Perhaps my wife wont like London then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool. (But then it is very bad for ones health to work too much) cannot read in the Evenings - fatness & idleness - Anxiety & responsibility - less money for books &c - if many children forced to gain one’s bread. to have the expense & anxiety of children - perhaps quarelling - Loss of time. Conversation of clever men at clubs - Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. Marlbro’ St.įreedom to go where one liked - choice of Society & little of it. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps - Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house - Charms of music & female chit-chat. Several weeks later, in July of 1838, he revisited the subject, with another meditation on the value of a life-partner (“better than a dog anyhow”):Ĭhildren - (if it Please God) - Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, - object to be beloved & played with. In country, experiment & observations on lower animals, - more space. I have so much more pleasure in direct observation, that I could not go on as Lyell does, correcting & adding up new information to old train & I do not see what line can be followed by man tied down to London. or poor man outskirts of London, some small Square &c: - & work as well as I can Then Cambridge Professorship, - & make best of it, do duty as such & work at spare times - My destiny will be Camb. Then Cambridge, better, but fish out of water, not being Professor & poverty. I could not indolently take country house & do nothing - Could I live in London like a prisoner? If I were moderately rich, I would live in London, with pretty big house & do as (B), but could I act thus with children & poor? No - Then where live in country near London better, but great obstacles to science & poverty. But better than hybernating in country, & where? Better even than near London country house. comply with all above requisites - I could not systematiz zoologically so well. London life, nothing but Society, no country, no tours, no large Zoolog. If marry - means limited, Feel duty to work for money.
?.oldest formations? Some experiments - physiological observation on lower animalsī Live in London for where else possible in small house, near Regents Park –keep horse –take Summer tours Collect specimens some line of Zoolog: Speculations of Geograph.
Work at transmission of Species - Microscope simplest forms of life - Geology. If I travel it must be exclusively geological United States, Mexico Depend upon health & vigour & how far I become Zoological The list, found in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 2: 1837-1843 ( public library) and also available online in the excellent Darwin Correspondence Project, was dated April 7, 1838, and bespeaks the timeless, and arguably artificial, cultural tension between family and career, love and work, heart and head. Just a few months earlier, he had scribbled on the back of a letter from a friend a carefully considered list of pros (“constant companion,” “charms of music & female chit-chat”) and cons (“means limited,” “no books,” “terrible loss of time”) regarding marriage and its potential impact on his work. But the legendary naturalist wasn’t always this single-minded about the union. “The day of days!,” wrote 29-year-old Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809–April 19, 1882) in his journal on November 11, 1838, after his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, accepted his marriage proposal.
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