“Darwin Groupies”

In case you didn’t know, one of the objectives of this blog (other than not to have any objectives) was to document all things pertinent to a visit Mr. Darwin’s home that I’m planning for next year while on a business trip to England (What’s this all about?).

In preparation, and also because I am a huge Darwin fan, I’ve been reading the Darwin tomes written by Janet Browne (Volume 1 – “Voyaging” and Volume 2 – “A Sense of Place”). In the second volume I ran across some very interesting material concerning Mr. Darwin’s feelings about “visitors.”

It seems that as Mr. Darwin’s fame grew (like most of the rich, famous, beautiful and influential) he acquired groupies – “Darwin groupies”, but they didn’t call them that in his day. I think that in Mr. Darwin’s time they were simply known as “pests", or worse yet for Mr. Darwin, a waste of time. Even his mail (post?) became increasingly filled with every sort of crackpot idea, proposal and demand that you could imagine – his equivalent of “junk” mail, I guess.

Beginning in her second volume on page 381 in section III, Browne begins to write about the people who wanted to see Mr. Darwin. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s a stream of visitors attempted to see Mr. Darwin at Downe House (p.382). Downe House was intimidating in appearance to the uninvited – the private domain of a privileged and well-off Englishman. But regardless, people still came. Many visitors regarded a meeting with Mr. Darwin as a turning point in their lives. I'm a little old for "turning points" (however you never know) but I wonder how standing in Mr. Darwin's house, surrounded by his personal posessions might affect me - sounds like fodder for another (later) blog entry. Browne maintains that Mr. Darwin was uncertain whether some visitors were taking undue advantage. In many of these circumstances, Mr. Darwin’s widely-known “fragile health” served him well – as the ultimate excuse to cut short or avoid visitors when he felt it necessary. The famous visited Mr. Darwin as well. Notables of the time like Thomas Carlyle in 1875; Samuel Smiles in 1876; Thomas Edward in 1876; George Eliot in 1873.

I hope that Mr. Darwin doesn’t look down unkindly on my visit (pilgrimage?) to his ancestral home at Downe. Even though he doesn’t know me from any of the other visitors who invade his private spaces each year, I’d like to think that he no longer minds having visitors, and possibly even smiles at the modern trials they endure to come for a visit.