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Christ's College Magazine,

OCTOBER TERM. 1887.

Cambridge

PRINTED FOR THE EDITORS BY

FABB & TYLER "REVIEW" OFFICE.

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Charles Darwin at Christ's.*

ANYTHING relating to Charles Darwin cannot fail to be of interest to every member of our College. Of his eminent position as a man of science, and the universal love felt for him by those who were in any way connected with him, we are justly proud. The appearance of his "Life and Letters" has been hailed with enthusiasm on all sides, and it has been thought by the editors of the College Magazine that this would be a fitting opportunity for showing how warm our admiration of the man is, and how honoured we feel by his connection with us. It will be unnecessary to say much about the work itself. "Edited by his son, Francis Darwin," we are prepared for the fulness of loving detail united with the vividness of an eye-witness which are so easily traceable in all pails of the book. The greater part of the three volumes consists of letters from Darwin to various friends, the earliest of these being dated Sept., 1828, shortly after he had entered at Christ's. But that part of the work round which most interest centres is an autobiography, which was "written for his children,—and written without any thought that it would ever be published." In the present article some of the more interesting references to Darwin's life at Cambridge will be given, and special mention will be made of such passages as throw light upon the state of Christ's at that time.

Almost all references to Cambridge are naturally confined

* The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter, edited by his son, Francis Darwin, in three vols. London: John Murray, 1837.
The present article is not supposed to be a review: the writer's object has been in every case to quote as much as possible from the book itself, and to reduce the connecting remarks to a minimum. Mr. Francis Darwin has been so good as to express his pleasure that such a notice should appear in our College Magazine, and the Editors and Writer here express their warm appreciation of this kindness.

C

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to Vol. I. Ten pages of the autobiography deal exclusively with Cambridge; and Chapter IV., written by the Editor, in twenty pages gives the history of Darwin's University career, together with letters written by him while in residence. From school at Shrewsbury Darwin went to Edinburgh with his brother for the purpose of studying medicine. He did not, however, apply himself to his studies, and he disliked the lectures. He writes, "The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably dull. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at eight o'clock on a winter's morning are something fearful to remember. Dr.— made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the subject disgusted me." "During my second year at Edinburgh I attended —'s lectures on Geology and Zoology, but they were intolerably dull; the sole effect they produced on me was the determination never as long as I lived to read a book on Geology, or in any way to study the Science." "After having spent two sessions at Edinburgh, my father perceived that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should be a clergyman." "As it was decided that I should be a clergyman, it was necessary that I should go to one of the English Universities to take a degree." From these passages we learn that the intention of Darwin on coming to Cambridge was to enter the Church. It might appear that he was disgusted with Science in all its branches, but such was by no means the case. From his earliest boyhood he had been a collector, and at Edinburgh much of his time was spent in scientific work of an amateur character. "I often," he writes, "accompanied Dr. Grant to collect animals in the tidal pools, which I dissected as well as I could. I also became friends with some of the Newhaven fishermen, and sometimes accompanied them when they trawled for oysters, and thus got many specimens. But from not having had regular practice in dissection, and from possessing only a

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wretched microscope, my attempts were very poor. Nevertheless I made an interesting little discovery, and read about the beginning of the year 1826 a short paper on the subject before the Plinian Society. This was that the so-called ova of Flustra had the power of independent movement by means of cilia, and were in fact larvae."

We shall now quote some passages from Chapter IV., which, with the exception of the letters, is the work of the editor. "It appears from the College books that my father 'admissus est pensionarius minor sub magistro Shaw' on Oct. 15, 1827. He did not come into residence till the Lent Term, 1828, so that, although he passed his examination in due season, he was unable to take his degree at the usual time—the beginning of the Lent Term, 1831." Accordingly Darwin did not go down till two terms after passing his examination, taking his degree and leaving the University at the end of the May Term, 1831. "He kept for a term or two in lodgings, over Bacon, the tobacconist's: not, however, over the shop in the Market Place, now so well known to Cambridge men, but in Sidney Street. For the rest of his time he had pleasant rooms in the south side of the first Court of Christ's." "The rooms are on the first floor, on the west side of the middle staircase, and a medallion (given by my brother) has recently been let into the wall of the sitting-room."

What determined the choice of this college for his brother Erasmus and himself I have no means of knowing. Erasmus the elder, their grandfather, had been at St. John's, and this college might have been reasonably selected for them, being connected with Shrewsbury School. But the life of an undergraduate at St. John's seems, in those days, to have been a troubled one, if I may judge from the fact that a relative of mine migrated thence to Christ's to escape the harassing discipline of the place."

"My father seems to have had no difficulty in living at

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peace with all men in and out of office at Lady Margaret's other foundation. The impression of a contemporary of my father's is that Christ's in their day was a pleasant, fairly quiet college, with some tendency towards 'horsiness;' many of the men made a custom of going to Newmarket during the races, though betting was not a regular practice. In this they were by no means discouraged by the Senior Tutor, Mr. Shaw, who was himself generally to be seen on the Heath on these occasions. There was a somewhat high proportion of Fellow Commoners—eight or nine to sixty or seventy Pensioners, and this would indicate that it was not an unpleasant college for men with money to spend and with no great love of strict discipline."

"The way in which the service was conducted in chapel shows that the Dean, at least, was not over-zealous. I have heard my father tell how at evening chapel the Dean used to read alternate verses of the Psalms, without making even a pretence of waiting for the congregation to take their share. And when the lesson was a lengthy one he would rise and go on with the Canticles after the Scholars had read fifteen or twenty verses."

With regard to the manner in which Darwin impressed men as an undergraduate, we have the testimony of one of his college friends given many years after. "I doubt not," writes Mr. Herbert, "that all his surviving college friends would concur with me, that he was the most genial, warmhearted, generous, and affectionate of friends: that his sympathies were all that was good and true; and that he had a cordial hatred for everything false or vile or cruel or mean or dishonourable. He was not only great, but preeminently good, and just and loveable."

"His old college friends," writes the editor, "agree in speaking with affectionate warmth of his pleasant, genial temper as a young man. From what they have been able to tell me, I gain the impression of a young man overflow-

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ing with animal spirits, leading a varied healthy life, not over industrious in the set studies of the place, but full of other pursuits, which were followed with a rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, riding, shooting in the fens, suppers, and card-playing, music at King's Chapel, engravings at the Fitzwilliaim Museum, walks with Professor Henslow, all combined to fill up a happy life."

To show what a passion he had for shooting, the following extract from his autobiography will suffice:— "How well I remember killing my first snipe, and my excitement was so great that I had much difficulty in reloading my gun from the trembling of my hands. This taste long continued, and I became a very good shot. When at Cambridge I used to practise throwing up my gun to my shoulder before a looking-glass to see that I threw it up straight. Another and a better plan was to get a friend to wave about a lighted candle, and then to fire at it with a cap on the nipple, and if the aim was accurate the little puff of air would blow out the candle. The explosion of the cap caused a sharp crack, and I was told that the tutor of the College remarked, 'What an extraordinary thing it is that Mr. Darwin seems to spend hours in cracking a horsewhip in his rooms, for I often hear the crack when I pass under his windows.'"

We have seen indications of Darwin's love of natural history at Edinburgh. At Cambridge this developed into a passion for entomology, and this pursuit seems to have been as fascinating to Darwin as it is to certain members of this College to-day. He writes: "No pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly, so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day on tearing off some old bark I saw two rare beetles,

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and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid which burnt my tongue, so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one."

"He seems to have affected others with his enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert relates how during a summer at Barmouth he was pressed into the service of 'the science,' as Darwin called collecting beetles.… 'On these occasions (their daily walks) Darwin entomologized most industriously, picking up creatures as he walked along, and bagging everything which seemed worthy of being pursued or of further examination. And very soon he armed me with a bottle of alcohol in which I had to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common kind. I performed this duty with some diligence in my constitutional walks; but alas! my powers of discrimination seldom enabled me to secure a prize; the usual result, on his examining the contents of my bottle, being an exclamation, 'Well, old Cherbury' (the nickname he gave me and by which he usually addressed me), none of these will do.'"

Darwin had a great love of music, which he followed up with his usual enthusiasm. He writes, "I also got into a musical set, I believe by means of my warm-hearted friend Herbert, who took a high Wrangler's degree. From associating with these men, and hearing them play, I acquired a strong taste for music, and used very often to time my walks so as to hear on weekdays the anthem in King's College Chapel. This gave me intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes shiver. I am sure that there was no affectation or mere imitation in this taste, for I used generally to go by myself to King's College, and sometimes hired the chorister boys to sing in my rooms. Nevertheless, I am so utterly destitute of an ear, that I cannot perceive a discord,

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or keep time and hum a tune correctly; and it is a mystery how I could possibly have derived pleasure from music. My musical friends soon perceived my state, and sometimes amused themselves by making me pass an examination, which consisted in ascertaining how many tunes I could recognise when they were played rather more quickly or slowly than usual. 'God Save the King,' when thus played, was a sore puzzle. There was another man with almost as bad an ear as I had, and, strange to say, he played a little on the flute. Once I had the triumph of beating him in one of our musical examinations."

Besides his love of music, we learn that Darwin had a taste for pictures and good engravings, in the study of which he spent much time in the Fitzwilliam Museum. When his son William came up to Christ's, by good fortune he obtained the rooms formerly occupied by Darwin, and we learn that the engravings which Darwin had purchased while up here were handed over to his son, and a second time hung on the walls of the old rooms.

"He became intimate with Henslow, the Professor of Botany, and through him with some other older members of the University. 'But' Mr. Herbert writes, 'he always kept up the closest connection with the friends of his own standing; and at our frequent social gatherings—at breakfast, wine, or supper parties—he was ever one of the most cheerful, the most popular, and the most welcome.'" "My father," writes the editor, "formed one of a club for dining once a week, called the Gourmet Club, the members, besides himself and Mr. Herbert, being Whitley, of St. John's; Heaviside, of Sidney; Lovett Cameron, of Trinity; Blane, of Trinity; Lowe, of Trinity Hall; and Watkins, of Emmanuel. The origin of the club's name seems already to have become involved in obscurity. Mr. Herbert says that it was chosen in derision of another set of men, who called themselves by a long Gfeek name signifying 'fond of dainties,' but who falsified

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their claim to such a designation by their weekly practice of dining at some roadside inn six miles from Cambridge on mutton chops or beans and bacon. Another old member of the club tells me that the name arose because the members were given to making experiments on 'birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate.' He says that hawk and bittern were tried, and that their zeal broke down over an old brown owl, 'which was indescribable.' At any rate the meetings seem to have been successful, and to have ended with a game of mild vingt-et-un."

From such passages as those just quoted it will be readily imagined that Darwin did not get on very well with his colledge studies. At Shrewsbury School the head master, Dr. Butler, was a classic, and the instruction was almost entirely classical. Darwin considered himself singularly incapable of mastering a language at any time of his life. "He learnt German simply by hammering away with a dictionary; he would say that his only way was to read a sentence a great many times over, and at last the meaning occurred to him. When he began German long ago he boasted of the fact (as he used to tell) to Sir J. Hooker, who replied, 'Ah, my dear fellow, that's nothing; I've begun many times.'" The verse-making, to which especial attention was devoted at his school, was effected by the assistance of many friends. Darwin thus "got together a good collection of old verses, which, by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, he could work into any subject." At Cambridge the subjects were little more to his taste. "During the three years I spent at Cambridge," he writes, "my time was wasted, as far as academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh or at school. I attempted mathematics;… the work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps of Algebra.… With respect to Classics, I did nothing except attend a few compulsory College lectures, and the attendance was almost

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nominal. In my second year I had to work for a month or two to pass the Little-Go, which I did easily. Again, in my last year, I worked with some earnestness for my final degree of B.A. … In order to pass the B.A. Examination it was also necessary to get up Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy.' This was done in a thorough manner, and I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course in the clear language of Paley… The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. By answering well the examination questions in Paley, by doing Euclid well, and by not failing miserably in Classics, I gained a good place among the οί πυλλοì or crowd of men who do not go in for honours" (10th in the list of Jan., 1831).

Considering the time he spent in other things, one wonders how Darwin managed so easily to pass his examinations. It is probable that when he felt it his duty to do so, he gave up for the time being his other pursuits, and transferred his energy, if not his enthusiasm, in the new direction. It appears that the standard of the Little-Go was raised just before Darwin was examined. In a letter to Fox (his cousin and close friend, who was also a Christ's man), he writes: "Graham smiled and bowed so very civilly, when he told me that he was one of the six appointed to make the examination stricter, and that they were determined this would make it a very different thing from any previous examination, that from all this I am sure it will be the very devil to pay amongst all idle men and entomologists."

His pleasure at passing may be gauged from the following: "My dear Fox, I am through the Little-Go!!! I am too much exalted to humble myself by apologizing for not

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having written before. But I assure you, before I went in, and when my nerves were in a shattered and weak condition, your injured person often rose before my eyes and taunted me with my idleness. But I am through, through, through. I could write the whole sheet full with this delightful word.… The whole examination is carried on in a different system. It has one great advantage—being over in one day. They are rather strict, and ask a wonderful number of questions."

This was in March, 1830. On November 5, of the same year, we find Darwin again in dire distress; this time preparing for his final examination. In a letter to Fox, he says: "I have so little time at present, and am so disgusted by reading, that I have not the heart to write to anybody. I have only written once home since I came up. … I have not stuck an insect this term, and scarcely opened a case.… Reading makes me quite desperate; the plague of getting up all my subjects is next thing to intolerable."

The last letter in Chapter IV. of the first vol. was written immediately after the lists were published. "I do not know why the degree should make one so miserable both before and afterwards. I recollect you were sufficiently wretched before, and I can assure you I am now, and, what makes it the more ridiculous is, I know not what about. I believe it is a beautiful provision of nature to make one regret the less leaving so pleasant a place as Cambridge.… As for Christ's, did you ever see such a college for producing captains and apostles?" (Editor notes "The Captain" is at the head of the "Poll;" the "Apostles" the last twelve in the Mathematical Tripos).

When we look at the sad effect produced on Darwin's nerves by Little-Go and Final Examinations, we cannot help congratulating the world that there was in those days no Natural Science Tripos. Although there is no reason to suppose that Darwin would in any case have read for honours, yet the tendency to specialize which accompanies the Tripos might have done him harm. He was

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well able to specialize when there was need for it, but it was not agreeable to him, and without doubt his best work has been such as could not be produced by a man who confined his sympathies to two or three branches of Natural Science. While at Cambridge his health was good; and although in his autobiography he seems to look on his time as a good deal wasted, we cannot help thinking that the full enjoyment of a young man's powers of mind and body is the best preparation for every kind of life. On the other hand, the tendency at the present day towards the abnormal development of the mind in certain directions must lead to a corresponding atrophy of powers the importance of which we younger men often fail to realize.

The editor in one of the passages quoted is at a loss to account for the choice of Christ's as the college for the Darwin brothers. The reason why John's was not chosen seems pretty evident, as at that time John's was in no way alluring to young men who had means and who loved freedom. Without supposing that we have solved the mystery, we may perhaps be allowed to quote from a curious' little work published in 1825, and very probably in the height of its popularity just at the time when Darwin turned his thoughts to Cambridge. It is entitled "Facetiae Cantabrigienses," and although in many respects a very poor affair, cannot fail to be of interest, as reflecting on the state of society in Cambridge at that time, and the state of feeling regarding the different colleges. In a chapter devoted to Cambridge parties, a fashionable breakfast is described, and specimens of the conversation given. "At the upper end of the table, occasionally interrupted by the vociferations of the lower, or by the pressing instances of our host to eat, the merits of the different colleges were discussed—the laxity of some—the discipline of others—the comparative strictness of lecturers or easiness of deans.

The conclusion seemed to be that Trinity might do very well for those humdrums who patronized learning, but that indisputably, Christ's was, in general, the sort of thing for a college. The mild and dignified urbanity of its master—the good fellowship of its fellows—the gay and gentlemanly character of the undergraduates—all received their due praise."

C. A. B.