Evolution, Old & New Part 13

Of his first marriage the following account is given:--

"In 1757 he married Miss Howard, of the Close of Lichfield, a blooming and lovely young lady of eighteen.... Mrs. Darwin's own mind, by nature so well endowed, strengthened and expanded in the friends.h.i.+p, conversation, and confidence of so beloved a preceptor. But alas! upon her too early youth, and too delicate const.i.tution, the frequency of her maternal situation, during the first five years of her marriage, had probably a baneful effect. The potent skill and a.s.siduous cares of _him_ before whom disease daily vanished from the frame of _others_, could not expel it radically from that of her he loved. It was, however, kept at bay during thirteen years.

"Upon the distinguished happiness of those years she spoke with fervour to two intimate female friends in the last week of her existence, which closed at the latter end of the summer 1770. 'Do not weep for my impending fate,' said the dying angel with a smile of unaffected cheerfulness. 'In the short term of my life a great deal of happiness has been comprised. The maladies of my frame were peculiar; those of my head and stomach which no medicine could eradicate, were spasmodic and violent; and required stronger measures to render them supportable while they lasted than my const.i.tution could sustain without injury. The periods of exemption from those pains were frequently of several days'

duration, and in my intermissions I felt no indications of malady. Pain taught me the value of ease, and I enjoyed it with a glow of spirit, seldom, perhaps, felt by the habitually healthy. While Dr. Darwin combated and a.s.suaged my disease from time to time, his indulgence to all my wishes, his active desire to see me amused and happy, proved incessant. His house, as you know, has ever been the resort of people of science and merit. If, from my husband's great and extensive practice, I had much less of his society than I wished, yet the conversation of his friends, and of my own, was ever ready to enliven the hours of his absence. As occasional malady made me doubly enjoy health, so did those frequent absences give a zest even to delight, when I could be indulged with his company. My three boys have ever been docile and affectionate.

Children as they are, I could trust them with important secrets, so sacred do they hold every promise they make. They scorn deceit and falsehood of every kind, and have less selfishness than generally belongs to childhood. Married to any other man, I do not suppose I could have lived a third part of the years which I have pa.s.sed with Dr.

Darwin; he has prolonged my days, and he has blessed them.'

"Thus died this superior woman, in the bloom of life, sincerely regretted by all who knew how to value her excellence, and _pa.s.sionately_ regretted by the selected few whom she honoured with her personal and confidential friends.h.i.+p."[143]

I find Miss Seward's pages so fascinating, that I am in danger of following her even in those parts of her work which have no bearing on Dr. Darwin. I must, however, pa.s.s over her account of Mr. Edgeworth and of his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' "which, by wise parents, is put into every youthful hand," but the description of Mr. Day's portrait cannot be omitted.

"In the course of the year 1770, Mr. Day stood for a full-length picture to Mr. Wright, of Derby. A strong likeness and a dignified portrait were the result. Drawn in the open air, the surrounding sky is tempestuous, lurid, dark. He stands leaning his left arm against a column inscribed to Hambden (_sic_). Mr. Day looks upwards, as enthusiastically meditating on the contents of a book held in his dropped right hand. The open leaf is the oration of that virtuous patriot in the senate, against the grant of s.h.i.+p money, demanded by King Charles I. A flash of lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the volume. The poetic fancy and what were _then_ the politics of the original, appear in the choice of subject and att.i.tude. Dr. Darwin sat to Mr. Wright about the same period. _That_ was a simply contemplative portrait, of the most perfect resemblance."[144]

"In the year 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front upon the back of the horse, by means of a kind of proboscis which, forming an arch, reached over the hind-quarters of the horse, and pa.s.sed through a ring, placed on an upright piece of iron, which worked in a socket fixed in the saddle. The horse could thus move from one side of the road to the other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the driver, whose constant attention was necessarily employed to regulate a piece of machinery contrived, but _not well_ contrived, for that purpose."

I cannot help the reader to understand the foregoing description. "From this whimsical carriage, however, the doctor was several times thrown, and the last time he used it had the misfortune, from a similar accident, to break the patella of his right knee, which caused, as it must always cause, an incurable weakness in the fractured part, and a lameness not very discernible, indeed, when walking on even ground."[145]

Miss Seward presently tells a story which reads as though it might have been told by Plutarch of some Greek or Roman sage. Much as we must approve of Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be agreed that a few more such stories would have been cheaply purchased by a corresponding number of lapses on the doctor's part.

Miss Seward writes:--

"Since these memoirs commenced, an odd anecdote of Dr. Darwin's early residence at Lichfield, was narrated to a friend of the author by a gentleman, who was of the party in which it happened. Mr. Sneyd, then of Bishton, and a few more gentlemen of Staffords.h.i.+re, prevailed upon the doctor to join them in an expedition by water from Burton to Nottingham, and on to Newark. They had cold provisions on board, and plenty of wine.

It was midsummer; the day ardent and sultry. The noon-tide meal had been made, and the gla.s.s had gone gaily round. It was one of those _few_ instances in which the medical votary of the Naiads transgressed his general and strict sobriety," in which, in fact, he may be said to have--remembered himself.

"If not absolutely intoxicated, his spirits were in a high state of vinous exhilaration. On the boat approaching Nottingham, within the distance of a few fields, he surprised his companions by stepping, without any previous notice, from the boat into the middle of the river, and swimming to sh.o.r.e. They saw him get upon the bank, and walk coolly over the meadows towards the town: they called to him in vain, but he did not once turn his head.

"Anxious lest he should take a dangerous cold by remaining in his wet clothes, and uncertain whether or not he intended to desert the party, they rowed instantly to the town at which they had not designed to have touched, and went in search of their river-G.o.d.

"In pa.s.sing through the market-place they saw him standing upon a tub, encircled by a crowd of people, and resisting the entreaties of an apothecary of the place, one of his old acquaintances, who was importuning him to his house, and to accept other raiments till his own could be dried.

"The party on pressing through the crowd were surprised to hear him speaking without any degree of his usual stammer:--'Have I not told you, my friend, that I had drank a considerable quant.i.ty of wine before I committed myself to the river. You know my general sobriety, and as a professional man you _ought_ to know that the _unusual_ existence of internal stimulus would, in its effects upon the system, counteract the _external_ cold and moisture.'"

"Then perceiving his companions near him, he nodded, smiled, and waived his hand, as enjoining them silence, thus, without hesitation, addressing the populace:--

"'Ye men of Nottingham, listen to me. You are ingenious and industrious mechanics. By your industry life's comforts are procured for yourselves and families. If you lose your health the power of being industrious will forsake you. _That_ you know, but you may _not_ know that to breathe fresh and changed air constantly, is not less necessary to preserve health than sobriety itself. Air becomes unwholesome in a few hours if the windows are shut. Open those of your sleeping rooms whenever you quit them to go to your workshops. Keep the windows of your workshops open whenever the weather is not insupportably cold. I have no _interest_ in giving you this advice; remember what I, your countryman and a physician, tell you. If you would not bring infection and disease upon yourselves, and to your wives and little ones, change the air you breathe, change it many times a day, by opening your windows.'

"So saying, he stepped down from the tub, and, returning with his party to their boat, they pursued their voyage."[146]

Could any missionary be more perfectly sober and sensible, or more alive to the immorality of trying to effect too sudden a modification in the organisms he was endeavouring to influence? If the men of Nottingham want a statue in their market-place, I would respectfully suggest that a subject is here afforded them.

"Dr. Johnson was several times at Lichfield on visits to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his daughter-in-law, while Dr. Darwin was one of the inhabitants. They had one or two interviews, but never afterwards sought each other. Mutual and strong dislike subsisted between them. It is curious that in Johnson's various letters to Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs.

Piozzi, published by that lady after his death, many of them dated from Lichfield, the name of Darwin cannot be found, nor, indeed, that of any of the ingenious and lettered people who lived there; while of its mere common-life characters there is frequent mention, with many hints of Lichfield's intellectual barrenness, while it could boast a Darwin and other men of cla.s.sical learning, poetic talents, and liberal information."[147]

Here there follows a pleasant sketch of the princ.i.p.al Lichfield notabilities, which I am compelled to omit.

"_These_ were the men," exclaims Miss Seward, "whose intellectual existence pa.s.sed unnoticed by Dr. Johnson in his depreciating estimate of Lichfield talents. But Johnson liked only _wors.h.i.+ppers_. Archdeacon Vyse, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Robinson paid all the respect and attention to Dr. Johnson, on these his visits to their town, due to his great abilities, his high reputation, and to whatever was estimable in his _mixed_ character; but they were not in the herd that 'paged his heels,'

and sunk in servile silence under the force of his dogmas, when their hearts and their judgments bore _contrary_ testimony.

"Certainly, however, it was an arduous hazard to the feelings of the company to oppose in the slightest degree Dr. Johnson's opinions. His stentor lungs; that combination of wit, humour, and eloquence, which 'could make the _worse_ appear the _better_ reason,' that sarcastic contempt of his antagonist, never suppressed or even softened by the due restraints of good breeding, were sufficient to close the lips in his presence, of men who could have met him in fair argument, on _any_ ground, literary or political, moral or characteristic.

"Where Dr. Johnson was, Dr. Darwin had no chance of being heard, though at least his equal in genius, his superior in science; nor, indeed, from his impeded utterance, in the company of any overbearing declaimer; and he was too intellectually great to be an humble listener to Johnson.

Therefore he shunned him on having experienced what manner of man he was. The surly dictator felt the mortification, and revenged it by _affecting_ to avow his disdain of powers too distinguished to be objects of _genuine_ scorn.

"Dr. Darwin, in his turn, was not much more just to Dr. Johnson's genius. He uniformly spoke of him in terms which, had they been deserved, would have justified Churchill's 'immane Pomposo' as an appellation of _scorn_; since if his person was huge, and his manners pompous and violent, so were his talents vast and powerful, in a degree from which only prejudice and resentment could withhold respect.

"Though Dr. Darwin's hesitation in speaking precluded his flow of colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of that conciser quality, _wit_. Of satiric wit he possessed a very peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr.

Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason, glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather _perceived_ than _felt_, exciting surprise more than mirth, and never awakening the pained sense of being the object of its ridicule. That unique in humorous verse, the Long Story, is a complete and beautiful specimen of Gray's singular vein.

"Darwinian wit is not more easy to be defined; instances will best convey an idea of its character to those who never conversed with its possessor.

"Dr. Darwin was conversing with a brother botanist concerning the plant kalmia, then a just imported stranger in our greenhouses and gardens. A lady who was present, concluding he had seen it, which in fact he had not, asked the doctor what were the colours of the plant. He replied, 'Madam, the kalmia has precisely the colours of a seraph's wing.' So fancifully did he express his want of consciousness concerning the appearance of a flower, whose name and rareness were all he knew of the matter.

"Dr. Darwin had a large company at tea. His servant announced a stranger, lady and gentleman. The female was a conspicuous figure, ruddy, corpulent, and tall. She held by the arm a little, meek-looking, pale, effeminate man, who, from his close adherence to the side of the lady, seemed to consider himself as under her protection.

"'Dr. Darwin, I seek you not as a physician, but as a _Belle Esprit_. I make this husband of mine,' and she looked down with a side glance upon the animal, 'treat me every summer with a tour through one of the British counties, to explore whatever it contains worth the attention of ingenious people. On arriving at the several inns in our route I always search out the man of the vicinity most distinguished for his genius and taste, and introduce myself, that he may direct as the objects of our examination, whatever is curious in nature, art, or science. Lichfield will be our headquarters during several days. Come, doctor, whither must we go; what must we investigate to-morrow, and the next day, and the next? Here are my tablets and pencil.'

"'You arrive, madam, at a fortunate juncture. To-morrow you will have an opportunity of surveying an annual exhibition perfectly worthy your attention. To-morrow, madam, you will go to Tutbury bull-running.'

"The satiric laugh with which he stammered out the last word more keenly pointed this sly, yet broad rebuke to the vanity and arrogance of her speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they would break under her so suddenly, and with so little mercy. Her large features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger--'I was recommended to a man of genius, and I find him insolent and ill-bred.' Then, gathering up her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted out of the room.

"After the departure of this curious couple, his guests told their host he had been very unmerciful. 'I chose,' replied he, 'to avenge the cause of the little man, whose nothingness was so ostentatiously displayed by his lady-wife. Her vanity has had a smart emetic. If it abates the symptoms, she will have reason to thank her physician who administered without hope of a fee.'"[148]

"In the spring of 1778 the children of Colonel and Mrs. Pole of Radburn, in Derbys.h.i.+re, had been injured by a dangerous quant.i.ty of the cicuta, injudiciously administered to them in the hooping-cough by a physician of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Pole brought them to the house of Dr. Darwin in Lichfield, remaining with them there a few weeks, till by his art the poison was expelled from their const.i.tutions and their health restored.

"Mrs. Pole was then in the full bloom of her youth and beauty. Agreeable features; the glow of health; a fine form, tall and graceful; playful sprightliness of manner; a benevolent heart, and maternal affection, in all its unwearied cares and touching tenderness, contributed to inspire Dr. Darwin's admiration, and to secure his esteem."[149]

"In the autumn of this year" (1778) "Mrs. Pole of Radburn was taken ill; her disorder a violent fever. Dr. Darwin was called in, and never perhaps since the death of Mrs. Darwin, prescribed with such deep anxiety. Not being requested to continue in the house during the ensuing night, which he apprehended might prove critical, he pa.s.sed the remaining hours till day-dawn beneath a tree opposite her apartment, watching the pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing lights in the chamber. During the period in which a life so pa.s.sionately valued was in danger, he paraphrased Petrarch's celebrated sonnet, narrating a dream whose prophecy was accomplished by the death of Laura. It took place the night on which the vision arose amid his slumber. Dr. Darwin extended the thought of that sonnet into the following elegy:--

"Dread dream, that, hovering in the midnight air, Clasp'd with thy dusky wing my aching head, While to imagination's startled ear Toll'd the slow bell, for bright Eliza dead.

"Stretched on her sable bier, the grave beside, A snow-white shroud her breathless bosom bound, O'er her wan brow the mimic lace was tied, And loves and virtues hung their garlands round.

"From those cold lips did softest accents flow?

Round that pale mouth did sweetest dimples play?

On this dull cheek the rose of beauty blow, And those dim eyes diffuse celestial day?

"Did this cold hand, unasking Want relieve, Or wake the lyre to every rapturous sound?

How sad for other's woe this breast would heave!

How light this heart for other's transport bound!

"Beats not the bell again?--Heavens, do I wake?

Why heave my sighs, why gush my tears anew?

Unreal forms my trembling doubts mistake, And frantic sorrow fears the vision true.