PARENTAGE
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reverse of an ascetic or of a Quaker. He was grandfather to me by his second wife ; and to Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), the great naturalist, by his first wife. His hereditary influence seems to have been very strong. His son Charles, who died at the early age of twenty from a dissection wound, was a medical student of extraordinary promise ; and the medical sagacity of another son, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, the father of Charles R. Darwin, is amply attested. I stayed for a night or two at the house of the latter while I was a boy and too young to form any opinion of him worth recording ; besides, I was rather awe-stricken.
My grandmother Darwin (1747-1832), the second wife of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was the widow of Colonel E. Sacheverel Chandos-Pole, and, judging from her portrait when young, a lady of remarkable grace and beauty. I saw her in her kindly old age when she lived at the Priory near Derby, but I know little with certainty of her early life and character. She died at the age of eighty-five, her mother at ninetysix. It is perhaps partly through her that the ex
longevity of my mother and her sons and daughters has been derived. My mother died short of ninety, my eldest brother at eighty-nine, two sisters, as already mentioned, at ninety-three and ninetyseven respectively; my surviving brother is ninety-three and in good health. My own age is now only eightysix, but may possibly be prolonged another year or more. I find old age thus far to be a very happy time, on the condition of submitting frankly to its many limitations.
A half-sister of my mother married Captain,
