A pretty desperate way to avoid paying your tailor
By Ruth Padel
He’s discovered the lack of Old Red Sandstone
in the Vale of Clwyd. The Professor’s pleased.
This geology he’s done, all his own hard work,
will mean revising the national map!
Promising student of Geology – that’ll help
for Teneriffe. (Though not for entering the Church.)
How long, in the Tropics, can you wear a shirt
without washing it? Now he’s going to have
some glorious shooting. And lovering with Fanny Owen.
But he hears Fate knock at the door. The letter
says a Captain FitzRoy, some relation
of the Duke of Grafton, requires a gentleman
companion, a naturalist and savant,
on a two-year survey of South America –
Tierra del Fuego and back by the West Indies –
starting in two months! A Professor at Cambridge
is suggesting him. The greatest good fortune
(beats a trip to Teneriffe), most exciting thing
that’s ever happened. I immediately said I would go.
But no. “My idle son! Two universities wasted
in profitless pursuits: shooting, drinking, debts –
and collecting insects. Sailing ships are jails!
Filthy, full of disease. And brutal discipline.
What about shipwreck?”
It would unfit him to be a clergyman
on his return. He has no experience in seafaring
and no time to make preparation.
And he might not suit the Captain.
My Father, though he does not decidedly refuse,
gives such strong advice against
I should not be comfortable if I did not follow it.
He goes to Maer. Starry spaces
of the world recede. Instead, he’ll shoot the partridges.
But Father knows there won’t be another chance
like this. (He never knew half
how his Father loved him). And Cambridge dons aren’t fools.
“If you can find anyone of common sense
who advises you to go, I’ll give consent.”
Everyone at Maer says Go! Uncle Jos
drives home with him. Cries of the dogrose
trailing in August hedges on the white-dust road.
Father gazes, considers – and OKs it.
He has to pay for himself, or Father does.
“I’d have to be deuced clever, to get into debt
on a boat.” “But they all say you are
very clever.” He’s going to be a sailor –
and there’s a girl to leave behind. A pretty desperate
way, says Fanny, to avoid paying your tailor.
Comments
and it's a damn good thing for science that Darwin decided to go...
Posted by: ponderman | September 18, 2009 6:08 PM