CHAPTER VI.

DR. ROBERT WARING DARWIN.

ONE cannot but form a very vivid picture of Mr. Darwin's father, if one will only add to those of the son, the relative words of Miss Meteyard, which occur in her remarkable book, A Group of Englishmen. Mr. Francis Darwin is a little too sensitive, perhaps, as to some of the characteristics recorded there of his grandfather. For Miss Meteyard to say, "Like his father (Erasmus), he (Dr. R. W.) was a great feeder," for example, "eating a goose for his dinner, as easily as other men do a partridge "that, it would seem, he (Mr. Francis) is disposed to deny. Those who were intimate with his grandfather, he assures us, "describe him as eating remarkably little, so that he was not a great feeder, eating a goose for his dinner, as easily as other men do a partridge." Otherwise, too, it would appear that Miss Meteyard, in her account of Dr. Darwin, " is not quite accurate." "It is incorrect," for example, "to describe Dr. Darwin as having a philosophical mind; his was a mind especially given to detail, and not to generalising." Again, " in the matter of dress he was conservative, and wore to the end of his life knee-breeches and drab gaiters; which, however, certainly did not, as Miss Meteyard says, button above the knee." Philosophical is a very loose word in English: I fancy

any exercise of mind whatever, if beyond mere need, may be called by us, like some things of glass, and wood, and metal, "philosophical." Why, then, should not the mind of a man such as Dr. Darwin, who "loved plants," who, according to his illustrious son, formed a theory for almost everything which occurred," who "was the most acute observer" he ever saw, and who was just on the whole the wisest man he ever knew "--why should not the mind of such a man," a highly successful physician," have been described as philosophical? Possibly, in the event of such a compliment, in other circumstances, to his grandfather, Mr. Francis Darwin would not always be minded to be equally fastidious. On the buttons Miss Meteyard is, no doubt, wrong. But, with regard to the goose, it may not be unfair to bear in mind the outdoor habits of Dr. Darwin, as well as the fact that he was, practically, a total abstainer, and could never have had his appetite debauched by alcohol in any form or in any quantity. Nay, when we add to these considerations this, that he is represented by his own son, Charles, as the largest man he ever saw," "about six feet two inches in height, with broad shoulders, and very corpulent," "twenty-four stone in weight, when last weighed, but afterwards much heavier "-may not we, too, be excused in seeing a certain relevance in the imputed feat, if not as a fact, then as a joke?

It would appear, on the whole, then, that there cannot be much that is serious said, even so far as "the few points" are concerned, against Miss Meteyard's statements. She describes the man externally very much as the son does. "Dr. Erasmus Darwin of Lichfield and Derby," she says, "was cast in a gigantic mould; his son (Dr. R. W.) in a still greater." Burly and farmer-looking, he wore invariably a snuff-coloured cloth suit-coat, waistcoat, and breeches all of a piece. There were lappets to

his waistcoat pockets, and wide cuffs to his sleeves. He had a conspicuous shirt-frill, with a manyfolded necktie of soft lawn equally ample. He bore a ponderous watch-chain; and there were gaiters to his extremities. As he grew in bulk and weight, visiting involved a preliminary problem: he could no longer undertake any and all houses as a matter of course; bare entrance was not always possible for him, the doors were not everywhere wide enough, and he could not always trust himself to the staircase; it was really a chance that the flooring might give way beneath him. In these circumstancs the services of a special footman, by way of a spy or scout for preparatory inspection and investigation, became a necessity for him. Such bulk and its trial, by attracting attention, could, as his father, Erasmus, might have said, only prove of advantage to him in his practice. Here, too, like his father before him, he was lucky in his start: he disagreed with the eminent Withering from Birmingham-proved right— and wrote a pamphlet. So, success as a practitioner was his from the outset. Of patients, some were awed by his peremptory commands, others amused by his comic sayings; and all were won by his kindness. An opinion prevailed that he was avaricious of fees; but, if true, he was in many respects a man of untiring and unostentatious benevolence. He was remarkable, too, for his love of children. It pleased him to talk with them in his small, high-pitched, falsetto voice. Miss Meteyard says that he had his father's taste for mechanical inventions: he made a design of his own for a lamp. It is her statement also that he took almost as much interest as his father in botany and zoology; as well as that he, too, made a fine place of his residence, the "Mount."

Born in 1766, he died in 1848, having continued

his practice till within a year of that date, when in a few months he would have been eighty-three. He took his degree before he was nineteen, and, with £20 from his father, and afterwards as much from an uncle, he went into practice at Shrewsbury when he was not yet twenty-one.1 In his thirtieth year he married, then in her thirty-second, Susannah, the daughter of Josiah Wedgewood of Etruria. She was a sweet, gentle, sympathetic, happy-natured woman, who died after twenty-one years of married life, having brought her husband a dowry of £25,000, to which more was afterwards added on deaths of relatives. It is Charles who tells it us, and we are not unprepared to hear it, that his father was a cautious and good man of business, so that he hardly ever lost money by an investment, and left to his children a very large property. Most men who save, it is not unlikely, are decidedly averse to withdraw a single corn (or coin) from the growing heap till, by death, they have left it, so far as they are concerned, summed: it is an engaging proof of the perfect health and sweetness of the man that, as a father, he (Dr. R. W.) grudged not one single break upon the solid whole, did it but avail to profit his children. His son Erasmus studied medicine without intention to practise; and Charles, who even at sixteen knew a competency behind him, tells such a tale, with respect to Shrewsbury, Edinburgh, Cambridge, the Beagle, settlement in marriage, etc., as proves his father's unstinted liberality to himself in money matters, although "I never imagined," he adds, "that I should be so rich a man as I am." Happy the children who are born into the single animation of such true family concrete!

1 It is the son (Charles) tells of these two twenty pounds to his father. The grandson (Mr. Francis) calls the statement "incorrect,” as £1000 fell to him under his mother's settlement, and he got £400 from an aunt. The question, however, is when?

He, this good father, was "clever but heretical," says Miss Meteyard; and then she describes his look, just as though giving shape to the substance and material which we have sketched. "He had," she says, "a powerful, unimpassioned, mild and thoughtful face." Fancy it powerful, unimpassioned, mild-above the huge, snuff-coloured frame! Was it wonderful in Charles the full, deep, ever-abiding love he gave this man? "His reverence for him was boundless: he would have wished to judge everything else in the world dispassionately, but anything his father had said was received almost with implicit faith." As a rule he put small faith in doctors;" but, for instinct, skill, treatment, his belief in his father was unlimited." It was astonishing how he remembered his father's opinions, and was able to quote some hint of his in most cases of illness. He hated at first his profession, Charles said ; with the smallest pittance to live on, or if he had been given any choice, nothing should have induced him to follow it. To the end of his life the thought of an operation sickened him, and he could scarcely endure to see a person bled-a horror which he transmitted to his Old Erasmus was made of sterner stuff; he could not get enough of the lancet!

son.

Per

It is characteristic of the son, what he tells of a little rasp between his father and himself. He, Charles, when a boy, was not remarkable for aptitude at school. fectly well-conditioned by nature, his interest lay with living things without, and not with dead vocables within. He was immensely fond of shooting, too. So, on these showings, it seems, his father, in a moment of ill-humour, burst out upon him in this way: "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family!" This, "to my deep mortification," says Charles, " my father once said to