by Janet Browne
This unhappy event brought all Emma and Charles’s combined family miseries to the surface again. Death knitted them together in the cruellest of ways, reviving old griefs with the new. Such events evoked the most intense emotions in Victorian family life.65 “Our poor little darling,” Darwin called him. Unwilling to let the memory go, he wrote an account of the baby on a scrap of paper. He tucked it away in the same envelope as his wistful memorial to Anne, his unfading “little angel,” who had died in his arms at Malvern of another terrible fever in 1851. If he had any inclination to think about his theory of natural selection at this time, he might easily have reflected on the melancholy fact that his ideas of struggle required the death of the weakest individuals, even of his own babies. His theory was a bleak theory of elimination.
“Thank God he will never suffer more in this world,” he told Hooker. “I cannot think now on subject, but soon will.”66
VI
He dispatched some manuscript material about evolution to Hooker on 29 June, at the end of the long sad following day. It was an odd, mixed bundle for the purpose, a very hasty culling of paperwork for a major turning point in biological science. He was exhausted.
I have just read your letter & see you want papers at once. I am quite prostrated & can do nothing, but I send Wallace & my abstract of abstract [sic] of letter to Asa Gray, which gives most imperfectly only the means of change & does not touch on reasons for believing species do change. I daresay all is too late. I hardly care about it. But you are too generous to sacrifice so much time & kindness.—It is most generous, most kind. I send sketch of 1844 solely that you may see by your own handwriting that you did read it.—I really cannot bear to look at it.—Do not waste much time. It is miserable in me to care at all about priority.67
As he said, his part of the parcel contained a handwritten copy of a letter sent in 1857 to the botanist Asa Gray, and the early sketch on evolution that he completed in 1844.
Gray, the professor of botany at Harvard University, was one of Hooker’s closest botanical colleagues and had corresponded with Darwin since 1855. The three had eased agreeably into a three-sided correspondence about botanical geography, classification, and plant anatomy.68 Gray was devout—a committed Congregationalist—and uncommonly talented in science, by far the most prominent botanist in the United States, and on an intellectual par with Louis Agassiz, his zoological counterpart at Harvard. Towards the middle of 1857, Darwin had been so impressed by Gray’s wide-ranging knowledge and his skilful analysis of knotty botanical problems that he confided in him, anxiously joking, “I know that this will make you despise me.” When Gray wrote back encouragingly (“can you get at the law of variation?”), Darwin responded with a long letter on 5 September 1857 describing his theory of natural selection in detail, including his most recent ideas about the divergence of species, which he thought explained the origin of separate lines of descent.69
Spelling it all out for Gray in September 1857 was a difficult task, but one he was keen to attempt if he could get the honest opinion of such an exceptional man (any comparable thoughts of describing the theory to Wallace during the same summer never crossed Darwin’s mind). Sentence by sentence, Darwin drew up a statement for Gray, which the young schoolmaster in Downe village neatly transcribed before it was sent to Harvard. It was the retained draft, creased and stained with use, that Darwin now dispatched to Hooker.70 He scribbled a few hurried corrections and notes on the bottom (getting the original posting date wrong in the process), and sent it away.
It was necessary to include the Gray letter, Darwin believed, because the 1844 sketch, although much longer and more detailed in every way, had in many places been superseded by the sustained attention he had brought to bear on the theory since then. In particular, Darwin’s barnacle studies had intervened. These encouraged him to shift his focus away from species originating in geographical isolation, as he imagined the Galapagos finches to have done, towards a more active, competitive arena in which constant variation, struggle, and divergence were the primary agents, and where most speciation would take place in large mixed populations, with numbers high and pressures intense.71 Such views had been reinforced by his development, in or around 1856, of a “principle of divergence,” a fundamental process that he believed acted in conjunction with natural selection, the one major conceptual adjustment he made during his long investigations—“The more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers.”72 Everything he had studied in the fourteen years since writing the sketch supported this basic vision. Although his overall arguments stayed pretty much the same—these were commitments Darwin would never relinquish—the manner in which he wished to present his mature theory was markedly different.
The sketch, in short, served mainly to establish the important fact that Hooker had read it sometime after it was finished in 1844—there on the manuscript pages were Hooker’s pencil marks and queries. There was no point in Darwin’s sending extracts from his current manuscript, the big book on species lying half completed on the table in his study, because Hooker’s and Lyell’s aim was to establish that a written account of Darwin’s views had been read by a third party more than ten years ago, in 1844 or 1845, and that an independent letter was similarly read by Asa Gray at least a year before Darwin received Wallace’s essay. The issue at the front of their minds was priority. In their eyes priority conferred ownership and secured an author’s claim to originality. Such affirmations lay deep at the heart of the scientific process, where natural philosophers strove to identify the laws governing the universe—laws that promised a unique insight into the truth. Although this was to be a double paper (often called a joint paper), the underlying message was to be of two independent workers caught in a single, unexpected thunderclap.
Darwin had no time to contemplate the storm of outrage that once surrounded publication of Vestiges; no time to reflect on Emma’s religious feelings, or to fret about literary perfection. There was no time to write to Wallace, the absent, unknowing trigger of all this activity. Despite the years he had devoted to analysing species, the only material Darwin could present to the public at such short notice was a letter to an overseas correspondent and an out-of-date sketch. “I always thought it very possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had grand enough soul not to care,” he admitted woefully to Hooker. “But I found myself mistaken & punished.”
VII
Late in the evening of 30 June 1858, Lyell and Hooker forwarded the paperwork to the Linnean Society’s secretary, John Joseph Bennett. Either Bennett or George Busk, the other secretary, would read it aloud at the meeting. Wallace’s essay needed no further attention. The same could not be said for Darwin’s contribution. Mrs. Hooker had spent all that afternoon copying extracts from Darwin’s handwritten materials, extracts presumably chosen by Hooker, intending to turn them into a form suitable for reading aloud. Silently, she made a few helpful changes. One result of this methodical afternoon was that Darwin had little idea of what actually went forward until he saw printed proofs several weeks after the event. Lyell and Hooker added a short note of their own to introduce the papers. Afterwards, Lyell recalled that there was such a rush that he could not remember whether he had gone to Hooker’s, or Hooker had come to him, or whether they spoke at all until an hour or two before the meeting.
The rush did not signify any lack of attention to detail. In the introductory matter, Hooker and Lyell subtly justified their friend’s position and, by implication, their own. Wallace’s work was praised and then delicately pushed aside, merely the stimulus, they hinted, which encouraged Darwin to make a preliminary announcement.73
The material which followed reinforced the impression. The articles were arranged in alphabetical order by author, as was customary at the Linnean Society for double contribut
ions. On this occasion, the alphabet coincided impressively with chronology. First came extracts from Darwin’s sketch of 1844, then Darwin’s September 1857 letter to Asa Gray, and, at the end, Wallace’s February 1858 essay. Darwin’s priority reverberated from every page. Even Darwin winced when he saw the layout some weeks later. He had assumed that his remarks would appear as a kind of appendix or as footnotes to Wallace.74 Privately embarrassed, he was relieved he had not personally supervised this printed reversal of fortunes.
The actual reading of the papers, on Thursday 1 July 1858, was subdued. Hooker and Lyell were present; Darwin, and of course Wallace, absent. Some twenty-five fellows came, not to hear about evolutionary theory, but to listen to Lyell praise Robert Brown’s career. Thomas Bell, the president, was chairman for the evening. There were two unnamed guests from overseas, and J. J. Bennett, the secretary: perhaps thirty all told. By chance, Wallace’s natural history agent Samuel Stevens was there.75 By chance, Darwin’s friend William Carpenter was present, and William Fitton, his geological acquaintance from Gower Street days. Daniel Oliver and Arthur Henfry, two men who later became committed evolutionists, attended, and Cuthbert Collingwood, a future opponent. Huxley, shortly to become Darwin’s most public defender, was not present, for he was not yet a fellow, nor were Erasmus Darwin or Hensleigh Wedgwood, Darwin’s brother and cousin. “No fourth individual had any cognisance of our meeting,” said Hooker, forgetting that this blanket of silence also embraced Wallace, the catalyst for the whole affair.76
The paper, too, was long and not immediately easy to understand. Darwin and Wallace’s articles were first on the programme (Hooker had persuaded George Bentham to step down)77 and were followed by five other papers on conventional botanical and zoological topics. By the end of the evening, as Bentham noted, the audience appeared fatigued. Darwin’s and Wallace’s proposals failed to ignite any late-night debate or controversy.
Since Bell usually encouraged discussion—an innovation introduced with his presidency—it seems that their radical ideas did not make much of an immediate impact.78 “No semblance of discussion,” said Hooker, although he thought he remembered that “it was talked over with bated breath” at tea afterwards. Later, as an old man, with half a century of battle metaphors running through his mind, he subsequently declared that “the subject [was] too novel and too ominous for the old school to enter the lists before armouring.”
In his declining years Hooker probably exaggerated both the silence and the teatime whispers. Most of the fellows in the audience that day would have known the importance of what was being suggested; and a moment’s reflection would have ensured that they recognised at least some of the wider implications. But George Busk, the zoological secretary of the society and Huxley’s closest friend, said nothing. Bennett, the general secretary, said nothing. Clever, philosophically minded Bentham, a nephew of Jeremy Bentham, was silent. Even William Carpenter, one of the most advanced physiologists of the age, with strongly naturalistic views of his own and well versed in Vestiges’ evolutionary thinking, kept his peace as Bell hurried them along to the end of the evening. All of them might have spoken their minds more freely if Hooker and Lyell had not thrown their powerful weight behind the argument. Lyell overawed the fellows, claimed Hooker with a certain amount of satisfaction; and Lyell’s, Hooker’s, and Darwin’s reputations probably inhibited any vulgar show of dissent from the floor. The fellows of the Linnean were polite to a fault. Only the rough and tumble of debates at the Geological Society and the British Association actively invited scientific lions to roar.
Later on, Bell captured the general air of unruffled, clubbable stability. “The year which has passed,” he remarked in his presidential address in May 1859, “has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear.”79 Accurate enough in the short term, Bell’s remark was destined to become known as one of the most unfortunate misjudgements in the history of science.
The Linnean fellows dispersed that night not so much aghast by new ideas as wearied by the length and amount of information presented.80 Much of the concept of natural selection probably went over their heads. There was insufficent opportunity to concentrate, no discussion to set the blood racing, no authors on the podium to fence and dodge difficult questions or to raise the blood pressure of theologically inclined naturalists. The fellows, moreover, were respectable men, unlikely to raise a rumpus. Hooker and Lyell had chosen exactly the right venue for well-behaved, impassive silence.
For Darwin, the evening marked the end of two of the most dreadful weeks of his life. Unfairly, he began to imagine Wallace’s letter had forced him into premature publication; and he began recasting his own role in the proceedings from possible villain to potential victim. “I do not think that Wallace can think my conduct unfair, in allowing you & Hooker to do whatever you thought fair,” he told Lyell. Above all, he hoped his own actions would be understood as a genuine wish to behave honorably. “My plans of publication are all changed,” he explained to an old Shropshire friend, Thomas Campbell Eyton. Nothing, in short, had happened the way he had wanted.
But he had at last spoken.
chapter
2
“MY ABOMINABLE VOLUME”
LL THAT REMAINED was to tell Wallace. This was possibly the trickiest part of the whole episode. Without question it would be a difficult letter for Darwin to write. The turbulence of the last two weeks had taken place entirely in Wallace’s absence and without Wallace’s knowledge, a state of affairs that reeked of Hamlet without the prince. His choice of words would set the agenda for Wallace’s response.
He raised the problem with Hooker first, hoping that Hooker might write to Wallace as well. “I certainly shd. much like this, as it would quite exonerate me,” he observed. “If you would send me your note, sealed up, I would forward it with my own, as I know address &c.”1 Hooker was already putting the Linnean Society papers through the editing process for the society’s Journal, and quite rightly thought that Wallace should be told.
When Hooker sent over his explanation (“perfect, quite clear & most courteous”), Darwin’s relief was palpable. Darwin promptly enclosed Hooker’s note with his own and posted the two letters to Singapore.2 They would eventually get into Wallace’s hands, somewhere further east of Singapore, some four months later, via local sailing vessels and steamer. The last leg, Darwin imagined, would be by prau.
Then he worried. The next few days were the worst, full of a nagging suspicion that he had not acted completely fairly and wondering if he had allowed himself to be bounced into slightly disreputable proceedings. He had no idea how Wallace would view the situation. Theories were deeply personal properties in the tightly governed world of nineteenth-century science, inextricably tied to the names of their creators, and not freely available for someone else to place before the public, and certainly not without permission. The republic of letters, despite a growing rhetoric of open information, was individualistic. Darwin knew a number of naturalists who would be outraged if he or Lyell had tried the same priority-sharing treatment on them, plenty of established figures who might have called his motives sharply into question. Restlessly, he told himself that everything had been done with the highest moral intention. It was obvious that six months or more must pass before he could receive a word in reply.
As it happened, Darwin’s worst fears were unnecessary. When Wallace read the letters sent from Down House he admitted he was “very much surprised to find that the same idea had occurred to Darwin.”3 Privately, he may have been greatly disappointed. But he replied immediately, displaying all the warm liberality of spirit that Darwin and other future scientific friends came to value dearly. Only the letter to Hooker now survives. “It would have caused me much pain & regret had Mr. Darwin’s excess of generosity led him to make public my paper unaccompanied by his own much earlier & I doubt not much more complete views on the same subject,”
Wallace informed Hooker. “I must again thank you for the course you have adopted, which while quite strictly just to both parties, is so favourable to myself.”4
Modestly, he accepted the lesser role of co-discoverer that was thrust upon him. Perhaps he realised there was little else he could do. What was done was done. By the time he knew about the dual announcement he was hardly in a position to make a fuss, and his innate good manners probably told him to acquiesce graciously.
Furthermore, he may have recognised that he would be much better off accepting the curious turn of events and enjoying the limelight. It was in his interest to make the best of the new situation. His essay would otherwise scarcely have been made public so rapidly or so advantageously. If he had sent the paper to his friend Henry Bates, still swatting mosquitoes on the Amazon, or to his London agent Samuel Stevens, his ideas would not yet have reached any of the experts who governed the sciences of the day and whose opinion he sought. If he had sent it directly for publication to Edward Newman at the Zoologist, or to some other natural history magazine, he would not have had any guarantee that he would be published. Now, his name was coupled with Darwin’s, and he was about to appear in a prestigious learned journal, professional advantages that he appreciated intently. Perhaps, too, Wallace found it relatively easy to share the honours. Unlike Darwin he had not yet invested his life and soul in the theory.