Early Life | Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

“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 deathbed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed worktable. 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.

[…]

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.

[…]

When I left the school, I was for my age neither high nor low in it; and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification my father once said to me, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat- catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words.”

Excerpted from Charles Darwin by Darwin, Francis Ed.|Publication date 1902 

Online at https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.93228

Image: Charles Darwin and sister Catherine

Credit: Credit: Charles Darwin and sister Catherine. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) / https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hq6sfjgf