Volume 1
The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin.
- Charles Darwin
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The life and letters of Charles Darwin : including an autobiographical chapter / edited by his son, Francis Darwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![the most profuse thanks, and enclosing, as he said, a £20 Bank of England note, but no note was enclosed. I asked my father whether this did not stagger him, but he answered ‘not in the least.’ On the next day another letter came with many apologies for having forgotten (like a true Irish man) to put the note into his letter of the day before. . . . [A gentleman] brought his nephew, who was insane but quite gentle, to my father ; and the young man’s insanity led him to accuse himself of all the crimes under heaven. When my father afterwards talked over the matter with the uncle, he said, ‘ I am sure that your nephew is really guilty of . . . a heinous crime.’ Whereupon [the gentleman] said, ‘ Good God, Dr. Darwin, who told you ; we thought that no human being knew the fact except ourselves ! ’ My father told me the story many years after the event, and I asked him how he distinguished the true from the false self-accusations ; and it was very characteristic of my father that he said he could not explain how it was. “The following story shows what good guesses my father could make. Lord Shelburne, afterwards the first Marquis of Lansdowne, was famous (as Macaulay somewhere remarks) for his knowledge of the affairs of Europe, on which he greatly prided himself. He consulted my father medically, and afterwards harangued him on the state of Holland. My father had studied medicine at Leyden, and one day [while there] went a long walk into the country with a friend who took him to the house of a clergyman (we will say the Rev. Mr. A , for I have forgotten his name), who had married an Englishwoman. My father was very hungry, and there was little for luncheon except cheese, which he could never eat. The old lady was surprised and grieved at this, and assured my father that it was an excellent cheese, and had been sent her from Bowood, the seat of Lord Shelburne. My father wondered why a cheese should be sent her from Bowood, but thought nothing more about it until it flashed across his mind many](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18031961_vol_1_0033.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
