Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1Darwin, Charles
History
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
Another favourite place was "Orchis Bank," above the quiet Cudham
valley, where fly- and musk-orchis grew among the junipers, and
Cephalanthera and Neottia under the beech boughs; the little wood
"Hangrove," just above this, he was also fond of, and here I remember
his collecting grasses, when he took a fancy to make out the names of
all the common kinds. He was fond of quoting the saying of one of his
little boys, who, having found a grass that his father had not seen
before, had it laid by his own plate during dinner, remarking, "I are an
extraordinary grass-finder!"
My father much enjoyed wandering slowly in the garden with my mother or
some of his children, or making one of a party, sitting out on a bench
on the lawn; he generally sat, however, on the grass, and I remember him
often lying under one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green
mound at its foot. In dry summer weather, when we often sat out, the
big fly-wheel of the well was commonly heard spinning round, and so the
sound became associated with those pleasant days. He used to like to
watch us playing at lawn-tennis, and often knocked up a stray ball for
us with the curved handle of his stick. === Though he took no personal
share in the management of the garden, he had great delight in the
beauty of flowers--for instance, in the mass of Azaleas which generally
stood in the drawing-room. I think he sometimes fused together his
admiration of the structure of a flower and of its intrinsic beauty;
for instance, in the case of the big pendulous pink and white flowers
of Dielytra. In the same way he had an affection, half-artistic,
half-botanical, for the little blue Lobelia. In admiring flowers, he
would often laugh at the dingy high-art colours, and contrast them with
the bright tints of nature. I used to like to hear him admire the beauty
of a flower; it was a kind of gratitude to the flower itself, and a
personal love for its delicate form and colour. I seem to remember
him gently touching a flower he delighted in; it was the same simple
admiration that a child might have.
He could not help personifying natural things. This feeling came out in
abuse as well as in praise--e.g. of some seedlings--"The little
beggars are doing just what I don't want them to." He would speak in a
half-provoked, half-admiring way of the ingenuity of a Mimosa leaf in
screwing itself out of a basin of water in which he had tried to fix
it. One must see the same spirit in his way of speaking of Sundew,
earth-worms, etc. (Cf. Leslie Stephen's 'Swift,' 1882, page 200, where
Swift's inspection of the manners and customs of servants are compared
to my father's observations on worms, "The difference is," says Mr.
Stephen, "that Darwin had none but kindly feelings for worms.")
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account