Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/78

 had ever seen before, or ever expect to see again.’

 DARWIN, CHARLES ROBERT (1809–1882), naturalist, born 12 Feb. 1809, at 'The Mount,' Shrewsbury, was the son of Robert Waring Darwin and grandson of [q. v.] Robert Waring Darwin, married, in 1796, Susannah, daughter of his father's friend, Josiah Wedgwood, and the youngest but one of her six children was Charles Robert Darwin. She died in 1817, when Darwin was eight years old, so that his education as a child fell in great measure into the hands of his elder sisters. He had no distinct remembrance of his mother, chiefly (as he has said) some childish memories of 'her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table.'

Darwin retained to the end of his life a vivid and affectionate remembrance of his home, a feeling which was fostered by his strong love and reverence for his father's memory. It was a sentiment which could nor fail to strike any one intimate with him, and was manifested by frequent allusions to his father, or reference to long-remembered opinions of his.

Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848) was a man of strongly marked character. He had no pretensions to being a man of science, no tendency to generalise his knowledge, and, though a successful physician, he was glided rather by intuition and everyday observation than by a deep knowledge of his subject. According to the opinion of his son, his chief mental characteristics were a keen power of observation and a knowledge of men, qualities which led him to 'read the characters and even the thoughts of those whom he saw even for a short time.' It is not, therefore, surprising that his help should have been sought, not merely in illness, but in cases of family trouble and sorrow. This was largely the case, and his wise sympathy, no less than his medical skill, obtained for him a strong influence over the lives of a large number of people. He was a man of quick, vivid temperament, with a lively interest in even the smaller details in the lives of those with whom he came in contact. He was fond of society, and entertained a good deal, and with his large practice and many friends the life at Shrewsbury must have been a full, stirring, and varied one, very different in this respect from the later home of his son at Down.

The chief knowledge we have of Darwin's childhood is gained from his own recollections, and judging from these he seems to have been a simple, docile, and happy child, with the somewhat unusual liking for long solitary walks. He has recorded the fact (curious in the development of so truth-loving a nature) that he was, as a little boy, prone to invent startling adventures for the sake of creating an impression, a disposition which was wisely treated, not by punishment, but by withholding the coveted expression of surprise.

In 1817 he went to a day-school kept by Mr. Case, the minister of the unitarian chapel, where, as a boy, he attended service. In the summer of 1818 he entered as a boarder at Shrewsbury school under Dr. Butler. Here the teaching was kept within the narrowest possible classical lines, and according to his own estimation the only education that he got during his boyhood was from some private lessons in Euclid and from working at chemistry in an amateur laboratory fitted up by his brother in the tool-house at home. This latter study met with disapproval and even public reproof from his schoolmaster. At this time his chief taste was that love of collecting which afterwards made him an ardent coleopterist, but which was now manifested in getting together such miscellaneous things as franks, seals, coins, minerals, &c. He has described the zeal with which, as a boy and young man, he gave himself up to shooting, a passion which only gradually faded before his stronger delight in unravelling the geology of an unknown country.

It was intended that he should follow his father's profession of medicine, and accordingly he left school somewhat early, and in 1825 joined his brother Erasmus at Edinburgh University. Here, as at school, and afterwards at Cambridge, he profited but little from the set studies of the place. The study of medicine at Edinburgh failed to attract him, although previously he had been interested by the care of a few patients, whom he attended under his father's guidance among the poor of Shrewsbury. Anatomy disgusted him, the operating theatre ('before the blessed days of chloroform') horrified him, and 'Materia Medica' left on his