45

1

Letters from Mr Darwin to me on various subjects — with some explanatory notes.

T H Farrer

August 18[8]2

My first recollections of Mr Darwin are about the years 1850-1860 when I used to meet him occasionally at the houses of his brother Erasmus, and of Mr Hensleigh Wedgewood. One evening at Mr Wedgewood's in Cumberland Terrace Regents Park I remember particularly. It was at the time when the "Origin of Species" was much in men's mouths, and Mr Buckle had, I believe, by his own desire been asked to meet Mr Darwin. There was a pleasant party, Dr Hooker and others. But Mr Buckle somewhat stunned us at dinner with his overwhelming and somewhat mechanical outpour of facts and stories, and I remember how pleasant conversation grew up, like a tender plant, when he made an early move to the drawing room. When we got upstairs, Mr Buckle laid hold of Mr Darwin, dragged him into a corner and began discussing the deepest of problems with him. Meanwhile my wife, Mrs Wedgwood's niece, and a child of the house, began, as was her wont there, to sing, and, as much was always respected in that circle, most people were silent. Mr Darwin very soon contrived to free himself from Mr Buckle and sat down by the piano to listen. Whereupon Mr Buckle, careless of music, ignorant of the ways of the house and of all the relationships between the hostess, Mr Darwin and the singer, walked up to Mrs Wedgwood and said "Mrs Wedgwood, what a very inferior man Charles Darwin is to his book"!

I think that at that time Mr Darwin cared

46

2

more for music than he did in later years. When we went to stay with him at down I remember his great delight in hearing my first wife sing Scotch and German ballads. One I remember he used specially to ask for "Summer's a pleasant time." In later years when I was often at Down with my second wife, his niece, quite as good a singer, he used to come in and listen, for that too was a house in which music was respected but I never thought that he cared very much for it. He used to say that poetry no longer interested him, and I believe that the subjects in which he did so much, occupied his attention, I will not say exclusively, for all matters connected with social and political life he was full of interest, but to the exclusion of many things and subjects. It was an illustration of the general truth, that all men and minds, even the greatest, have their limitations. It is idle to expect any man to be everything; and if a man is very deep on any one subject, he is the less likely to be wide on all others.

In 1868 I amused myself by looking at English orchids with the help of his book published in 1862, and well remember the effect which that book had on me. I had previously been trying to learn something about common flowers with the help of our ordinary botany books, and could echo feelingly Goethe's complaint, much truer in his day than since, that botany was for the most part a mere cataloging and pigeon-holing of specimens. Mr Darwin had remembered to me Asa Gray's lessons in Botany and some other books of the same kind, which gave an insight into

47

3

some general laws of plant life but this book of Mr Darwin's on orchids gave me a quite new kind of feeling about natural history. To be able to follow with my own eyes in one small but curious tribe of plants the peculiar but varied forms: to see how function depends upon and modifies structure: how elaborate and how various are the modes by which, under slightly different circumstances, the same end is reached: to find in these cases an unanswerable illustration of the great fruitful truths that a living forms are constantly varying so as to adapt themselves to varying conditions; that fertility is promoted by the crossing of different individuals; that the vegetable world does not stand alone, but is developed by and aids to develop other creatures; and finally which seems to me the most fruitful generalization of all, that, if we want to learn the raison d'etre of any particular form or function we must try and find out in what way it conduces to the existence and welfare of the creature; all this gave me a quite new insight and interest.

In examining the English orchids one or two trifling points in the book struck me as not absolutely accurate. About these I wrote to Mr Darwin, and the following notes are his replies. It had struck me also that if each creature has its form and functions adapted to its own wants, it was questionable whether it was right to use the word "degradation" of one which might not be quite so specialized as others, even if it had previously been more specialized and had ceased to be so. It had also struck me that the pollinia of Ophrys Muscifera

48

4

and of Peristylus viridis do undergo a movement of depression as they do in others. Mr Darwin's notes are chiefly remarkable for the anxiety with which Mr Darwin accepted any new observations even though at variance with his own and from the most inexperienced observers. He published these and other addenda to his work on Orchids in the Annals and Magazine for Natural History Septr. 1869.

[Darwin. 1869. Notes on the fertilization of orchids. Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Text]

50

In the autumn of 1868 I had amused myself with watching the fertilization and consequent structure fo the Scarlet Runner, which seemed to me as curious as those of orchids, and I sent my notes to Mr Darwin. He characteristically replied that these had engaged his own attention and that he had described them 10 years before, and he sent me his printed notes. But he not only begged me to publish mine but sent them to the Annals and Magazine of Natural History where they appeared on                     1868. The following letters refer to this matter.

[Farrer, Thomas Henry. 1868. On the manner of fertilization of the scarlet runner and blue lobelia. (Publication suggested by Darwin) Annals and Magazine of Natural History 4th ser. 2: 255-63. Text PDF]

52

The following nore was written in answer to a request for some advice as the the best mode of observation.

53

During the summer of 1869 I was much interested in examing some of our most common Papilionaceous flowers with a view to their fertilization, and thought I had found in the adaptations to this object the cause of the monadelphous and diadelphous stamens, as well as other peculiarites in this very interesting tribe. The following are answers to notes from me on this and other subjects.

62

I had continued to amuse myself with the fertilization of papilionaceous flowers and finally sent to Mr Darwin a paper with the results. The following notes upon it will shew the kind interest he shewed and unvarying trouble he took in helping me.

64

I paid him a visit in the autumn of 1872 and he recommended me the following list of books, and lent me several of them.

Given by C. Darwin 1872

De la Fecondation dans les Phanerogames Eugene Fournier.

Untersuchungen uber Nectarien Kurr

Journal of Linnean Societiy Vol IX no. 38

—— della Societ Italiana Vol XI

Fecondazione nelle Piante F. Delpino

Distribuzione dei Sessi &c by Hildebrand

Criticism by Delpino

Dicogama nel Regno Vegetale F. Delpino

Swedish Book

Sprengel.

67

In the beginning of August 1873 he paid us the first of several visits at Abinger, visits to which I always look back with very great pleasure. So long as he was able to talk he was

68

full of cheery conversation; but he always liked to take his strolls alone. He had a great liking for my gardener, Payne, who took a very intelligent interest in Mr Darwin's books. He loved to stroll down to our garden where we had a considerable quantity of herbaceous flowers and always found something to observe. One thing which much interested him was a "Stipa" whose seeds are barbed in such a manner as to work into the ground like a gimlet and hold when these: and the footstalk of which are first bent in such a way as to place the point of the seed against the earth, and in the second place twist and untwist with changes of moisture so as to screw the barbed seed into the soft earth. For many days he had saucers full of earth and strewed with these seeds in his own room watching the operation of burying. Above my house are some low hills, standing up in the valley, below the chalk range on the one hand and the more distance range of Leith Hill on the other, with pretty views of the valley towards Dorking in one direction, and Guildford in the other. They are composed of the less fertile Greensand strata and are covered with fern, broom, gorse and heath. Here it was a particular pleasure of his to wander: and his tall figure, with his broad-brimmed Panama hat, and long stick like an Alpenstock, sauntering solitary and slow over our favourite walks, is one of the pleasantest of the many pleasant associations I have with the place.

On the occasion of this visit he was particularly

73

In 1875 Mrs and Mrs Darwin occupied our house for a time when my wife was absent in Germany at Kreuznach. The following note was in answer to one of mine suggesting some experiments with

74

Drosera, to try whether plants fed with animal matter were more flourishing or more fertile than plants deprived of it.

76

In 1877 we had discovered some remains of a building of Roman British times in a field outside the garden at Abinger. There had been doubts whether Mr and Mrs Darwin would pay us a visit: but on hearing of these remains he at once determined to come — not however for the sake of the antiquities but for the sake of the worms.

He came accordingly in August and spent a great part of the day watching the workmen and suggesting excavations for the purpose of tracing the worms' operations. I promised to watch them after his departure, and wrote to him to tell him that in a certain small bit of concrete floor I had counted as many as 40 holes in which the worms were constantly at work. The following is his reply.

77

I subsequently kept notes of the work done by the worms — effacing or stopping up the holes each day and watching to see which of them had been reopened in the night. These notes I sent to him and the results are embodied in his book on Worms. The follow is his not thanking me for them.

79

In the spring of 1878 I sent him some flowers of a Ledum, full of flies captured by the sticking secretion of the flower, and mentioned the case of Cardamine pratensis which in certain parts of the field before my house always comes double, and also mentioned to great abundance and variety or primroses, cowslips, oxlips and polyanthuses then in flower in my garden, and the way in which they all seem to run into one another. The following is his answer.

80

In 1878 he again came to stay with us at Abinger, but I have no notes of anything that happened.

In the winger of 1878,9 his son Horace was married to my daughter. In the autumn of 1880 he was busy with his book on worms, and we sent him a number of different specimens of brick rubbish, from gravel walks underlaid with brick, and from various other places in which it might be supposed the worms had

81

worked through and swallowed hard materials. The first of the following notes relates to these specimens. The second speaks for itself.

84

[text partially obscured by note pasted on the page:]

…1881 when staying with …recommended to me…as a book which had …him that he was making…author. Ultimately, I …acquaintance with him and … The following, which is…had from him, is in answer …written to him on the subject— …particularly interesting to me, because…his antipathy to pretentions…scientific or otherwise, and also for…on the use of the word chance.

86

I have often regretted that indolence of incapacity have prevented me from taking notes of what I have heard in conversation, and never more than in thinking of the pleasant and genial talks with Mr Darwin. There were subjects on which he