



Produced by Sue Asscher





THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES DARWIN

From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin

By Charles Darwin

Edited by his Son Francis Darwin



[My father's autobiographical recollections, given in the present
chapter, were written for his children,--and written without any
thought that they would ever be published. To many this may seem an
impossibility; but those who knew my father will understand how it was
not only possible, but natural. The autobiography bears the heading,
'Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character,' and end
with the following note:--"Aug. 3, 1876. This sketch of my life was
begun about May 28th at Hopedene (Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood's house in
Surrey.), and since then I have written for nearly an hour on most
afternoons." It will easily be understood that, in a narrative of a
personal and intimate kind written for his wife and children, passages
should occur which must here be omitted; and I have not thought it
necessary to indicate where such omissions are made. It has been found
necessary to make a few corrections of obvious verbal slips, but the
number of such alterations has been kept down to the minimum.--F.D.]



A German Editor having written to me for an account of the development
of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have
thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest
my children or their children. I know that it would have interested me
greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my
grandfather, written by himself, and what he thought and did, and how he
worked. I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if
I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have
I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no
pains about my style of writing.

I was born at Shrewsbury on February 12th, 1809, and my earliest
recollection goes back only to when I was a few months over four years
old, when we went to near Abergele for sea-bathing, and I recollect some
events and places there with some little distinctness.

My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old,
and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except
her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed
work-table. In the spring of this same year I was sent to a day-school
in Shrewsbury, where I stayed a year. I have been told that I was much
slower in learning than my younger sister Catherine, and I believe that
I was in many ways a naughty boy.

By the time I went to this day-school (Kept by Rev. G. Case, minister of
the Unitarian Chapel in the High Street. Mrs. Darwin was a Unitarian
and attended Mr. Case's chapel, and my father as a little boy went there
with his elder sisters. But both he and his brother were christened and
intended to belong to the Church of England; and after his early boyhood
he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr. Case's. It
appears ("St. James' Gazette", Dec. 15, 1883) that a mural tablet has
been erected to his memory in the chapel, which is now known as the
'Free Christian Church.') my taste for natural history, and more
especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out
the names of plants (Rev. W.A. Leighton, who was a schoolfellow of my
father's at Mr. Case's school, remembers his bringing a flower to school
and saying that his mother had taught him how by looking at the inside
of the blossom the name of the plant could be discovered. Mr. Leighton
goes on, "This greatly roused my attention and curiosity, and I enquired
of him repeatedly how this could be done?"--but his lesson was naturally
enough not transmissible.--F.D.), and collected all sorts of things,
shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting
which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser,
was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or
brother ever had this taste.

One little event during this year has fixed itself very firmly in my
mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having been
afterwards sorely troubled by it; it is curious as showing that
apparently I was interested at this early age in the variability of
plants! I told another little boy (I believe it was Leighton, who
afterwards became a well-known lichenologist and botanist), that I could
produce variously  polyanthuses and primroses by watering them
with certain  fluids, which was of course a monstrous fable, and
had never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little boy
I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this was always
done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once gathered
much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it in the shrubbery,
and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that I had
discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.

I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to the
school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake shop one day,
and bought some cakes for which he did not pay, as the shopman trusted
him. When we came out I asked him why he did not pay for them, and he
instantly answered, "Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great
sum of money to the town on condition that every tradesman should give
whatever was wanted without payment to any one who wore his old hat and
moved [it] in a particular manner?" and he then showed me how it was
moved. He then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked
for some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of
course obtained it without payment. When we came out he said, "Now if
you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well I remember its
exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you can get whatever you
like if you move the hat on your head properly." I gladly accepted the
generous offer, and went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old hat
and was walking out of the shop, when the shopman made a rush at me, so
I dropped the cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being
greeted with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.

I can say in my own favour that I was as a boy humane, but I owed this
entirely to the instruction and example of my sisters. I doubt indeed
whether humanity is a natural or innate quality. I was very fond of
collecting eggs, but I never took more than a single egg out of a bird's
nest, except on one single occasion, when I took all, not for their
value, but from a sort of bravado.

I had a strong taste for angling, and would sit for any number of hours
on the bank of a river or pond watching the float; when at Maer (The
house of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood.) I was told that I could kill the
worms with salt and water, and from that day I never spitted a living
worm, though at the expense probably of some loss of success.

Once as a very little boy whilst at the day school, or before that time,
I acted cruelly, for I beat a puppy, I believe, simply from enjoying
the sense of power; but the beating could not have been severe, for
the puppy did not howl, of which I feel sure, as the spot was near
the house. This act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my
remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed. It probably
