Part 13 (1/2)

I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly grown up.

Thus:--

”Amusing scenes occurred at college when one twin came to visit the other; the porter on one occasion refusing to let the visitor out of the college gates, for, though they stood side by side, he professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow to depart.”

Children are usually quick in distinguis.h.i.+ng between their parent and his or her twin; but I have two cases to the contrary. Thus, the daughter of a twin says:--

”Such was the marvellous similarity of their features, voice, manner, etc., that I remember, as a child, being very much puzzled, and I think, had my aunt lived much with us, I should have ended by thinking I had two mothers.”

In the other case, a father who was a twin, remarks of himself and his brother:--

”We were extremely alike, and are so at this moment, so much so that our children up to five and six years old did not know us apart.”

I have four or five instances of doubt during an engagement of marriage. Thus:--

”A married first, but both twins met the lady together for the first time, and fell in love with her there and then. A managed to see her home and to gain her affection, though B went sometimes courting in his place, and neither the lady nor her parents could tell which was which.”

I have also a German letter, written in quaint terms, about twin brothers who married sisters, but could not easily be distinguished by them.[13] In the well-known novel by Mr. Wilkie Collins of _Poor Miss Finch_, the blind girl distinguishes the twin she loves by the touch of his hand, which gives her a thrill that the touch of the other brother does not. Philosophers have not, I believe, as yet investigated the conditions of such thrills; but I have a case in which Miss Finch's test would have failed. Two persons, both friends of a certain twin lady, told me that she had frequently remarked to them that ”kissing her twin sister was not like kissing her other sisters, but like kissing herself--her own hand, for example.”

It would be an interesting experiment for twins who were closely alike to try how far dogs could distinguish them by scent.

[Footnote 13: I take this opportunity of withdrawing an anecdote, happily of no great importance, published in _Men of Science_, p. 14, about a man personating his twin brother for a joke at supper, and not being discovered by his wife. It was told me on good authority; but I have reason to doubt the fact, as the story is not known to the son of one of the twins. However, the twins in question were extraordinarily alike, and I have many anecdotes about them sent me by the latter gentleman.]

I have a few anecdotes of strange mistakes made between twins in adult life. Thus, an officer writes:--

”On one occasion when I returned from foreign service my father turned to me and said, 'I thought you were in London,' thinking I was my brother--yet he had not seen me for nearly four years--our resemblance was so great.”

The next and last anecdote I shall give is, perhaps, the most remarkable of those I have; it was sent me by the brother of the twins, who were in middle life at the time of its occurrence:--

”A was again coming home from India, on leave; the s.h.i.+p did not arrive for some days after it was due; the twin brother B had come up from his quarters to receive A, and their old mother was very nervous. One morning A rushed in saying, 'Oh, mother, how are you?'

Her answer was, 'No, B, it's a bad joke; you know how anxious I am!'

and it was a little time before A could persuade her that he was the real man.”

Enough has been said to prove that an extremely close personal resemblance frequently exists between twins of the same s.e.x; and that, although the resemblance usually diminishes as they grow into manhood and womanhood, some cases occur in which the diminution of resemblance is hardly perceptible. It must be borne in mind that it is not necessary to ascribe the divergence of development, when it occurs, to the effect of different nurtures, but it is quite possible that it may be due to the late appearance of qualities inherited at birth, though dormant in early life, like gout. To this I shall recur.

There is a curious feature in the character of the resemblance between twins, which has been alluded to by a few correspondents; it is well ill.u.s.trated by the following quotations. A mother of twins says:--

”There seemed to be a sort of interchangeable likeness in expression, that often gave to each the effect of being more like his brother than himself.”

Again, two twin brothers, writing to me, after a.n.a.lysing their points of resemblance, which are close and numerous, and pointing out certain shades of difference, add--

”These seem to have marked us through life, though for a while, when we were first separated, the one to go to business, and the other to college, our respective characters were inverted; we both think that at that time we each ran into the character of the other. The proof of this consists in our own recollections, in our correspondence by letter, and in the views which we then took of matters in which we were interested.”

In explanation of this apparent interchangeableness, we must recollect that no character is simple, and that in twins who strongly resemble each other, every expression in the one may be matched by a corresponding expression in the other, but it does not follow that the same expression should be the prevalent one in both cases. Now it is by their prevalent expressions that we should distinguish between the twins; consequently when one twin has temporarily the expression which is the prevalent one in his brother, he is apt to be mistaken for him. There are also cases where the development of the two twins is not strictly _pari pa.s.su_; they reach the same goal at the same time, but not by identical stages.

Thus: A is born the larger, then B overtakes and surpa.s.ses A, and is in his turn overtaken by A, the end being that the twins, on reaching adult life, are of the same size. This process would aid in giving an interchangeable likeness at certain periods of their growth, and is undoubtedly due to nature more frequently than to nurture.

Among my thirty-five detailed cases of close similarity, there are no less than seven in which both twins suffered from some special ailment or had some exceptional peculiarity. One twin writes that she and her sister ”have both the defect of not being able to come downstairs quickly, which, however, was not born with them, but came on at the age of twenty.” Three pairs of twins have peculiarities in their fingers; in one case it consists in a slight congenital flexure of one of the joints of the little finger; it was inherited from a grandmother, but neither parents, nor brothers, nor sisters show the least trace of it. In another case the twins have a peculiar way of bending the fingers, and there was a faint tendency to the same peculiarity in the mother, but in her alone of all the family. In a third case, about which I made a few inquiries, which is given by Mr. Darwin, but is not included in my returns, there was no known family tendency to the peculiarity which was observed in the twins of having a crooked little finger. In another pair of twins, one was born ruptured, and the other became so at six months old.

Two twins at the age of twenty-three were attacked by toothache, and the same tooth had to be extracted in each case. There are curious and close correspondences mentioned in the falling off of the hair.

Two cases are mentioned of death from the same disease; one of which is very affecting. The outline of the story was that the twins were closely alike and singularly attached, and had identical tastes; they both obtained Government clerks.h.i.+ps, and kept house together, when one sickened and died of Bright's disease, and the other also sickened of the same disease and died seven months later.

Both twins were apt to sicken at the same time in no less than nine out of the thirty-five cases. Either their illnesses, to which I refer, were non-contagious, or, if contagious, the twins caught them simultaneously; they did not catch them the one from the other. This implies so intimate a const.i.tutional resemblance, that it is proper to give some quotations in evidence. Thus, the father of two twins says:--