Word: darwin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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ASCION of the intellectual coffers of the Darwin family, he often visited his renowned grandfather Charles Darwin before his death in 1882. His father Francis Darwin was one of three of Charles's sons who were knighted for their contributions to science. Bernard spent a good deal of his childhood at his Welsh grandmother's estate, as his mother died in childbirth...
...Darwin, in fact, was somewhat of a journalistic pioneer. He embarked on a career as a barrister after passing the Law Tripos at Cambridge before his first article appeared in the Times in 1907 under the heading "Golf and the Championship." Prior to Darwin, sports in newspapers had been consigned to the old Victorian concept of "Sporting Intelligence," which amounted to a few morsels of trivia and numbers. Darwin's literary flair and telegraphic accounts of matches quickly made his Saturday features an eagerly awaited treat savored by thousands of readers...
...Darwin had the same gift as the best impressionistic painters to capture a scene with a radiance that transcends time. His self-professed motto was "writing about sports in worth nothing without gusto." The effervescence of his narratives is most apparent in a stirring passage from an essay entitled "Crowd and Urgency." After a discussion of crowds in general, he writes...
...Although Darwin was a man of unsurpassed personal charm, his enthusiasm for sports and the pugnacious attitude that allowed him to become a championship golfer in his own right, added a certain lovable but disarming, and at times boorish, intensity to his personality. The passion that infuses all of Darwin's writings can perhaps best be traced to Ryde's insight that "every game he watched or took part in assumed the proportions of an heroic encounter...
...eight, Darwin muttered to his father, who was playing in a sedate foursome, "let us beat those beasts." He remained a partisan zealot the rest of his life. In 1929 the British ladies champion Joyce Wethered was five down in a match to her American counterpart, Glenna Collet. Before she sunk a putt that proved the turning point in the contest and enabled her to go on to victory, Miss Wethered noticed Darwin in the gallery and recalls that "his face wore an expression that was a mixture of fury and dejection." Darwin took no solace in the notion that...