Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement

  • Desmond King-Hele
Giles de la Mare: 1999. 422 pp. £24.99 (pbk)

To most people who have heard of him, Erasmus Darwin was a successful doctor, bad poet and, most significantly, the grandfather of Charles Darwin. In this astonishing book, Desmond King-Hele seeks to reverse the judgement and argue that Charles should rather be remembered as Erasmus's grandson. Erasmus, King-Hele concludes, was much the brighter spark, a genius of rare qualities. In this book, ‘Darwinian’ refers to the grandfather and his legacy.

I doubt if the meaning of the adjective will be changed as a result of the book, but King-Hele's portrait of Dr Darwin is powerfully drawn. It is his sixth book, and second biography, devoted to his subject. The conclusions of his previous biography are unchanged, but the new availability of 170 family letters written by Darwin permits him to add much detail, including a valuable assessment of Darwin's relationship with his son (Charles's father), Robert Waring Darwin. Erasmus died before Charles was born, so the influence was through Robert Waring's recollections of his own father or through Erasmus's publications.

That Erasmus Darwin cut a substantial figure in his own lifetime cannot be doubted. Of massive size, with a pock-marked face and a severe stammer, he was also highly sexed and attractive to women. Following the death of his first wife, he sired two daughters by the servant looking after his young children. He then courted a beautiful, rich, married woman 16 years his junior, writing her love poetry (see above) when he was not busy tending her medical needs. After her husband conveniently died, the 50-year-old doctor won out over his younger rivals and had a further seven children by her.

Darwin's interesting domestic life did not get in the way of his medical practice. He was the pre-eminent practitioner in the industrializing Midlands, travelling as much as 10,000 miles a year around Nottingham, Lichfield and Derby, where he settled after his second marriage. No wonder he was concerned with the design of carriages and the building of canals.

For most of his life, his reputation was simply that of a good doctor (and genial host). His early publications were produced anonymously, Darwin fearing that general knowledge that he was an inventor, poet, industrial entrepreneur and botanist would make patients less likely to consult him. Nor was he especially good at exploiting his mechanical ingenuity. His copying machine went unpatented, as did his ingenious improvements to the steering mechanism and springs of his carriage. His designs for a steam carriage or his speculations about mechanized flight were confined to his private commonplace-book or to correspondence with close friends. Among the latter were many of the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution, including James Watt, Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood. Making and keeping friends were two of his most endearing and enduring traits.

The necessity of earning his living through practising medicine thus rendered Darwin a behind-the-scenes figure in both the Industrial Revolution and the world of letters. Only in his last decade, the 1790s, did he venture to come into the limelight. First came his long, two-part scientific poem, The Botanic Garden. This was followed by a massive synthesis of medical knowledge (Zoonomia), further scientific poetry, a prose work on botany and scientific agriculture, and an essay on female education. This last was written for his two illegitimate daughters, whom he had set up as proprietresses of a boarding-school for young women. Altogether, he published more than a million words, not bad for a busy doctor chary of print.

Nor was the quality of his insight swamped by the quantity of words he scribbled. King-Hele reckons he contributed insight to no fewer than 86 areas of human endeavour and knowledge, ranging from adiabatic expansion to weather maps, from artesian wells to water closets. His ideas about evolution were based on an appreciation of the significance of the fossil record, the reality of biological extinction and the immense age of the Earth. He also remarked that the first law of organic nature was expressed in the words, “Eat or be eaten”. Why, then, is the ‘Darwin industry’ confined almost exclusively to the grandson, especially when evolution and survival of the fittest are among those areas of grandfatherly insight?

There are a number of reasons. Many of his best ideas and inventions lay hidden in his commonplace-book until long after his death. Then, too, poetry is not the usual way to expound scientific discovery, at least not in the modern world. Even Darwin's reputation as a major poet was short-lived. Despite his undeniable influence on the Romantic poets, Darwin was soon relegated to the stilted and formal versifiers of the earlier age. His poetry is easier to admire than to respond to. Nor did his evolutionary ideas, deism and sympathy for the French Revolution endear him to the conservative thinkers and politicians who dominated British life after the Terror.

But if Darwin's historical fortunes have not been all he deserved, he has at least been fortunate in his modern biographer. Like Darwin himself, King-Hele is both a poet and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his sympathy for his subject is total. Few scientific lives have ever been so carefully and thoughtfully examined. There are no final words in history, but this is a biography for which the word definitive can be aptly applied. I just wish I liked Darwin's poetry more.