DR. R. W. DARWIN. 9 



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 sym- 

 pathetic nature which Miss Meteyard ascribes to her.f 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 under- 

 gone 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 a steep bank 

 leading down to the Severn. The terraced bank is traversed 

 by a long walk, leading from end to end, still called "the 

 Doctor's Walk." At one point in this walk grows a Spanish 

 chestnut, the branches of which bend back parallel to them- 

 selves in a curious manner, and this was Charles Darwin's 



* The statement that Dr. R. W. Darwin that he got 1000 under 



Darwin received no pecuniary as- his mother's settlement, and ^4 



sistance beyond 20 from his father, from his aunt, Susannah Darwin, 

 and a like sum from his uncle, is t ! A. Group of Englishmen/ by 



incorrect. It appears from papers Miss Meteyard, 1871. 

 in the possession of Mr. Reginald 



