Today we were guests at a delightful wedding on the beach at Byron Bay.
The first reading was from the Gospel according to Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin was a prolific journal keeper – the prototypical blogger! His complete works are available online at . His private papers are held by Cambridge University, and amongst these is Darwin’s methodical anaylsis of the benefits of marriage.
In July 1838, aged 29, he had returned from his 5 year voyage on the HMS Beagle and had spent 2 years back in London living in grand batchelor style. A decision had to made. In his journal, he weighed up the Pros and Cons of marriage using a scientific approach.
This is the Question
Marry
- Children (if it Please God)
- Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
- Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
- Home, & someone to take care of house
- Charms of music and female chit-chat
- These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
- My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
- Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
- Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
- Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London
Not Marry
- Freedom to go where one liked
- Choice of Society and little of it
- Conversation of clever men at clubs
- Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
- Expense and anxiety of children
- Perhaps quarrelling
- Loss of Time
- Cannot read in the evenings
- Fatness and idleness
- Anxiety and responsibility
- Less money for books etc.
- If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
- Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool
Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.
