My ancestor’s private memories of Darwin

04 February 2009

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Sir Norman Moore was Charles Darwin’s doctor and friend for many years. Charlotte Moore, his great-granddaughter, reveals the intimate recollections in his private correspondence

I live in the house my family have occupied since 1888. My great-grandfather, a tremendous letter-writer and note-taker, never threw anything away. Sorting through barrowloads of his correspondence, I built up an intimate picture of Darwin family life, as well as finding many accounts of the great man’s experiments and conversation.

My great-grandfather’s was a remarkable Victorian success story. Aged 14, he was sweeping floors at a cotton warehouse in Manchester, but a combination of natural ability, night school and sympathetic mentors eventually took him to Cambridge, then to a career at St Bartholomew’s Hospital; he was made a baronet, and was president of the Royal College of Physicians. He also had a great gift for friendship. A Cambridge friend was Frank Darwin, a fellow medical student and the third son of Charles. In the 1860s acceptance of evolutionary theory was not widespread; still, I was startled to find that Moore, opposing the motion ‘that this meeting view with regret the abolition of slavery’, used the distinctly pre-Darwinian argument that ‘since mankind are sprung from one pair it is manifest that at one time the whole human race was free’.

In 1871 Moore, aged only 24 but already making a name as a naturalist and man of letters as well as a doctor, was asked to review The Descent of Man by the publisher John Chapman. ‘I foolishly agreed to review Darwin ... My review will be so hostile that I doubt their inserting it,’ he told a friend. His preconceived antipathy to the idea of man’s descent from a subhuman ancestor colours his argument: ‘False views are a result of limited knowledge ... when they are expanded into gigantic theories they... retard unbiased investigation and even bring discredit on the study of science.’ As he expected, the review was not printed. This was lucky; had it appeared, the friendship that was later to blossom with Darwin would surely have withered in the bud.

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