Village 8 m. NW of Sevenoaks. Downe is the setting for Down House, Charles Darwin's house (on the North Downs). Darwin would spend 40 years at his quiet Kent home (‘the extreme verge of the world’), during which time he wrote prolifically, including his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, which was published in 1859. Samuel Butler twice visited Charles Darwin at Down House. In Unconscious Memory (1880), Butler describes the disagreement between them, which prevented further visits. Charles Darwin's grandchild Gwen Raverat, born (1885) three years after his death, describes the idiosyncrasies of her five Darwin uncles and captures the flavour of family holidays here in the 1890s in Period Piece (1952). Although when she ‘was eleven Grandmamma died and it all came to an end’, Down House (English Heritage) remains much as it was in Darwin's lifetime and one room is devoted to exhibits relating to his work.
The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain & Ireland. © 2008
Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved.
