why every gentleman was not an ornithologist’. It was telling that he used the word
gentleman because as he entered his teens he would have understood that, because of
the accumulated wealth of the Darwin and Wedgwood families, he would never need
to work for a living.
Dr Robert Darwin sent his son to Edinburgh at the age of sixteen to study medicine
in the hope that he would become a doctor like himself, but it soon became evident
that Charles was never going to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.
Long before the age of anaesthetics, Charles Darwin found the gruesome realities
of nineteenth-century medicine particularly upsetting. As part of his course he was
required to attend the operating theatre in the hospital at Edinburgh. He was so horrified
that he had to leave the building and quickly decided he could never become doctor.
Fortunately, Edinburgh University was the leading centre in Britain for both
medicine and science. Unable to admit his aversion to medicine to his father, Darwin
took chemistry, natural history and geology classes. He became interested in observing
soft-bodied marine organisms collected in Leith harbour and made his first scientific
discovery when he found that under the microscope the ‘ova’ of a gelatinous sea-
mat were not eggs at all but free-swimming larvae. At the end of his university year
Darwin had to come home and explain to his father that he had given up his medical
studies. Apart from his interest in natural history he enjoyed shooting and hunting
more than anything else and his father was furious, writing: ‘You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your
family’.
Even though he would never have to work for a living, Charles’ father insisted
his son prepare for a career. The Army, Navy or the Law were out of the question,
but scattered across England were numerous country parsons who spent their idle
hours collecting and studying the natural world around them. His father decided
Charles should leave Edinburgh for an education at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
There he would read for an ‘ordinary degree’, a syllabus of mathematics, theology,
and classical works which was the usual starting point for taking Holy Orders in the
Anglican Church. Many clergy devoted themselves to natural history because it filled
in their time in a quiet country parish and they believed that a study of the natural
world would bring them to a closer understanding of God – the Creator of all things.
An appointment to the right parish might be perfect for Charles, allowing him to shoot
with the gentry, ride with the local hunt, then botanize and geologize to his heart’s
content between the Sunday services. Darwin’s inspiration was perhaps the Reverend
Gilbert White, the author of the popular book The Natural History and Antiquities of
Selbourne, who had recorded the plants, birds and animals of a small country parish
in Hampshire. This interest in both religion and natural history was best expressed by
Sir Francis Bacon when he wrote:
Charles Darwin – The Early Years 55