Charles Darwin spent more money on expensive shoes than books while studying at Cambridge University, newly-discovered records show.
I really cannot believe that in a place with libraries stuffed with free books and with nary a free cobbler to be seen that this could be true.
11 responses so far ↓
1 Rumbold // Mar 23, 2009 at 11:57 am
Several hundred years ago libraries in Cambridge were in fact heavily restricted, even to students.
2 Jim // Mar 23, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Maybe there weren’t books in the subjects he was interested in.
How much did he spend on notebooks to make his own studies?
3 dearieme // Mar 23, 2009 at 1:27 pm
“Several hundred years ago”: but Tim was discussing Darwin.
4 dearieme // Mar 23, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Slightly relevant: I’ve just read a reminiscence of a woman who attended Johns Hopkins in the 1950s. As a woman she was, she says, prohibited from borrowing from the university library and had to get male classmates to borrow on her behalf.
5 The Great Simpleton // Mar 23, 2009 at 4:17 pm
dearime,
You think thats bad. When the Great WiseOne and I got married 25 years ago she went from being a teacher in an Army school with all her own rights to needing my siganture before she could borrow a library book.
6 dearieme // Mar 23, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Ah, GS, but you were legally responsible for all her debts whereas she was not legally responsible for yours; or so I understand in my unlawyerly way. (I assume it’s different now?)
7 Nigel Sedgwick // Mar 24, 2009 at 8:14 am
Well, given that Darwin had so much youthful behaviour of which the modern PC crowd severely disapproves, he seems to have made a quite useful contribution overall.
I wonder what this says to us.
Best regards
8 Martin // Mar 24, 2009 at 8:27 am
Given the quality of his theory, it seems unsurprising that he should have spent so much time talking cobblers – sorry, to cobblers.
9 Gene Berman // Mar 24, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Martin:
Eh?
10 Martin // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:48 am
Gene,
Are you expressing a sentiment which I am somehow expected to understand is characterised by the non-word ‘Eh?’, or asking for its definition?
11 David Gillies // Mar 25, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I think Gene, like me, is completely unable to understand what the fuck you’re on about. Are you assailing The Origin of Species as ‘cobblers’? Or just making a feeble pun?
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