and fencing), the appalling and repetitive school meals, and time spent, after last bell, avoiding the abuses of senior boys.
Each student’s stay at Clapham was associated with an individual casebook (or student file). Under the date September 14th, 1868, Thomas’s name stands in the General Admission Register: “Thomas Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, of Down” along with the modest, albeit misleading, description of his father’s occupation — “country gentleman.” Within his student file, still housed along with those of his classmates in the National Archives of England, cursory identifying data is followed by the headmaster’s brief yearly note, each dated on or around June 1st, from 1869 to 1877 inclusive.
The annual notes for each student were virtually identical, and those written in the first few years of Thomas’s enrollment by a Mr. Pritchard are hardly illuminating.
“June 1st, 1869. Thomas has passed the year’s examinations and is eligible for advancement. Pritchard.”
“June 1st, 1870. Ibid.”
“June 1st, 1871. Ibid.”
In autumn, 1871, a Dr. Wrigley was appointed the new headmaster and, perhaps due to a newcomer’s enthusiasm, a more substantial note next appeared in Thomas’s casebook.
“June 3rd, 1872. Thomas is a quiet and obedient boy of avrage [sic] ability. Isolated but cooperative when approached. Hardworking, honest, and upright. Eligible for advancement. Wrigley.”
Wrigley’s assessment confirmed Charles and Emma’s fears. Although doubtlessly pleased with Dr. Wrigley’s positive estimation of Thomas’s character, the two had privately hoped that, once enrolled at Clapham, Thomas might engage in the typical male camaraderie of adolescence. Until then, they had attributed Thomas’s solitary nature to a lack of social opportunity. To Charles and Emma’s disappointment, however, Thomas remained uninterested in acquiring close friends even when surrounded by boys his age. “Still alone but not lonely,” as a resigned Emma reported to Aunt Fanny.
After his initial note, Wrigley’s annual entries succumbed to the formulaic. Thomas continued to be promoted annually, and in his final year at Clapham, he capably passed the entrance examinations for Cambridge. Charles and Emma seemed content with Thomas’s consistent, if unremarkable, school performance. Based on Emma’s correspondence, Thomas’s single frustration was his inability to find like-minded hobbyists. “The children are well … As for Thomas, he is still at Clapham. He seems to have inherited a dislike of Greek and Latin, but otherwise attends to his work seriously. Charles and I were not surprised that his efforts to start a Button Club failed to attract a single fellow. Yet overall, he has been quite contented there.”9
Although Clapham was a boarding school, it was located just six miles from Down House and, due to this proximity, Thomas routinely returned home for weekends during school terms, as well as for summer recesses. By now he was also viewed as sufficiently mature to assist his father’s research. Although overshadowed in significance by his “species” work, Charles Darwin was then conducting a series of botanical experiments, often with the aid not only of his gardener and under-gardener, but of his family as well. Their laboratory, initially the extensive garden at Down House, was later supplemented by the addition of a small hothouse.
Throughout the early 1870s, Thomas played an essential role in confirming his father’s discovery that the plant Drosera (more commonly known as the sundew) was capable of trapping and, seemingly, digesting insects. Charles had noticed the sundew, “when properly excited”, secreted a substance analogous to an animal’s digestive fluid. In the experiments required to substantiate this observation, it was Thomas’s task to “excite” the plants. At first, Thomas chose to leave raw meat on the sundew’s sticky glandular tentacles. By chance, Thomas then discovered that emotional encouragement enhanced the sundew’s secretions. His technique progressed from rather crude facial distortions to more effective gentle caresses of the plant’s uppermost stem, sometimes cooing as he did so. His father’s book, Insectivorous Plants, in which Charles acknowledged Thomas’s contribution, was published in 1875. Thomas subsequently assisted with the experiments his father conducted on the formation of vegetable mould as well as those related to the fertilization and movements of various plants.10
When time allowed, Thomas continued to enlarge his button collection. To his regret, one ill-advised acquisition led to a rare fraternal altercation. After removing a great horn button from his brother Leonard’s new jacket, and substituting a small, glued piece of cardboard, Thomas was angrily confronted by the usually even-tempered Leonard. Thomas immediately apologized and reattached the original horn button using stiff copper wire. “As good as new!” according to Emma. Nevertheless, Leonard now mistrusted Thomas and, for the next few months, insisted on hiding all his clothes under an old chesterfield in the drawing-room.
It was during this period of tension that Thomas turned to coin collecting, a new interest sparked by a welcome discovery. Sometime in early 1869, when out for a hike with Horace, Thomas came across what he believed were two ancient British coins. Encouraged by their father, the two brothers reported the find, published on February 25th, 1869, in the London Numismatics Monthly Intelligencer. Accompanying the submission was Thomas’s confident pencil sketch of the two coins.
COINAGE OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS AT DOWN
We wish to report that one of us (T. D.) has recently found on Keston Common in the parish of Down, six miles from the village of Bromley, two very old coins, which we believe to be of ancient British origin. One, which appears the older, depicts the image of a head on its obverse; on the reverse there are a chariot and four horses (Fig. A). The depictions on the second coin are much less detailed. On the obverse there is now only a laurel wreath; a single horse on the reverse (Fig. B). As Keston Common is so close to London, we have thought that you might like to include this little notice in the Intelligencer.
Horace Darwin and Thomas Darwin, Down,
Kent
Figure 3. Two Ancient British Coins (Illustrations by Thomas Darwin, from “Coinage of the Ancient Britons at Down,” 1869).
Drawing by Catherine MacDonald.
The published report indicated the coins were found in Keston Common, a lowland heath located about two miles from Down House. This setting was to take on a more ominous connotation for Thomas just a few months later. Some years before, his father had been prescribed horseback riding for therapeutic purposes and had found the grasslands and fields of the nearby common a convenient place to ride. Although his ill health persisted, Charles enjoyed the exercise until one day in early April, 1869, when his “quiet cob Tommy stumbled and fell, rolling on him and bruising him seriously.” Thomas witnessed the misadventure and was traumatized. Shaken, he retreated into his bedroom for a number of days, consoling himself with repeated games of shadow puppets. Thereafter, he had an aversion to horses and experienced significant anxiety in their presence. Although Charles Darwin never raised the matter with either Emma or Thomas, he was privately convinced the earlier rocking horse incident was responsible for his son’s brief, but otherwise puzzling, regression.
When not working or in school, Thomas’s adolescence was also characterized by the social milestones and activities of a large Victorian family. The happier occasions included the marriages of three siblings: Henrietta Emma to Richard Buckley Litchfield in 1871; Francis to Amy Richenda Ruck in 1874; and William Erasmus to Sara Sedgwick in 1877.
In 1876, the birth of Thomas’s first nephew (Bernard) was followed by the tragic loss of Bernard’s young mother who, just one week later, died of puerperal fever. Afterwards, Thomas’s widowed brother Francis
