbourhood of London, unless it be the dull haze of smoke that sometimes clouds the sky. The village stands in an angle between two of the larger high-roads of the country, one leading to Tunbridge and the other to Westerham and Edenbridge. It is cut off from the Weald by a line of steep chalk hills on the south, and an abrupt hill, now smoothed down by a cutting and embankment, must formerly have been something of a barrier against encroachments from the side of London. In such a situation, a village, communicating with the main lines of traffic, only by stony tortuous lanes, may well have preserved its retired character. Nor is it hard to believe in the smugglers and their strings of pack-horses making their way up from the lawless old villages of the Weald, of which the memory still existed when my father settled in Down. The village stands on solitary upland country, 500 to 600 feet above the sea--a country with little natural beauty, but possessing a certain charm in the shaws, or straggling strips of wood, capping the chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet ploughed lands of the valleys. The village, of three or four hundred inhabitants, consists of three small streets of cottages meeting in front of the little flint-built church. It is a place where new-comers are seldom seen, and the names occurring far back in the old church registers are still known in the village. The smock-frock is not yet quite extinct, though chiefly used as a ceremonial dress by the "bearers" at funerals; but as a boy I remember the purple or green smocks of the men at church.

The house stands a quarter of a mile from the village, and is built, like so many houses of the last century, as near as possible to the road--a narrow lane winding away to the Westerham high-road. In 1842, it was dull and unattractive enough: a square brick building of three storeys, covered with shabby whitewash, and hanging tiles. The garden had none of the shrubberies or walls that now give shelter; it was overlooked from the lane, and was open, bleak, and desolate. One of my father's first undertakings was to lower the lane by about two feet, and to build a flint wall along that part of it which bordered the garden.

The earth thus excavated was used in making banks and mounds round the lawn: these were planted with evergreens, which now give to the garden its retired and sheltered character.

The house was made to look neater by being covered with stucco, but the chief improvement effected was the building of a large bow extending up through three storeys. This bow became covered with a tangle of creepers, and pleasantly varied the south side of the house. The drawing-room, with its verandah opening into the garden, as well as the study in which my father worked during the later years of his life, were added at subsequent dates.

Eighteen acres of land were sold with the house, of which twelve acres on the south side of the house form a pleasant field, scattered with fair-sized oaks and ashes. From this field a strip was cut off and converted into a kitchen garden, in which the experimental plot of ground was situated, and where the greenhouses were ultimately put up.

During the whole of 1843 he was occupied with geological work, the result of which was published in the spring of the following year. It was ent.i.tled _Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands, visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, together with some brief notices on the geology of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope_; it formed the second part of the _Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle_, published "with the Approval of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury." The volume on _Coral Reefs_ forms Part I. of the series, and was published, as we have seen, in 1842. For the sake of the non-geological reader, I may here quote Sir A. Geikie's words[110] on these two volumes--which were up to this time my father's chief geological works. Speaking of the _Coral Reefs_, he says (p. 17): "This well-known treatise, the most original of all its author's geological memoirs, has become one of the cla.s.sics of geological literature. The origin of those remarkable rings of coral-rock in mid-ocean has given rise to much speculation, but no satisfactory solution of the problem had been proposed. After visiting many of them, and examining also coral reefs that fringe islands and continents, he offered a theory which for simplicity and grandeur, strikes every reader with astonishment. It is pleasant, after the lapse of many years, to recall the delight with which one first read the _Coral Reefs_, how one watched the facts being marshalled into their places, nothing being ignored or pa.s.sed lightly over; and how, step by step, one was led to the grand conclusion of wide oceanic subsidence. No more admirable example of scientific method was ever given to the world, and even if he had written nothing else, the treatise alone would have placed Darwin in the very front of investigators of nature."

It is interesting to see in the following extract from one of Lyell's letters[111] how warmly and readily he embraced the theory. The extract also gives incidentally some idea of the theory itself.

"I am very full of Darwin's new theory of Coral Islands, and have urged Whewell to make him read it at our next meeting. I must give up my volcanic crater theory for ever, though it cost me a pang at first, for it accounted for so much, the annular form, the central lagoon, the sudden rising of an isolated mountain in a deep sea; all went so well with the notion of submerged, crateriform, and conical volcanoes, ...

and then the fact that in the South Pacific we had scarcely any rocks in the regions of coral islands, save two kinds, coral limestone and volcanic! Yet in spite of all this, the whole theory is knocked on the head, and the annular shape and central lagoon have nothing to do with volcanoes, nor even with a crateriform bottom. Perhaps Darwin told you when at the Cape what he considers the true cause? Let any mountain be submerged gradually, and coral grow in the sea in which it is sinking, and there will be a ring of coral, and finally only a lagoon in the centre.... Coral islands are the last efforts of drowning continents to lift their heads above water. Regions of elevation and subsidence in the ocean may be traced by the state of the coral reefs."

The second part of the _Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle_, _i.e._ the volume on Volcanic Islands, which specially concerns us now, cannot be better described than by again quoting from Sir A. Geikie (p. 18):--

"Full of detailed observations, this work still remains the best authority on the general geological structure of most of the regions it describes. At the time it was written the 'crater of elevation theory,'

though opposed by Constant Prevost, Scrope, and Lyell, was generally accepted, at least on the Continent. Darwin, however, could not receive it as a valid explanation of the facts; and though he did not share the view of its chief opponents, but ventured to propose a hypothesis of his own, the observations impartially made and described by him in this volume must be regarded as having contributed towards the final solution of the difficulty." Geikie continues (p. 21): "He is one of the earliest writers to recognize the magnitude of the denudation to which even recent geological acc.u.mulations have been subjected. One of the most impressive lessons to be learnt from his account of 'Volcanic Islands'

is the prodigious extent to which they have been denuded.... He was disposed to attribute more of this work to the sea than most geologists would now admit; but he lived himself to modify his original views, and on this subject his latest utterances are quite abreast of the time."

An extract from a letter of my father's to Lyell shows his estimate of his own work. "You have pleased me much by saying that you intend looking through my _Volcanic Islands_: it cost me eighteen months!!! and I have heard of very few who have read it.[112] Now I shall feel, whatever little (and little it is) there is confirmatory of old work, or new, will work its effect and not be lost."

The second edition of the _Journal of Researches_[113] was completed in 1845. It was published by Mr. Murray in the _Colonial and Home Library_, and in this more accessible form soon had a large sale.

_C. D. to Lyell._ Down [July, 1845].

MY DEAR LYELL--I send you the first part[114] of the new edition, which I so entirely owe to you. You will see that I have ventured to dedicate it to you, and I trust that this cannot be disagreeable. I have long wished, not so much for your sake, as for my own feelings of honesty, to acknowledge more plainly than by mere reference, how much I geologically owe you. Those authors, however, who, like you, educate people's minds as well as teach them special facts, can never, I should think, have full justice done them except by posterity, for the mind thus insensibly improved can hardly perceive its own upward ascent. I had intended putting in the present acknowledgment in the third part of my Geology, but its sale is so exceedingly small that I should not have had the satisfaction of thinking that as far as lay in my power I had owned, though imperfectly, my debt. Pray do not think that I am so silly, as to suppose that my dedication can any ways gratify you, except so far as I trust you will receive it, as a most sincere mark of my grat.i.tude and friendship. I think I have improved this edition, especially the second part, which I have just finished. I have added a good deal about the Fuegians, and cut down into half the mercilessly long discussion on climate and glaciers, &c. I do not recollect anything added to the first part, long enough to call your attention to; there is a page of description of a very curious breed of oxen in Banda Oriental.

I should like you to read the few last pages; there is a little discussion on extinction, which will not perhaps strike you as new, though it has so struck me, and has placed in my mind all the difficulties with respect to the causes of extinction, in the same cla.s.s with other difficulties which are generally quite overlooked and undervalued by naturalists; I ought, however, to have made my discussion longer and shown by facts, as I easily could, how steadily every species must be checked in its numbers.

A pleasant notice of the _Journal_ occurs in a letter from Humboldt to Mrs. Austin, dated June 7, 1844[115]:--

"Alas! you have got some one in England whom you do not read--young Darwin, who went with the expedition to the Straits of Magellan. He has succeeded far better than myself with the subject I took up. There are admirable descriptions of tropical nature in his journal, which you do not read because the author is a zoologist, which you imagine to be synonymous with bore. Mr. Darwin has another merit, a very rare one in your country--he has praised me."

_October 1846 to October 1854._

The time between October 1846, and October 1854, was practically given up to working at the Cirripedia (Barnacles); the results were published in two volumes by the Ray Society in 1851 and 1854. His volumes on the Fossil Cirripedes were published by the Palaeontographical Society in 1851 and 1854.

Writing to Sir J. D. Hooker in 1845, my father says: "I hope this next summer to finish my South American Geology,[116] then to get out a little Zoology, and hurrah for my species work...." This pa.s.sage serves to show that he had at this time no intention of making an exhaustive study of the Cirripedes. Indeed it would seem that his original intention was, as I learn from Sir J. D. Hooker, merely to work out one special problem. This is quite in keeping with the following pa.s.sage in the _Autobiography_: "When on the coast of Chile, I found a most curious form, which burrowed into the sh.e.l.ls of Concholepas, and which differed so much from all other Cirripedes that I had to form a new sub-order for its sole reception.... To understand the structure of my new Cirripede I had to examine and dissect many of the common forms; and this gradually led me on to take up the whole group." In later years he seems to have felt some doubt as to the value of these eight years of work--for instance when he wrote in his _Autobiography_--"My work was of considerable use to me, when I had to discuss in the _Origin of Species_ the principles of a natural cla.s.sification. Nevertheless I doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time." Yet I learn from Sir J. D. Hooker that he certainly recognised at the time its value to himself as systematic training. Sir Joseph writes to me: "Your father recognised three stages in his career as a biologist: the mere collector at Cambridge; the collector and observer in the _Beagle_, and for some years afterwards; and the trained naturalist after, and only after the Cirripede work. That he was a thinker all along is true enough, and there is a vast deal in his writings previous to the Cirripedes that a trained naturalist could but emulate.... He often alluded to it as a valued discipline, and added that even the 'hateful' work of digging out synonyms, and of describing, not only improved his methods but opened his eyes to the difficulties and merits of the works of the dullest of cataloguers. One result was that he would never allow a depreciatory remark to pa.s.s unchallenged on the poorest cla.s.s of scientific workers, provided that their work was honest, and good of its kind. I have always regarded it as one of the finest traits of his character,--this generous appreciation of the hod-men of science, and of their labours ... and it was monographing the Barnacles that brought it about."

Mr. Huxley allows me to quote his opinion as to the value of the eight years given to the Cirripedes:--

"In my opinion your sagacious father never did a wiser thing than when he devoted himself to the years of patient toil which the Cirripede-book cost him.

"Like the rest of us, he had no proper training in biological science, and it has always struck me as a remarkable instance of his scientific insight, that he saw the necessity of giving himself such training, and of his courage, that he did not shirk the labour of obtaining it.

"The great danger which besets all men of large speculative faculty, is the temptation to deal with the accepted statements of fact in natural science, as if they were not only correct, but exhaustive; as if they might be dealt with deductively, in the same way as propositions in Euclid may be dealt with. In reality, every such statement, however true it may be, is true only relatively to the means of observation and the point of view of those who have enunciated it. So far it may be depended upon. But whether it will bear every speculative conclusion that may be logically deduced from it, is quite another question.

"Your father was building a vast superstructure upon the foundations furnished by the recognised facts of geological and biological science.

In Physical Geography, in Geology proper, in Geographical Distribution, and in Palaeontology, he had acquired an extensive practical training during the voyage of the _Beagle_. He knew of his own knowledge the way in which the raw materials of these branches of science are acquired, and was therefore a most competent judge of the speculative strain they would bear. That which he needed, after his return to England, was a corresponding acquaintance with Anatomy and Development, and their relation to Taxonomy--and he acquired this by his Cirripede work."

Though he became excessively weary of the work before the end of the eight years, he had much keen enjoyment in the course of it. Thus he wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker (1847?):--"As you say, there is an extraordinary pleasure in pure observation; not but what I suspect the pleasure in this case is rather derived from comparisons forming in one's mind with allied structures. After having been so long employed in writing my old geological observations, it is delightful to use one's eyes and fingers again." It was, in fact, a return to the work which occupied so much of his time when at sea during his voyage. Most of his work was done with the simple dissecting microscope--and it was the need which he found for higher powers that induced him, in 1846, to buy a compound microscope. He wrote to Hooker:--"When I was drawing with L., I was so delighted with the appearance of the objects, especially with their perspective, as seen through the weak powers of a good compound microscope, that I am going to order one; indeed, I often have structures in which the 1/30 is not power enough."

During part of the time covered by the present chapter, my father suffered perhaps more from ill-health than at any other period of his life. He felt severely the depressing influence of these long years of illness; thus as early as 1840 he wrote to Fox: "I am grown a dull, old, spiritless dog to what I used to be. One gets stupider as one grows older I think." It is not wonderful that he should so have written, it is rather to be wondered at that his spirit withstood so great and constant a strain. He wrote to Sir Joseph Hooker in 1845: "You are very kind in your inquiries about my health; I have nothing to say about it, being always much the same, some days better and some worse. I believe I have not had one whole day, or rather night, without my stomach having been greatly disordered, during the last three years, and most days great prostration of strength: thank you for your kindness; many of my friends, I believe, think me a hypochondriac."