The text of the Pickwick Paper of 4th June 1997 reads:

Pickwick knew about Charles Darwin, the young naturalist who had just returned from a five year round-the-world voyage on HMS Beagle, the ship loaded down with new varieties of this and species of that - in fact the London museums were now so full of new discoveries that people were despairing of ever having the time to record them all. But what had Darwin to do with Prof. of Botany, John Henslow of Corpus Christi college in Cambridge; John Fynn sketched in some of the details.

"Darwin was going to be a vicar when he came up to Christ’s college in 1827 when he was 18 years old. The college was so full he had to take lodgings in the town - over Bacon’s tobacconist shop in Sidney Street. We reckon that there are two types of undergraduates - varmint men and reading men. The varmint men have all the fun - give late night feasts, drink like fish, smoke all the time, gamble and go to Bamwell for the women. We porters like them there's more scope for tips and perks, and we can help them out when they get into trouble.

"The reading men attend lectures, never miss chapel, win all the prizes, don’t have a passion for anything but work. But Darwin couldn't settle to study, he soon frittered his allowance away, ran up bills - and got passionate about beetles.

"That was the real craze then - beetles. They used to pay a couple of us to go down to Mill Pool when the barges got in. The coal barges weren’t no good, we looked out for those bringing stuff in from the fens and then we'd ruttle round in the old reeds at the bottom of the boat and see what beetles we could find. That was a profitable occupation, and if we found a rare one they'd usually be one of the grads we knew who would pay a bit more just to add it to his collection.

"That’s how Darwin met Prof Henslow. A group of them used to go out beetle hunting on Friday nights around Bottisham and Swafiham Bulbeck where they met up with the vicar, Revd Jenyns, a bachelor who kept a proper naturalists calendar, bit like Gilbert White. One day they were out looking for new specimens and Darwin spotted something called an insect-eating bladderwort on the other side of a muddy dyke. So he got one of the jumping poles and set off to vault over. Only thing is he didn't go fast enough, the pole got stuck in the mud and he slid down into the water up to his waist. Then he waded across to get this specimen for Prof Henslow.

"The Prof was really popular and was busy trying to get a new Botanic Garden established instead of the one we've got now at the back of the Guildhall. It worked too for seven years ago the University bought about 30 acres down the Trumpington Road.

"Then he got an invitation to join that five-year expedition on the Beagle - trip of a lifetime it would be to a botanist like him. Do you know he turned it down - recommended Darwin instead. You should see the piles and piles of things Darwin's sent here for him to examine, enough to fill a dozen museums - no wonder they're building that new one down the road!

Return to the top of the page go back to the Pickwick Index , go back to John 'Porter' Fynn or use one of the buttons to the left...

Page last updated 1st June 2010