Rustic Sounds, and Other Studies in Literature and Natural History. Sir Francis Darwin
come now to human sounds. It was exciting to wake at 5 o’clock some morning in June, and to learn by the sound of scythes being whetted that the mowers had arrived, and that the hay harvest had actually begun. The field had been a great sea of tall grasses, pink with sorrel and white with dog-daisies, a sacred sea into which we might not enter. But now we could at least follow the mowers, and watch the growth of the tracks made by their shifting feet, and listen to the swish of the scythes as the swathes of fallen grass and flowers also grew in length. There was something military in their rhythm, and something relentless and machine-like in their persistence. But our admiration was mixed with pity from the time that one of them told us that after the first day’s mowing he was too tired to sleep. In later years another sound was associated with haymaking, when in an Alpine meadow the group of resting peasants were heard hammering the blades of their little pre-Raphaelite scythes to flatten the dents made by stones hidden among the grass.
A well-remembered sound that came near the end of the harvest was the cry of “Stand fast!” which was heard at intervals warning the man in the cart, whose duty it was to arrange the pitched-up hay, that a move was to be made. Why it was necessary to shout the warning so that it could be heard a quarter of a mile away I cannot say. But its impressive effect depended on its loud chant-like tone. This sound is connected with recollections of riding in the empty hay-cart, from the sea-green stack mysteriously growing in the corner of the field back to where hay waited to be carted. The inside of the hay-cart was enchantingly polished, and also full of hay-seed, which had a charm for me. The hay-making at Down was a leisurely affair, with many women gossiping as they gently turned the hay. There was, however, one man of whom we children were much afraid, a fierce red-eyed old labourer who acted as foreman, and did not hesitate to show that he thought us out of place in a hay-field.
One sound there was peculiar to Down—I mean the sound of drawing water. In that dry chalky country we depended for drinking-water on a deep well from which it came up cold and pure in buckets. These were raised by a wire rope wound on a spindle turned by a heavy fly-wheel, and it was the monotonous song of the turning wheel that became so familiar to us. The well-house, gloomily placed among laurel bushes, had a sort of terrifying attraction for us, and I remember dropping pebbles and waiting—it seemed ages—for them to fall into the water below. We believed the well to be 365 feet deep, also that this was the height of the dome of St. Paul’s—I have never tested the truth of either statement. The opening was roofed in by a pair of hinged flaps, or doors, and I especially liked the moment when the rising bucket crashed into the doors from below, throwing them open with a brutal and roystering air, which one forgave it as having made a long and dangerous journey up from the distant water. But the best was when the empty bucket went down, and the fly-wheel spun round till its spokes were invisible. Then was the time to remember the death of a dog (called Dick) who was killed by jumping through the flying wheel. I envied my elder brothers who could actually remember Dick: to me he was only a tragic myth. I imagine that in hot dry weather more water was drawn, or else that being more constantly out of doors we heard more of it. It is at least certain that the sound of the well came to be associated with peaceful days and happy weather in that dear garden.
Another sound I like to recall is connected with the memory of my father. He daily took a certain number of turns round a little wood planted by himself, and christened the Sandwalk. As he paced round it he struck his heavy iron-shod walking-stick against the ground, and its rhythmical click became a familiar sound that spoke of his presence near us, and was associated with his constant sympathy in our pursuits. It is a sound that seems to me to have lasted all those years that stretch from misty childish days until his death. I am sure that all his children loved that sound.
February, 1912.
II.
FRANCIS GALTON [13] 1822–1911
Francis Galton was born on February 16th, ninety-two years ago, and to-day we are met together to remember him—a word that seems to me more in tune with his nature than the more formal expression commemorate.
He disliked pomposity, but he seems to have loved little private ceremonials. For instance, when he opened the first notebook in preparation for his autobiographical Memories, he began page I with Falstaff’s words: “Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying”—an inverted appeal to truth which no man ever stood less in need of. And again, at the foot of the very last page of his Memories is a drawing of Galtonia candicans, a little ceremony without words, a hieroglyphic glorification of the honour paid him in giving his name to this African plant.
Many persons, and even some reviewers, form their opinions of books by reading half-a-dozen passages at random. I have been more scientific in selecting the first and last pages, and from these I conclude that a simple and kindly commemoration is not out of harmony with the genius of this great and loveable man.
I should like to express my appreciation of the honour done me in asking me to give the first Galton lecture. In many ways I am a bad choice, since I have had no share in his science of eugenics, neither has my research-work been directly connected with evolution. I can only hope that in consideration of my delight in the fibre and flavour of Galton’s mind, with its youth, its charm of humour, and its ever-springing originality and acuteness—I say that I hope these considerations may excuse me for having undertaken an office for which I am in so many ways unfitted.
One of his most obvious characteristics was his love of method. I do not mean methodicalness, but that he took delight in knowing how to do all manner of things in the very best way. He also liked to teach his methods to others. Those who never saw him, or even read his books, will exclaim, “What a bore he must have been.” One might as well call the lightning a bore for explaining that the thunder was coming, or complain of the match for boring the gunpowder as to the proper way of exploding. With Galton’s explanations there was a flash of clear words, a delightful smile or gesture, which seemed to say: “That’s all—don’t let me take up your time.” Nobody was ever more decidedly the very antithesis of a bore than Francis Galton.
He first appeared on the literary and scientific stage as a traveller, geographer, and author of a book on South Africa (1853), and it was the experience there gained that enabled him to write two years later, in 1855, that wonderful book, The Art of Travel. There he teaches such vitally important things as how to find water, how to train oxen as pack animals, to pitch a tent, to build a fire, to cook, and a thousand other secrets.
He liked, of course, to be useful to weary and thirsty travellers, but he was as much, or more, impelled by the love of method for its own sake. He was in fact an artist in method. The same thing is shown in a letter he wrote to Nature near the end of his life, explaining how to cut a cake on scientific principles so that it shall not become stale. This again was not so much a philanthropic desire that his fellow men should not have dry cake, as delight in method.
When I re-read The Art of Travel quite recently, I could not find his method of preventing a donkey braying. My recollection is that, observing a braying donkey with tail erect, he argued that if the tail were forcibly kept down, as by tying a stone to it, the braying would not occur. I certainly believe myself to have read or heard that this most Galtonian plan succeeded.
Later in life he tried to make his unique knowledge of value to his country. He writes: [15]
“The outbreak of the Crimean War showed the helplessness of our soldiers in the most elementary matters of camp-life. Believing that something could be done by myself towards removing this extraordinary and culpable ignorance, I offered to give lectures on the subject, gratuitously, at the then newly-founded camp at Aldershot.”
He received no answer from the War Office, but a personal application to Lord Palmerston led to his being installed. He speaks of a few officers attending his course, and adds that the “rude teachings of the Crimean War soon superseded” his own.
In relation to what I have been speaking of, I must here be allowed to turn back to an earlier period of his life. In illustrating the different dispositions of his sisters, both of whom were dear to him, Galton writes:
“My eldest sister was just, my youngest merciful. When my bread was buttered for me as a child, the