Yesterday was Darwin Day, marking the 205th anniversary of the great naturalist’s birth on February 12, 1809. One of the great things about Darwin is that a huge amount of his work is digitized and freely available via sites like Darwin Online.
Interested browsers can also check out the Darwin Manuscripts Project, a collaborative initiative based at the American Museum of Natural History. Here you can read through Darwin’s personal notes, including gems like his scratched out book title ideas. There are also a number of nature drawings that Darwin prepared while writing his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Here, for example, is Darwin’s rather skillful drawing of the stamen of a Strelitizia flower:
Cambridge University Library DAR 49: 115r
But there are other drawings in Darwin’s papers that defy explanation – until we remember that Darwin and his wife Emma (who, famously, was also his cousin) had a huge family of ten children. Scholars believe that a young Francis Darwin, the naturalist’s third oldest son, drew this on the back of Darwin’s manuscript for On the Origin of Species.
“The Battle of the Fruit and Vegetable Soldiers”
Cambridge University Library
Remarkably, this is one of only twenty-eight pages of the manuscript that still exist. The Cambridge University Library has given it the descriptive name “The Battle of the Fruit and Vegetable Soldiers,” and so indeed it seems to be. As near as I can make out, it shows a turbaned soldier mounted on a blueberry squaring off with an English dragoon on a carrot-steed. Perhaps inspired by the 1839-1842 Anglo-Afghan War, and filtered through the Darwin household’s fascination with plants and gardening?
Here’s another drawing from the talented Darwin children, this one seemingly directly inspired by their father’s work. Birds are in the act of catching a spider and a gnat or bee, while flowers and a butterfly appear in remarkable detail. Clearly the family had a knack for acute observations of nature (in fact young Francis ended up becoming a naturalist as well).
Cambridge University Library
This one’s my personal favorite: a child’s-eye view of the Darwin family home with cozy details like a tea kettle on the boil
13 Comments
impish9208
My favorite Darwin fun fact is his detailed pros and cons list on whether to get married.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-a…
Gormo
The article makes no mention of the name "Babbage" in Emma's diary. Could that relate to Charles Babbage, who was a contemporary?
behnamoh
This is one of the few things children still do even centuries later. In many aspects, we have changed so drastically that I think 100-year-ago people would find us weird and unsociable.
nkrisc
Relevant only by virtue of also being about historical children’s drawings, but it reminds of another example of a child’s drawings preserved for us to see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
> … Onfim, was a boy who lived in Novgorod (now Veliky Novgorod, Russia) in the 13th century, some time around 1220 or 1260. He left his notes and homework exercises scratched in soft birch bark, which was preserved in the clay soil of Novgorod.
I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
hnax
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andrewstuart
My brothers and I and all our friends were allowed to draw on the walls when we were kids as long as it was in our bedrooms.
My friends thought it was the coolest thing ever.
We painted it over when we got older.
unit149
[dead]
ykonstant
"If I catch you rascals, I will give you the Darwin award in fine arts!"
quirk
Curious if anyone reading this has explored the alternative theories to Darwinian evolution. I only recently started looking at it, so don't want to share links because I don't know what is believable. But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about. He considered Origin of Species an abstract, and was promising the full "big book" for the rest of his life, but never was able to pull it together.
cjs_ac
Royal Armouries Ms. I.33[0] was also used for colouring practice by children, e.g., in folii 2r – 8v as shown on Wiktenauer[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armouries_Ms._I.33
[1] https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Walpurgis_Fechtbuch_(MS_I.33)
casey2
The other story here is incremental growth of camera technology. The daguerreotype came out after his voyage on the HMS Beagle, by the time Origin of Specices was published (with no photography) Cameras still had to many practical limitations to justify a worse image. By 1872 Darwin would publish a book full of photography despite his remarkable drawing skills.
Something gives me the feeling that a lot of people are going to follow Darwin's example in the near future
anon291
People talk about how hard it is to have kids these days without realizing that this sort of chaos was normal for the vast majority of humans throughout history and they still achieved great things. Part of it is the expectation of others. So what if your kids color your book, interrupt your meetings, or cause embarrassment in front of your boss. They need to get over it.
Like him or hate, the fact that the Vice President takes his kids everywhere is a good reminder of how un-child-friendly our societies have become. It's almost transgressive to exist with children these days.
s3r3nity
This reminds me of the fascinating story of how Shakespeare's first folio was assembled, in that many of the plays were assembled from folks who had copies that were annotated – either as reading notes or with random family musings like todo lists.
I highly recommend the Chris Laoutaris' book on the topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Book-Behind-Making-Shake…