Darwin and a village parson

 Ronald Blythe tells the story of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow, who helped give Darwin his start.

Henslow was an organizer, reformer and improver. He loved putting people in positions where they could learn and better themselves. He turned Cambridge’s small botanic garden into something that helped Darwin improve his understanding of natural history. Henslow recommended Darwin for the post of naturalist aboard the Beagle.

Blythe tells the story of Henslow’s work as a country parson.

 

He arrived in Hitcham in 1837 to discover a wretched village of warring farmers and child labour, and left it with a good school, allotments, cricket and athletic clubs and a history of railway excursions, the great one being that of Thursday 27 July 1854 when he took no fewer than 287 Hitchamites to Cambridge to see his Botanic Garden.

 

Henslow wrote and published an illustrated booklet so his parishioners would understand what they were seeing when they toured the garden. He arranged for them to dine at a college. He did something to widen the horizons of people who had few prospects. Teachers will tell you that such experiences can change lives.

The usual version of this story is about a single man — Darwin — and his development as a scientific genius. Blythe’s story is about an ecosystem, rather than a person. Henslow lacked the kind of mind that allowed Darwin to see the implications of the new learning. But, as a director of the botanic garden observed, “Without Henslows there are no Darwins.”

• Source: Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside; London: John Murray, 2022, p. 252-4.