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UNVEILING THE DARWIN STATUE AT THE MUSEUM.

[…]

[Joseph Dalton Hooker¹:]

The Vice-Chancellor of your University has done me the honour of asking me to address you on the occasion of the installation of the statue of the great naturalist which now adorns your museum, and has expressed his opinion that a few personal reminiscences would be more acceptable to you from me than an eloge of Mr. Darwin's researches and discoveries, of which latter indeed an excellent reasoned resume is well known to you as the work of your Hope professor of zoology. In accepting the task of giving personal reminiscences, I am reminded of the fact that narrators of an advanced age are not only proverbially oblivious, but are too often the victims of self-deception in respect of what they think they remember, to which must be added that where a dual personification is attempted the narrator is apt to assume the more prominent position. I have thus many snares to avoid, and must hope for a lenient judgment on what follows.

The fact of our having commenced our scientific careers under very similar conditions favoured the rapid growth of a bond of friendship between Mr. Darwin and myself. We both of us, immediately after leaving our respective Universities, commenced active life as naturalists under the flag of the Royal Navy; he, as a volunteer eight years before me, who was an official. We both sailed round the world, collecting and observing often in the same regions, many of them at that time seldom visited and since made accessible to science by his researches—the Cape Verde Islands, St. Helena, Rio, the Cape of Good Hope, the Falkland Islands, Tierra del Fuego, Tasmania, and New Zealand. On returning to England we both enjoyed the rare advantage of the counsel and encouragement of one of the greatest leaders in science of the time—Mr., afterwards Sir Charles, Lyell. It was through the father of Sir C. Lyell, the translator of the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, and a friend of my father, that I first heard of Mr. Darwin. The "Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of the Beagle" was then passing through the press, and the proof sheets were being submitted to Sir C. Lyell for his information and criticisms. These were passed on to Sir Charles's father, himself a naturalist, who was permitted to lend them to me for perusal, because I was then preparing to accompany Sir James Ross as a naturalist on the Antarctic expedition (1839-43). At that particular time I was engaged upon engrossing hospital duties, and I slept with the proofs under my pillow that I might at once, on awaking, devour their contents. They impressed me profoundly, I may say despairingly, with the genius of the writer, the variety of his acquirements, the keenness of his powers of observation, and the lucidity of his descriptions. To follow in his footsteps, at however great a distance, seemed to be a hopeless aspiration; nevertheless they quickened my enthusiasm in the desire to travel and observe. A copy of the complete work was a parting gift from Mr. Lyell on the eve of my leaving England, and no more instructive and inspiriting work occupied the bookshelf of my narrow quarters throughout the voyage. In the interval I had been introduced to Mr. Darwin, on a casual meeting in Trafalgar-square by a brother officer who had accompanied him in the Beagle to Rio, when I was impressed by his animated expression, heavy beetle brow, mellow voice, and delightfully frank and cordial greeting to his former shipmate. Shortly after the arrival in England of the Antarctic expedition (in 1843) I received from Mr. Darwin a long letter, warmly congratulating me on my return to my family and friends, directing my attention to the importance of correlating the flora of Fuegia with those of the Cordillera and of Europe, and inviting me to study and publish the botanical collections which he had made in the Galapagos Islands, Patagonia, and Fuegia.

This led to an interchange of views on the subject of geographical distribution, followed by an invitation to visit him at what he used to call his inaccessible home at Down, which was then eight or ten miles distant from the nearest railroad station. This I joyfully accepted ; and then commenced that friendship which ripened rapidly into feelings of esteem and reverence for his life, works, and character that were never clouded for one instant during the forty subsequent years of our joint lives. In the admirable biography of his father by my friend, Prof. Frank Darwin, are recorded the subjects, especially botanical and geographical, which were for many years the subjects of conversation and correspondence between us. During the many visits to Down which followed, he laid before me without reserve, not only his vast stores of knowledge, but his mature and immature speculations and theories, describing how they originated, and dwelling on their influence on the progress of his researches. Among these, so long ago as 1844, was his sketch of "The Origin of Species," which I was the first to see of the few friends to whom he ever showed it. At that very early period of my own studies I failed to grasp its full significance, a apropos of which I may mention that I have been reproached for this by friends who have wondered, not only that I did not assimilate it at once, but that I did not apply it to my earliest essays on the distribution of plants. My friends overlooked the fact that the communication was a confidential one, of a hypothesis which its author hoped to establish as a tenable theory by an accumulation of facts in support of it, which he was engaged in collecting with a view to future publication. On the occasions of many other visits it was Mr. Darwin's practice to ask me, shortly after breakfast, to retire with him to his study for twenty minutes or so, when he brought out a long list of questions to put to me on the botanical subjects then engaging his attention. These questions were sometimes answered ofthand, others required consideration, and others a protracted research in the Herbarium or in the gardens at Kew. The answers were written on slips of paper, which were deposited in bags or pockets that hung against the wall within reach of his arm, each of them a receptacle devoted to a special object of inquiry. To me this operation of pumping, as he called it, was most instructive. I could not but feel that any information that I could give him was comparatively trivial, while what I carried away was often as much as I could stagger under. As his health fluctuated or declined, and especially during his sharper attacks of illness, these interviews became intermittent, and on such occasions he would ask me to bring my own work with me to Down, where I pursued my studies free from the distractions of Kew, and with the advantages of his counsel and aid whenever desired. These morning interviews were followed by his taking a complete rest, for they always exhausted him, often producing a buzzing noise in the head, and sometimes what he called "stars in the eyes," the latter too often the prelude of an attack of violent eczema in the head, during which he was hardly recognisable. These attacks were followed by a period of what with him was the nearest approach to health, and always to activity. Shortly before lunch I used to hear his mellow voice under my window, summoning me to walk with him, first to inspect the experiments in his little plant-houses, and then to take a precise number of rounds of the "sand-walk," which he trudged with quick step, staff in hand, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and light shooting coat in summer, and a felt hat and warm cape in winter. This walk was repeated in the afternoon; on both these occasions his conversation was delightful, animated when he was well enough, never depressing however ill he might be. It turned naturally on the scenes we had witnessed in far-away regions and anecdotes of our seafaring lives, and on the discoveries in science, then, as now, hurrying onwards and treading on one another's heels in their haste for recognition. In the evening we had books and music, of which latter Mr. Darwin was, during the first few years of our friendship, almost passionately fond. I well remember now, at the 1847 meeting of the British Association in this city, his asking me to accompany him to hear the organ at New College Chapel, and, on coming away, saying tome, "Hooker, I felt it up and down my back;" and I find in the "Life and Letters" that when a student at Cambridge, after hearing a beautiful anthem, he made use of a similar expression to a friend who had accompanied him. It is a curious fact that music should have had in after life no charm for him—that "it set him thinking too energetically at what he had been at work on instead of giving him pleasure."

If I were asked what traits in Mr. Darwin's character appeared to me most remarkable during the many exercises of his intellect that I was privileged to bear witness to, they would be, first, his self-control and indomitable perseverance under bodily suffering, then his ready grasp of difficult problems, and, lastly, the power of turning to account the waste observations, failures, and even the blunders of his predecessors in whatever subject of inquiry. It was this power of utilising the vain efforts of others which in my friend Sir James Paget's opinion afforded the best evidence of Darwin's genius. Like so many men who have been great discoverers, or whose works or writings are proofs of their having intellects indicating great originality, he was wont to attribute his success to industry rather than ability. "It is dogged that does it"² was an expression he often made use of. In his autobiography he says of himself, "My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of facts"; and, again, "of the complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions which determined my success as a man of science, I regard as the most important the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over many subjects—industry in observing facts, and a fair share of invention, as well as of common sense." In this introspection he has, if my judgment is correct, greatly undervalued "invention"—that is originality or that outcome of the exercise of the imagination which is so conspicuous in every experiment he made or controlled, and in the genesis of every new fact or idea that he first brought to light. Referring to his disregard when possible of his bodily sufferings, I remember his once saying to me that his sleepless nights had their advantages, for they enabled him to forget his hours of misery when recording the movement of his beloved plants from dark to dawn and daybreak. For those other qualities of head and heart that endeared Mr. Darwin to his friends I must refer you to the "Life and Letters." There is only one upon which I would comment, it is that passage of his autobiography where he says, "I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit." Possibly the "of" and "or" are here transposed; whether or no, my impression of his conversation has left the opposite as characteristic of him. It is, at any rate, inconsistent with the fact that in arguing he was ever ready with repartee, as I many times experienced to my discomfiture, though never to my displeasure; it was a physic so thoughtfully and kindly exhibited. And I may conclude these fragmentary records with an anecdote which goes, I think, to support my view, and which I give, if not verbally correctly, as nearly as my memory of so ancient an episode permits. I was describing to him the reception at the Linnean Society, where he was unable to be present, of his now famous account of "The two forms or dimorphic condition of Primula," for which he took the common primrose as an illustration. On that occasion an enthusiastic admirer of its author got up, and in concluding his eloge likened British botanists who had overlooked so conspicuous and beautiful a contrivance to effect cross-fertilisation to Wordsworth's "Peter Bell," to whom

"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

When I told Mr. Darwin of this he roared with laughter, and, slapping his side with his hand, a rather common trick with him when excited, he said, "I would rather be the man who thought of that on the spur of the moment than have written the paper that suggested it."

Professor Raphael Meldola³ said that unfortunately for him his acquaintance with Mr. Darwin was of a very slight character, and only occurred towards the end of his career, when he was in failing health. The reminiscences which he could bring to mind were, therefore, comparatively few, for he had few opportunities of meeting Mr. Darwin. In the first place he would like thoroughly to endorse the feeling which had impressed itself so fairly upon the mind of the distinguished and veteran naturalist who had just spoken, and that was Mr. Darwin certainly did under-estimate his own sense of humour and wit, for upon every occasion when he had the opportunity of conversing with him he certainly did seem to him to be keenly appreciative of wit and humour, and the result of interviews with him was of the character of an inspiration. He never met any man with whom a very short conversation produced such an intense desire to push forward one's own work in order to meet suggestions that had fallen quite unconsciously from Mr. Darwin in the course of conversation. Witty regard to the influence of his work upon science in every direction, this topic had been so well touched upon by the Vice-Chancellor that it was quite unnecessary to dwell further upon that subject. There were many directions in which the teaching of Mr. Darwin had spread quite outside and remote from his own immediate life and work. It was indeed a great privilege to have come in contact with him, and it must always be a source of marvel to those who knew him, how he managed, considering the failing state of his health, to grapple with the endless quantity of work which he had bequeathed for generations yet to come. The little natural history work that he (the speaker) had been enabled to do was entirely inspired by Mr. Darwin, not only by the teaching of his great doctrine which he was bold enough to maintain held the field against any rival doctrines of the origin of species, but also through the watchful care with which Mr. Darwin appeared always to follow the developments of his own ideas in the minds of others. To a busy person like himself, unable to keep pace with the literature of the subject as that time, it was always delightful to receive a short note from Mr. Darwin stating that he though such-and-such a magazine or journal or paper might be worth while reading. His attention in that way was called to many apparently insignificant notes and observations which would otherwise have escaped notice, and on the present occasion it could not be altogether out of place if he stated that it was one such notes as that which led to the introduction of a little biological speculation, and which, in the hands of their distinguished Hope Professor, his friend Professor Poulton, was leading to most important results—(applause). With regard to the moral influence of Mr. Darwin's life and teaching upon modern science he though that what had endeared his memory so much to his disciples, apart from the great truths he proclaimed, was the splendid character of Mr. Darwin as a man—(applause). His splendid magnanimity under attacks, even of the most virulent character, the philosophic calm with which he treated his adversaries and bequeathed to the students of science a lesson which they surely of this country should be proud to carry with them through all generations—(applause).

Professor Tylor⁴ said it fell to him as the humble mouthpiece of the delegates of the Museum to thank those distinguished men of science who had come from a distance to assist in that ceremony, and perhaps he was not a wholly unsuitable person to ask for the rendering of these thanks, being among the now dwindling few who had the privilege of knowing the great man. Nothing could ever exceed the kindness he received from him years ago, when he was first beginning the task of accumulating facts contained on the endless sheets of foolscap paper, and endeavouring to make them tell their own story. To him Darwin was not what he was rapidly becoming to the younger generation, the embodiment of a philosophic idea, but a living person, most genial and kind. The place was vividly presented to his mind where he lived with all the features which had been dilated upon in books. Of the man himself, what impressed one was his immense genius, his transcendent simplicity, his absolute straightforwardness, and that curious want of self-consciousness which was seldom among mankind visible by its absence. As he sat and talked to Darwin the point which occurred to him, and which had never been quite absent from his mind, was what Darwin thought of himself, how far he was thinking of the work that he was doing among mankind. He doubted after watching and listening to him for long whether he himself was ever, or, at least, often objectised in his own thoughts, and yet there must have been a time in his life when gradually coming forward into the first rank of scientific men it must have begun to dawn upon him that he had his hand upon the lever that was to shift the opinions of mankind for generation to come. He thought, to put it concisely, he was a prophet, and a prophet must be intensely interested in his own message, but he doubted whether prophets ever thought much about themselves, and in that sense the great man whose statue was placed in that court below, his face a speaking likeness, would look down and encourage generations of science students of the —(applause).

¹ Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911), leading botanist and one of Darwin's closest friends.

² Darwin often used the expression "It's dogged as does it," taken from Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). See LL 1: 149.

³ Raphael Meldola (1849-1915), a chemist and entomologist.

⁴ Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) was a prominent anthropologist.