16 LIFE OF 



success as a physician, for it impressed his patients with 

 belief in him ; and my father used to say that the art of 

 gaining confidence was the chief element in a doctor's 

 worldly success." 



Sensitive, sociable, a good talker, high-spirited and 

 somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his 

 friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the 

 friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who 

 were needy, pre-eminent for sympathy, which for a time 

 made him hate his profession for the constant suffering 

 it brought before his eyes such was Charles Darwin's 

 father. Miss Meteyard, in her " Group of Englishmen," 

 1871, gives a vivid picture of the old doctor, his acknow- 

 ledged supremacy in Shrewsbury, his untiring activity and 

 ubiquity, his great dinner parties, his liberal and rather 

 unpopular opinions, tolerated for the sake of his success 

 in curing his patients. His face, powerful, unimpassioned, 

 mild, and thoughtful, was always the same as he rolled 

 through the streets and lanes, for he sat "as though 

 carved in stone." His love of children was marked. 

 " He would address them in his small, high-pitched 

 falsetto voice, and if their answers pleased him he would 

 reply ; and occasionally, lifting them on to a chair or table, 

 he would measure their heads with his broad hand, as 

 though reading character, and mentally prognosticating 

 their future fate." 



The successful doctor bought a piece of land near the 

 Holyhead road, and built on it a large square house, of 

 plain architecture, which from its charming position, a 

 hundred feet above the Severn, received the name of 



