Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol 1 | Page 7

and it is a
curious fact, that in after years, when speaking French, he never
stammered. At a very early age he collected specimens of all kinds.
When sixteen years old he was sent for a year to [Christ Church]
Oxford, but he did not like the place, and thought (in the words of his
father) that the 'vigour of his mind languished in the pursuit of classical
elegance like Hercules at the distaff, and sighed to be removed to the
robuster exercise of the medical school of Edinburgh.' He stayed three
years at Edinburgh, working hard at his medical studies, and attending
'with diligence all the sick poor of the parish of Waterleith, and
supplying them with the necessary medicines.' The Aesculapian
Society awarded him its first gold medal for an experimental inquiry on
pus and mucus. Notices of him appeared in various journals; and all the
writers agree about his uncommon energy and abilities. He seems like
his father to have excited the warm affection of his friends. Professor
Andrew Duncan... spoke...about him with the warmest affection
forty-seven years after his death when I was a young medical student at
Edinburgh...
"About the character of his second son, Erasmus (born 1759), I have
little to say, for though he wrote poetry, he seems to have had none of
the other tastes of his father. He had, however, his own peculiar tastes,
viz., genealogy, the collecting of coins, and statistics. When a boy he
counted all the houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out the
number of inhabitants in as many as he could; he thus made a census,
and when a real one was first made, his estimate was found to be nearly
accurate. His disposition was quiet and retiring. My father had a very
high opinion of his abilities, and this was probably just, for he would

not otherwise have been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to,
men so distinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and
Day the moralist and novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, seems to
have taken place in a state of incipient insanity.
Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born May 30, 1766,
and entered the medical profession like his father. He studied for a few
months at Leyden, and took his M.D. (I owe this information to the
kindness of Professor Rauwenhoff, Director of the Archives at Leyden.
He quotes from the catalogue of doctors that "Robertus Waring Darwin,
Anglo- britannus," defended (February 26, 1785) in the Senate a
Dissertation on the coloured images seen after looking at a bright
object, and "Medicinae Doctor creatus est a clar. Paradijs." The
archives of Leyden University are so complete that Professor
Rauwenhoff is able to tell me that my grandfather lived together with a
certain "Petrus Crompton, Anglus," in lodgings in the Apothekersdijk.
Dr. Darwin's Leyden dissertation was published in the 'Philosophical
Transactions,' and my father used to say that the work was in fact due
to Erasmus Darwin.--F.D.) at that University on February 26, 1785.
"His father" (Erasmus) "brought ('Life of Erasmus Darwin,' page 85.)
him to Shrewsbury before he was twenty-one years old (1787), and left
him 20 pounds, saying, 'Let me know when you want more, and I will
send it you.' His uncle, the rector of Elston, afterwards also sent him 20
pounds, and this was the sole pecuniary aid which he ever
received...Erasmus tells Mr. Edgeworth that his son Robert, after being
settled in Shrewsbury for only six months, 'already had between forty
and fifty patients.' By the second year he was in considerable, and ever
afterwards in very large, practice."
Robert Waring Darwin married (April 18, 1796) Susannah, the
daughter of his father's friend, Josiah Wedgwood, of Etruria, then in her
thirty-second year. We have a miniature of her, with a remarkably
sweet and happy face, bearing some resemblance to the portrait by Sir
Joshua Reynolds of her father; a countenance expressive of the gentle
and sympathetic nature which Miss Meteyard ascribes to her. ('A
Group of Englishmen,' by Miss Meteyard, 1871.) She died July 15,
1817, thirty-two years before her husband, whose death occurred on
November 13, 1848. Dr. Darwin lived before his marriage for two or
three years on St. John's Hill; afterwards at the Crescent, where his

eldest daughter Marianne was born; lastly at the "Mount," in the part of
Shrewsbury known as Frankwell, where the other children were born.
This house was built by Dr. Darwin about 1800, it is now in the
possession of Mr. Spencer Phillips, and has undergone but little
alteration. It is a large, plain, square, red-brick house, of which the most
attractive feature is the pretty green-house, opening out of the
morning-room.
The house is charmingly placed, on the top of