Turtle Reader

Table of Relationship. (An incomplete list of family members.)

• Robert Darwin of Elston, 1682-1754, had three sons, William Alvey Darwin, 1726-1783, Robert Waring Darwin, 1724-1816, and Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802.
• William Alvey Darwin, 1726-1783, had a son, William Brown Darwin, 1774-1841, and a daughter, Anne Darwin.
• William Brown Darwin, 1774-1841, had two daughters, Charlotte Darwin and Sarah Darwin.
• Charlotte Darwin married Francis Rhodes, now Francis Darwin of Creskeld and Elston.
• Sarah Darwin married Edward Noel.
• Anne Darwin married Samuel Fox and had a son, William Darwin Fox.
• Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, married (1) Mary Howard, 1740-1770, with whom he had two sons, Charles Darwin, 1758-1778, and Robert Waring Darwin, and (2) Eliz. Chandos-Pole, 1747-1832, with whom he had a daughter, Violetta Darwin, and a son, Francis Sacheverel Darwin.
• Robert Waring Darwin, 1767-1848, married Susannah Wedgwood and had a son, Charles Robert Darwin, b. February 12, 1809, d. April 19, 1882.
• Violetta Darwin married Samuel Tertius Galton and had a son, Francis Galton.
• Francis Sacheverel Darwin, 1786-1859, had two sons, Reginald Darwin and Edward Darwin, “High Elms.”

The table above shows Charles Darwin’s descent from Robert, and his relationship to some other members of the family, whose names occur in his correspondence. Among these are included William Darwin Fox, one of his earliest correspondents, and Francis Galton, with whom he maintained a warm friendship for many years. Here also occurs the name of Francis Sacheverel Darwin, who inherited a love of natural history from Erasmus, and transmitted it to his son Edward Darwin, author (under the name of “High Elms”) of a ‘Gamekeeper’s Manual’ (4th Edition 1863), which shows keen observation of the habits of various animals.

It is always interesting to see how far a man’s personal characteristics can be traced in his forefathers. Charles Darwin inherited the tall stature, but not the bulky figure of Erasmus; but in his features there is no traceable resemblance to those of his grandfather. Nor, it appears, had Erasmus the love of exercise and of field-sports, so characteristic of Charles Darwin as a young man, though he had, like his grandson, an indomitable love of hard mental work. Benevolence and sympathy with others, and a great personal charm of manner, were common to the two. Charles Darwin possessed, in the highest degree, that “vividness of imagination” of which he speaks as strongly characteristic of Erasmus, and as leading “to his overpowering tendency to theorise and generalise.” This tendency, in the case of Charles Darwin, was fully kept in check by the determination to test his theories to the utmost. Erasmus had a strong love of all kinds of mechanism, for which Charles Darwin had no taste. Neither had Charles Darwin the literary temperament which made Erasmus a poet as well as a philosopher. He writes of Erasmus (‘Life of Erasmus Darwin,’ page 68.): “Throughout his letters I have been struck with his indifference to fame, and the complete absence of all signs of any over-estimation of his own abilities, or of the success of his works.” These, indeed, seem indications of traits most strikingly prominent in his own character. Yet we get no evidence in Erasmus of the intense modesty and simplicity that marked Charles Darwin’s whole nature. But by the quick bursts of anger provoked in Erasmus, at the sight of any inhumanity or injustice, we are again reminded of him.

On the whole, however, it seems to me that we do not know enough of the essential personal tone of Erasmus Darwin’s character to attempt more than a superficial comparison; and I am left with an impression that, in spite of many resemblances, the two men were of a different type. It has been shown that Miss Seward and Mrs. Schimmelpenninck have misrepresented Erasmus Darwin’s character. (Ibid., pages 77, 79, etc.) It is, however, extremely probable that the faults which they exaggerate were to some extent characteristic of the man; and this leads me to think that Erasmus had a certain acerbity or severity of temper which did not exist in his grandson.

The sons of Erasmus Darwin inherited in some degree his intellectual tastes, for Charles Darwin writes of them as follows:

“His eldest son, Charles (born September 3, 1758), was a young man of extraordinary promise, but died (May 15, 1778) before he was twenty-one years old, from the effects of a wound received whilst dissecting the brain of a child. He inherited from his father a strong taste for various branches of science, for writing verses, and for mechanics…He also inherited stammering. With the hope of curing him, his father sent him to France, when about eight years old (1766-’67), with a private tutor, thinking that if he was not allowed to speak English for a time, the habit of stammering might be lost; and it is a curious fact, that in after years, when speaking French, he never stammered. At a very early age he collected specimens of all kinds. When sixteen years old he was sent for a year to [Christ Church] Oxford, but he did not like the place, and thought (in the words of his father) that the ‘vigour of his mind languished in the pursuit of classical elegance like Hercules at the distaff, and sighed to be removed to the robuster exercise of the medical school of Edinburgh.’ He stayed three years at Edinburgh, working hard at his medical studies, and attending ‘with diligence all the sick poor of the parish of Waterleith, and supplying them with the necessary medicines.’ The Aesculapian Society awarded him its first gold medal for an experimental inquiry on pus and mucus. Notices of him appeared in various journals; and all the writers agree about his uncommon energy and abilities. He seems like his father to have excited the warm affection of his friends. Professor Andrew Duncan… spoke…about him with the warmest affection forty-seven years after his death when I was a young medical student at Edinburgh…

“About the character of his second son, Erasmus (born 1759), I have little to say, for though he wrote poetry, he seems to have had none of the other tastes of his father. He had, however, his own peculiar tastes, viz., genealogy, the collecting of coins, and statistics. When a boy he counted all the houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out the number of inhabitants in as many as he could; he thus made a census, and when a real one was first made, his estimate was found to be nearly accurate. His disposition was quiet and retiring. My father had a very high opinion of his abilities, and this was probably just, for he would not otherwise have been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to, men so distinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day the moralist and novelist.” His death by suicide, in 1799, seems to have taken place in a state of incipient insanity.

Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born May 30, 1766, and entered the medical profession like his father. He studied for a few months at Leyden, and took his M.D. (I owe this information to the kindness of Professor Rauwenhoff, Director of the Archives at Leyden. He quotes from the catalogue of doctors that “Robertus Waring Darwin, Anglo-britannus,” defended (February 26, 1785) in the Senate a Dissertation on the coloured images seen after looking at a bright object, and “Medicinae Doctor creatus est a clar. Paradijs.” The archives of Leyden University are so complete that Professor Rauwenhoff is able to tell me that my grandfather lived together with a certain “Petrus Crompton, Anglus,” in lodgings in the Apothekersdijk. Dr. Darwin’s Leyden dissertation was published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ and my father used to say that the work was in fact due to Erasmus Darwin.–F.D.) at that University on February 26, 1785. “His father” (Erasmus) “brought (‘Life of Erasmus Darwin,’ page 85.) him to Shrewsbury before he was twenty-one years old (1787), and left him 20 pounds, saying, ‘Let me know when you want more, and I will send it you.’ His uncle, the rector of Elston, afterwards also sent him 20 pounds, and this was the sole pecuniary aid which he ever received…Erasmus tells Mr. Edgeworth that his son Robert, after being settled in Shrewsbury for only six months, ‘already had between forty and fifty patients.’ By the second year he was in considerable, and ever afterwards in very large, practice.”