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
He had a printed form to be used in replying to troublesome
correspondents, but he hardly ever used it; I suppose he never found an
occasion that seemed exactly suitable. I remember an occasion on which
it might have been used with advantage. He received a letter from a
stranger stating that the writer had undertaken to uphold Evolution at
a debating society, and that being a busy young man, without time for
reading, he wished to have a sketch of my father's views. Even this
wonderful young man got a civil answer, though I think he did not get
much material for his speech. His rule was to thank the donors of books,
but not of pamphlets. He sometimes expressed surprise that so few people
thanked him for his books which he gave away liberally; the letters that
he did receive gave him much pleasure, because he habitually formed so
humble an estimate of the value of all his works, that he was generally
surprised at the interest which they excited.
In money and business matters he was remarkably careful and exact. He
kept accounts with great care, classifying them, and balancing at the
end of the year like a merchant. I remember the quick way in which
he would reach out for his account-book to enter each cheque paid, as
though he were in a hurry to get it entered before he had forgotten it.
His father must have allowed him to believe that he would be poorer than
he really was, for some of the difficulty experienced in finding a house
in the country must have arisen from the modest sum he felt prepared to
give. Yet he knew, of course, that he would be in easy circumstances,
for in his 'Recollections' he mentions this as one of the reasons for
his not having worked at medicine with so much zeal as he would have
done if he had been obliged to gain his living.
He had a pet economy in paper, but it was rather a hobby than a real
economy. All the blank sheets of letters received were kept in a
portfolio to be used in making notes; it was his respect for paper that
made him write so much on the backs of his old MS., and in this way,
unfortunately, he destroyed large parts of the original MS. of his
books. His feeling about paper extended to waste paper, and he objected,
half in fun, to the careless custom of throwing a spill into the fire
after it had been used for lighting a candle.
My father was wonderfully liberal and generous to all his children in
the matter of money, and I have special cause to remember his kindness
when I think of the way in which he paid some Cambridge debts of
mine--making it almost seem a virtue in me to have told him of them.
In his later years he had the kind and generous plan of dividing his
surplus at the year's end among his children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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