Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 · Charles Darwin
LETTERS.
CHARLES DARWIN TO R. FITZ-ROY. Down [March 31st, 1843]. Dear Fitz-Roy, I read yesterday with surprise and the greatest interest, your appointment as Governor of New Zealand. I do not know whether to congratulate you on it, but I am sure I may the Colony, on possessing your zeal and energy. I am most anxious to know whether the report is true, for I cannot bear the thoughts of your leaving the country without seeing you once again; the past is often in my memory, and I feel that I owe to you much bygone enjoyment, and the whole destiny of my life, which (had my health been stronger) would have been one full of satisfaction to me. During the last three months I have never once gone up to London without intending to call in the hopes of seeing Mrs. Fitz-Roy and yourself; but I find, most unfortunately for myself, that the little excitement of breaking out of my most quiet routine so generally knocks me up, that I am able to do scarcely anything when in London, and I have not even been able to attend one evening meeting of the Geological Society. Otherwise, I am very well, as are, thank God, my wife and two children. The extreme retirement of this place suits us all very well, and we enjoy our country life much. But I am writing trifles about myself, when your mind and time must be fully occupied. My object in writing is to beg of you or Mrs. Fitz-Roy to have the kindness to send me one line to say whether it is true, and whether you sail soon. I shall come up next week for one or two days; could you see me for even five minutes, if I called early on Thursday morning, viz. at nine or ten o'clock, or at whatever hour (if you keep early ship hours) you finish your breakfast. Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Fitz-Roy, who I trust is able to look at her long voyage with boldness.
Believe me, dear Fitz-Roy, Your ever truly obliged, CHARLES DARWIN. [A quotation from another letter (1846) to Fitz-Roy may be worth giving, as showing my father's affectionate remembrance of his old Captain. "Farewell, dear Fitz-Roy, I often think of your many acts of kindness to me, and not seldomest on the time, no doubt quite forgotten by you, when, before making Madeira, you came and arranged my hammock with your own hands, and which, as I afterwards heard, brought tears into my father's eyes."] CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. [Down, September 5, 1843.] Monday morning. My dear Fox, When I sent off the glacier paper, I was just going out and so had no time to write. I hope your friend will enjoy (and I wish you were going there with him) his tour as much as I did. It was a kind of geological novel. But your friend must have patience, for he will not get a good GLACIAL EYE for a few days. Murchison and Count Keyserling RUSHED through North Wales the same autumn and could see nothing except the effects of rain trickling over the rocks! I cross-examined Murchison a little, and evidently saw he had looked carefully at nothing. I feel CERTAIN about the glacier-effects in North Wales. Get up your steam, if this weather lasts, and have a ramble in Wales; its glorious scenery must do every one's heart and body good. I wish I had energy to come to Delamere and go with you; but as you observe, you might as well ask St. Paul's. Whenever I give myself a trip, it shall be, I think, to Scotland, to hunt for more parallel roads. My marine theory for these roads was for a time knocked on the head by Agassiz ice-work, but it is now reviving again...
Farewell,--we are getting nearly finished--almost all the workmen gone, and the gravel laying down on the walks. Ave Maria! how the money does go. There are twice as many temptations to extravagance in the country compared with London. Adios. Yours, C. DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1844?]. ...I have also read the 'Vestiges,' ('The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' was published anonymously in 1844, and is confidently believed to have been written by the late Robert Chambers. My father's copy gives signs of having been carefully read, a long list of marked passages being pinned in at the end. One useful lesson he seems to have learned from it. He writes: "The idea of a fish passing into a reptile, monstrous. I will not specify any genealogies--much too little known at present." He refers again to the book in a letter to Fox, February, 1845: "Have you read that strange, unphilosophical but capitally-written book, the 'Vestiges': it has made more talk than any work of late, and has been by some attributed to me--at which I ought to be much flattered and unflattered."), but have been somewhat less amused at it than you appear to have been: the writing and arrangement are certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology far worse. I should be very much obliged, if at any future or leisure time you could tell me on what you ground your doubtful belief in imagination of a mother affecting her offspring. (This refers to the case of a relative of Sir J. Hooker's, who insisted that a mole, which appeared on one of her children, was the effect of fright upon herself on having, before the birth of the child, blotted with sepia a copy of Turner's 'Liber Studiorum' that had been lent to her with special injunctions to be careful.) I have attended to the several statements scattered about, but do not believe in more than accidental coincidences. W. Hunter told my father, then in a lying-in hospital, that in many thousand cases, he had asked the mother, BEFORE HER CONFINEMENT, whether anything had affected her imagination, and recorded the answers; and absolutely not one case came right, though, when the child was anything remarkable, they afterwards made the cap to fit. Reproduction seems governed by such similar laws in the whole animal kingdom, that I am most loth [to believe]...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.M. HERBERT. Down [1844 or 1845]. My dear Herbert, I was very glad to see your handwriting and hear a bit of news about you. Though you cannot come here this autumn, I do hope you and Mrs. Herbert will come in the winter, and we will have lots of talk of old times, and lots of Beethoven. I have little or rather nothing to say about myself; we live like clock-work, and in what most people would consider the dullest possible manner. I have of late been slaving extra hard, to the great discomfiture of wretched digestive organs, at South America, and thank all the fates, I have done three-fourths of it. Writing plain English grows with me more and more difficult, and never attainable. As for your pretending that you will read anything so dull as my pure geological descriptions, lay not such a flattering unction on my soul (On the same subject he wrote to Fitz-Roy: "I have sent my 'South American Geology' to Dover Street, and you will get it, no doubt, in the course of time. You do not know what you threaten when you propose to read it--it is purely geological. I said to my brother, 'You will of course read it,' and his answer was, 'Upon my life, I would sooner even buy it.'") for it is incredible. I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions without undergoing labour of some kind. Geology is at present very oral, and what I here say is to a great extent quite true. But I am giving you a discussion as long as a chapter in the odious book itself.
I have lately been to Shrewsbury, and found my father surprisingly well and cheerful. Believe me, my dear old friend, ever yours, C. DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, Monday [February 10th, 1845]. My dear Hooker, I am much obliged for your very agreeable letter; it was very good-natured, in the midst of your scientific and theatrical dissipation, to think of writing so long a letter to me. I am astonished at your news, and I must condole with you in your PRESENT view of the Professorship (Sir J.D. Hooker was a candidate for the Professorship of Botany at Edinburgh University.), and most heartily deplore it on my own account. There is something so chilling in a separation of so many hundred miles, though we did not see much of each other when nearer. You will hardly believe how deeply I regret for MYSELF your present prospects. I had looked forward to [our] seeing much of each other during our lives. It is a heavy disappointment; and in a mere selfish point of view, as aiding me in my work, your loss is indeed irreparable. But, on the other hand, I cannot doubt that you take at present a desponding, instead of bright, view of your prospects: surely there are great advantages, as well as disadvantages.
The place is one of eminence; and really it appears to me there are so many indifferent workers, and so few readers, that it is a high advantage, in a purely scientific point of view, for a good worker to hold a position which leads others to attend to his work. I forget whether you attended Edinburgh, as a student, but in my time there was a knot of men who were far from being the indifferent and dull listeners which you expect for your audience. Reflect what a satisfaction and honour it would be to MAKE a good botanist--with your disposition you will be to many what Henslow was at Cambridge to me and others, a most kind friend and guide. Then what a fine garden, and how good a Public Library! why, Forbes always regrets the advantages of Edinburgh for work: think of the inestimable advantage of getting within a short walk of those noble rocks and hills and sandy shores near Edinburgh! Indeed, I cannot pity you much, though I pity myself exceedingly in your loss.
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