NATORE 
593 

THURSDAY, JULY 8, 10915. 


EMMA DARWIN AND HER CIRCLE. 
Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters, 
1792-1896. Edited by her daughter Henrietta 
Litchfield. Vol. 1., pp. xxxi+289. Vol. -il., 
pp- xxv+ 326. (London: John Murray, 1915.) 
Price 21s. net. Two vols. 
“~URIOSITY as to the intimate life of those 
S who have become distinguished is at any 
rate human. It may be that in some cases it 
would be better if the veil were not withdrawn. 
But there is a better reason by which such 
curiosity is justified. We want to know what 
were the conditions under which great person- 
alities have been produced. These remarkable 
volumes will charm by their literary merit. But 
here they invite considerations of a more scientific 
kind. 
They give the history of three notable families 
which intermarried until they formed a sort of 
clan. The Allens were landed gentry of north of 
Ireland origin but settled in Wales; the Wedg- 
woods in Staffordshire and the Darwins in 
Lincolnshire were yeomen who rose in social rank, 
itself a note of racial ability. The relationships 
would be perplexing but for the pedigrees. All 
three strains were united when Charles Darwin 
married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. 
The men had plenty of fibre, sometimes a little 
too fibrous, the women no less charm and vivacity. 
John Allen had nine daughters; the eldest married 
the second Josiah Wedgwood; one Sir James 
Mackintosh, whom Darwin thought an even better 
talker than either Carlyle, Macaulay, or Huxley, 
but whose misfortune was never to have red tape 
to tie up his bills; another was grandmother to 
Georgiana, Lady Salisbury; and still another was 
the wife of Sismondi, the historian. All families 
were well-to-do and “middle-class.” But what a 
class it was; there was nothing like it at the time 
except the aristocracy at Geneva, with whom it 
was in touch through Sismondi and Madame de 
Staél. When Darwin married, a friend wrote: 
“Tt is very like a marriage of Jane Austen’s, can 
I say more?” He could not, for the entire 
atmosphere was that of Jane Austen, wholesome, 
vivacious, intelligent. One of the Allen daughters 
made a penetrating remark & propos of an incident 
at Sydney Smith’s: ‘‘In the gay world they commit 
more offences against the decencies of society 
than in the middle classes.” 
But though well-to-do the middle class of the 
early nineteenth century was simple . and 
unaffected in its mode of life and content with 
intellectual pleasures. With leisure and freedom 
NO. 2384, VOL. 95] 

from anxiety it could turn to science and recruited 
the Royal Society. This swept that body into the 
social life of the day, which is now inevitably 
ebbing away from it. Darwin speculates in a 
letter to a son as to “what makes a man a dis- 
coverer of undiscovered things,” and remarks that 
“many men who are very clever—much cleverer 
than the discoverers—never originate anything.” 
He conjectures that ‘the art consists in habitually 
searching for the causes and meaning of every- 
» Perhaps the explanation lies 
between the inductive and 
deductive temperament. Hereditary aptitude must 
also count for something. The clan was clever 
enough but never failed to throw up originality. 
Tom Wedgwood was ‘the first discoverer of 
photography,” Hensleigh was a mathematician 
and philologist, John with Sir Joseph Banks 
founded the Horticultural Society at Hatchard’s 
shop, Sir Henry Holland and the Galtons were 
cousins. The amateur has been the glory of 
English science; there is now little place for him. 
The ground to be traversed before the fighting 
line is reached is too vast, and each worker must 
be content to ‘nibble’ at his own little section 
with small knowledge of what the rest are doing. 
And so, rather unkindly, Prof. Armstrong 
describes the Royal Society as a “rabble.” 
Science must now be content to be professional, 
if not professorial. In the last century it was not 
so. Leading men of science were in touch with 
one another and the larger life and influenced it. 
It seems strange to read that in 1842 at the 
Atheneum “they have soirées every Monday 
evening, and as all the literary and scientific men 
in London are in the club, they must be very 
pleasant.” 
In the second volume Mrs. Litchfield has given 
a picture of her mother which is a worthy comple- 
ment to that her brother has given us of their 
father. Maria Edgeworth describes her “ radiantly 
cheerful countenance, even now, debarred from 
all London gaieties and all gaiety but that of her 
by close attendance on her sick 
husband.” And the resources of that mind fill 
one with admiration. Some things are told almost 
too sacred for publication, yet one is glad to have 
known them. Two letters which she wrote to 
her husband on religion could not be surpassed 
Darwin wrote on the 
thing that occurs.’ 
in the difference 
own mind 
for courage and affection. 
last, ‘God bless you.” Her literary judgment 
was admirably sound. Of course she knew Jane 
Austen by heart and could give off-hand the 
christian name of Mr. Woodhouse, asked in an 
examination paper, the point being that it can be 
inferred though never stated. 
All sorts of celebrities flash through the pages, 
Wi 
