'I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life ...'
Sharon Messenger is Research Officer at The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. In 1999 she completed a PhD on middle class women’s lives between the wars at Liverpool University. She co-edited with Michael Neve (also at the Wellcome Trust Centre) Charles Darwin’s Autobiographies for Penguin Classics. They are now both working on an edition of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, also for Penguin Classics.
‘I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life …’
Few lives have attracted as much interest or stimulated as much debate as the life of Charles Darwin, one of the greatest figures of nineteenth-century science. Darwin’s name has become synonymous with the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The interest in his autobiographical reflections is, therefore, not surprising. Nor is it new. His son Francis published the first edition of his autobiography in 1887. A second edition, edited by his great granddaughter Nora Barlow, appeared in 1958. Both of these editions were heavily edited. In the new Penguin Classics edition the editors have restored the previously edited material (largely on the question of religion) and have tried to be as faithful as possible to the original manuscript held in Cambridge University Library.
One wonders what Charles Darwin would have thought about seeing his autobiography published in Penguin Classics for a mass audience. His reflections were personal and he did not want anyone outside his immediate family to read them. This wish was made clear to a German colleague, Julius Victor Carus in 1879.
Darwin’s memoir provides insights into his scientific career and public achievements. Modest in tone, he sees his achievements as being the result of his determination and hard work. Much is learnt of his relationships with his contemporaries. His dislike of Spencer, his close friendship with Hooker and his uneasy relationship with Lyell are all found in the pages of the autobiography. But its central purpose was that it should be a family memoir, a memoir that Darwin thought "might possibly interest my children or their children." (p. 6)
What I have found most fascinating about the autobiography, however, is the space that Darwin gives to describing and analysing his familial relationships. Through these pages one learns a great deal about Darwin’s childhood and his early family relationships as well as the later adult relationships within his own household.
Darwin was setting down his personal recollections at a time when he was anxious about his own family and its future. At the time of writing he had no grandchildren and one suspects that this was a source of both unhappiness and anxiety for him. Darwin was well aware of the effects of heredity and had legitimate worries. He had married his own cousin – Emma Wedgwood - and had genuine concerns about the implications of this close marriage. He was also a sick man. His life was plagued with illnesses of one kind or another. Naturally he worried that he could have passed these traits onto his children. Darwin was known to have confided to his close friends, notably Fox, his fears of ‘hereditary weakness’ and it was with these concerns in mind that Darwin felt the need to reflect upon his own life for the benefit of his children.
Its is clear that Darwin had not had an easy relationship with his father. This may be interpreted as a typical Victorian middle-class father/son relationship, but Dr Darwin had ambitions for his son, ambitions that were never realised as Darwin refused a career in the church. He began medical school but could not stomach the experience and wrote in the autobiography: "It disgusts me!" Darwin was polite but frank about his father’s character. In a deservedly much-quoted sentence, his father once said to him, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." (p. 10)
Darwin was only eight years old when his mother died and he remembered very little of her. Writing in the autobiography he recalled:
I recollect my mother’s gown & scarcely anything of her appearance. Except for one or two walks with her I have no distinct remembrance of any conversations, & those only of very trivial nature. (Fragment, p. 2)
The results of this episode on his later life are not reflected upon in the autobiography other than with sadness and the long-term effects of this are probably best left to psychological accounts of Darwin’s life.
One of the central themes to be found in the family relationships described by Darwin is his relationship with his wife Emma Wedgwood. He married Emma in 1839, and in describing her he writes:
You all know well your Mother, and what a good Mother she has ever been to all of you. She has been my greatest blessing, and I can declare that in my whole life I have never heard her utter one word which I had rather have been unsaid. (p. 56)
Despite the fact that Emma was a deeply religious woman who could never reconcile herself to her husband’s ideas of evolution, the bond between them could not be broken. Although a source of great unhappiness for both of them, their conflicting beliefs did not completely destroy their deep affection for one another. Their closeness is further highlighted when he describes her as "my wise adviser and cheerful comforter throughout life, which without her would have been ... a very long miserable one from ill-health." (p. 56) Theirs was a happy and companionable marriage.
Darwin was a family man and he was also a man of considerable means. As a result he could spend much time at home with his children and be a devoted father. Stereotypes of busy, absent and uncaring Victorian fathers abound, but the history of the middle-class Victorian family also yields many counter-examples, of which Darwin is certainly one. His strength of family feeling is fully evident in the following passage:
I have indeed been most happy in my family, and I must say to you my children that not one of you has ever given me one minute’s anxiety, except on the score of health. There are, I suspect, very few fathers of five sons who could say this with entire truth. When you were very young it was my delight to play with you all, and I think with a sigh that such days can never return ... From your earliest days to now that you are grown up, you have all, sons and daughters, ever been most pleasant, sympathetic and affectionate to us and to one another." (p.56)
This passage evokes a harmonious household and Darwin was clearly proud of his fatherly role in producing happy and well-adjusted children. Although his children often provided material for Darwin’s own scientific observations, his interest in them went far beyond this. He was not a father who spent his days always locked away in his study or pottering alone in his greenhouse, seeing his children only for a few minutes each day. Life at Down was family oriented. Darwin wanted to disengage himself from the hurly-burly of London life and the home and garden were at the centre of his universe. He had fond memories of spending time with his children and his lament in the autobiography that ‘such days can never return’ emphasises his regrets at the passage of time. However, as the children grow older it is clearly one of Darwin’s greatest pleasures to have his family gathered around him:
When all or most of you are at home (as, thank Heavens happens pretty frequently) no party can be, according to my taste, more agreeable, and I wish for no other society. (p.56-7)
The closeness of the Darwin family and Darwin’s fondness for his children is further highlighted by the tragedy of his daughter Annie’s death. Annie was, as Darwin once confessed, one of his favourites and remained the ‘apple of her father’s eye.’ Her death at the age of ten hit the whole family hard, but it seemed to have brought particular and lasting distress to Darwin who writes ‘tears still sometimes come into my eyes, when I think of her sweet ways’ (p. 57). And again, Annie’s early death added to his fears of ‘hereditary weakness.’
Darwin’s fears were obviously never far from his mind as he penned his reflections on his life and the autobiography provides insights into ways in which his scientific preoccupations complicated his assessment of his personal life. The autobiography offers a unique and intimate glimpse of the private life of the public man. His memoirs allow us to peep inside the walls of Down House and we see that Darwin’s family was central to his life. Darwin is usually remembered for being Darwin the scientist or Darwin the naturalist. Through the pages of the autobiography another Darwin emerges: Darwin the doting husband and Darwin the caring father.
Related titles:
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology
Return to features homepage
|
