Charles Darwin

by Janet Browne

  But he was frank. “I grieve to say that I cannot honestly go as far as you do about design.” His Origin had meant to demolish just such a view. By showing how blind and gradual adaptation could produce the same results as the apparently purposeful design that William Paley glorified, and the perfect adaptations in the natural world that the Bridgewater Treatises displayed in all their ramifications, Darwin had intended to challenge the argument that design necessarily indicated the presence of a designer.14 This inference, in which divine purpose was identified with human intent, had been used for centuries as one of the strongest proofs of the existence of an infinite deity. In natural selection Darwin substituted an alternative hypothesis that was both logically adequate, he thought, to produce the results seen and philosophically more secure.

  Nevertheless, his respect for Gray—and, it must be said, his dependence on him—persuaded him to delve further into his own beliefs than he was accustomed to go, one of the few times that he turned his cool analytic gaze onto himself. He was perplexed, he told Gray. “I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; & yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of design.”15 In letter after letter they exchanged opinions, each trying to be as honest about himself as he believed the other deserved.

  Neither was a trained theologian, and their views changed as they grew older. Certainly Darwin ended up as a nonbeliever. It seemed to Darwin that Gray merely reiterated the age-old claim that the creator can preordain events. What of “necessity & Free-will,” and the “Origin of evil”? he inquired, subjects “quite beyond the scope of the human intellect.”16

  With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.—I am bewildered.—I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd. wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.17

  Gray gave him a sympathetic ear. Darwin wrote to Lyell too, an indication of the seriousness with which he regarded the question. Stones fall without God’s intervention, he told Lyell. Sparrows die. Every scientist, he said, can accept the idea of gravity as a mathematical law operating according to natural rules. “I cannot believe that there is a bit more interference by the Creator in the construction of each species, than in the course of the planets.”18

  The actual existence, or not, of an Almighty was in this regard irrelevant, Darwin remarked, although he was prepared to let Gray, and doubtless Lyell, carry on believing that a divine authority could at one point have made the laws.

  One word more on “designed laws” & “undesigned results.” I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun & kill it. I do this designedly.—An innocent & good man stands under a tree & is killed by flash of lightning. Do you believe (& I really shd. like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? Many or most persons do believe this; I can’t & don’t.—If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow shd. snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man & the gnat are in same predicament.—If the death of neither man or gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production shd. necessarily be designed. Yet, as I said before, I cannot persuade myself that electricity acts, that the tree grows, that man aspires to loftiest conceptions all from blind, brute force.19

  Decades afterwards, he said that around this time he probably deserved to be called a theist.20 In truth, Darwin was profoundly conditioned to become the author of a doctrine inimical to religion. But he only gradually rose to understand the depths of his own implications long after the Origin of Species was published. Orchids made him think as hard about his own beliefs as he hoped his future readers would think about theirs.

  V

  Over the next few months, Darwin channelled his efforts into understanding the basic anatomy and embryology of each of the major groups of orchids, taking his cue from the evolutionary idea that when an organ arises it is invariably a modification of something else. The task was not especially easy. Orchids were a deceptive group, even with the added benefit of evolutionary theory. He valued Robert Brown’s observations on fertilisation and particularly studied Hooker’s paper on the British orchid, Listera ovata, written in 1854. After several weeks of hard work with his microscope, however, he wondered if even a judicious botanist like Hooker might be wrong about the origin of the spiral vessels inside the stem, and he sent inky diagrams to Hooker for his opinion. Hooker could not work out what his friend meant; he had to dissect a few specimens at Kew to reexamine the parts in a way that an anatomical taxonomist would understand. Not for the first time, Hooker must have wondered what he would be sucked into next. Seeds, barnacles, sundews, species, orchids—Darwin could be a very demanding correspondent. Every postbag brought something different. Hooker’s increasing commitments as assistant director at Kew meant these inquiries were taking more time than he could readily spare.

  Darwin sent a raft of similar questions to Asa Gray, asking about Spiranthes, an orchid fairly common in North America but rare in Britain, called lady’s tresses because of the plaited effect of the flowers, and Goodyera, a close relative. He questioned whether the spiral arrangement of flowers helped insects steer as they crawled up and around the spike, fertilising flowers as they went. He had never seen an insect visit Spiranthes. “It is no use watching this,” he wrote to Alexander More on the Isle of Wight. “I watched it last autumn at Eastbourne till I was sick.”21 His friends and aquaintances began to feel amused by the intensity of Darwin’s interest in apparently obscure topics. Yet these precise anatomical investigations helped him reframe what would come to be known as the ecological relationships between species on an explicitly evolutionary basis.

  Furthermore, in Darwin’s view, the orchid nectary was a modification of one of the petals and ought to secrete some sweetish juice to attract insects. “Unless the flowers were by some means rendered attractive, most of the species would be cursed with perpetual sterility,” he remarked. The longer the nectary, the longer the insect’s proboscis needed to be—a good example of co-adaptation. Neat as this argument was in principle, Darwin could not establish the existence of nectar. Unwilling to give up his theory, he ate a nectary himself to see if it tasted sugary. A little while later he acquired from the nation’s greatest orchid specialist, James Bateman, a specimen of Angraecum sesquipedale, which possessed an exceptionally long nectary measuring eleven or twelve inches. “What a proboscis the moth that sucks it must have!” he exclaimed.22 No such moth was then known to science. Years after Darwin’s death, a moth with a twelve-inch proboscis was discovered in Madagascar.

  He was so gripped by his passion that he did not stop during the holiday season. He took the family to Torquay in 1861 for the sake of Henrietta’s health, bringing with him a selection of potted orchids, and his microscope, all wedged into a wooden crate that had to travel upright. He fussed all the way there. But he said he was glad to get away. “I have been a poor wretch for many months,” he told his cousin Fox, and a large glass of port wine on arrival was “a very necessary restorative.”23 At Torquay Henrietta improved in the seaside air. The family trudged ov
er the sands for picnics in nearby coves, leading Henrietta on a donkey, and rented a sea-bathing machine for her to follow fashionable example. “She gets up twice every day now & can walk one or two hundred yards,” Darwin reported.

  Orchids dominated the rest of his time. He sent the younger boys out over the Devon hills searching for specimens, knowing they would be happy enough scrambling around and getting dirty. Darwin directed affairs from the cliff paths with his walking stick. When William arrived from Cambridge University for a few days, hoping to discuss his future prospects, he too was sent off to participate. Darwin got him dissecting and drawing, glad to have his assistance. William had become adept at botany during the last few years and was accustomed to helping his father with his scientific chores. Docile as always, William probably found it hard to refuse.

  Father and son evidently talked to each other as well. During this visit it was agreed that William should not read for the law after graduating from Cambridge but should instead cut his university days short and accept an opening in a banking firm in Southampton that John Lubbock had found for him. This would require leaving university without a degree. The two decided that William would merely postpone his B.A. examination and take it a year late, which he did do, returning to Cambridge for a few days in 1862 to sit his papers and complete the university’s residential requirements.

  Darwin was grateful for Lubbock’s intervention in this affair. Previously he had not known what to recommend to his oldest son, especially as banking appeared to be closed to outsiders. A potential banker had to be invited to join a firm, invariably through the old boys’ network, as in this instance, and had to pay handsomely for the privilege, almost like buying a commission in the army. Once in, the new partner could expect a relatively secure and respectable occupation. In friendly appreciation, Darwin sent Lubbock a collection of small insects from Devon collected by his sons from damp and smelly places under logs, confident that one naturalist would know best how to show gratitude to the other.

  The bank in Southampton proved rather more difficult to please. Those kinds of privately owned banks depended on their partners’ guarantees for the capital reserve, and Darwin was asked to guarantee the sum of £10,000 on his son’s behalf in case there should be a run on deposits. Such guarantees remained the custom until the Joint Stock Banks and Companies Act of 1863 allowed limited liability and some redistribution of risk, a change in legislation brought in after a couple of big financial crashes in 1857 and 1858. Wary of the possible risk involved, and taken aback by the size of the sum expected, Darwin instructed his solicitor to look into the matter so that he would know exactly where he—and William—would stand in case of a crash or fraud (Darwin’s own London bank suffered from a notorious fraud case in 1858). Privately, he wondered at Lubbock’s casual, well-buttressed assumption that such an enormous guarantee was perfectly routine. By writing some hard-headed letters, he bludgeoned the bank’s partners down to £5,000.

  Otherwise, he was irrepressible. Hooker received increasingly urgent requests for specimens:

  I was really ashamed to bother you about Catasetum; I have now written to Parker & Williams for chance. I shd. be very glad of a Cattleya or Epidendron & specially (from what A. Gray writes) for an Arethusa or one of that section.—Have you Mormodes with some buds that would complete my desiderata for comparison. If the racemes were cut off & packed in tin-cannister with a little slightly damp moss, they might be sent by post, & I would pay postage; possibly Arethusa might come in pot, as that seems most important for me.24

  Parcels came and went, tin cans were filled. The pace slackened when Erasmus called by, bringing Hope Wedgwood with him (Fanny and Hensleigh’s youngest, roughly the same age as Henrietta). Darwin sent the ladies off on a scenic tour round Devon, Emma, Henrietta, and Hope together, the only time Emma went anywhere without small boys attached to her skirts and a trip remembered with pleasure for that reason by Henrietta. Left alone, the men discussed science at the dinner table, sticking pieces of ice together in order to understand John Tyndall’s new theory of glacier motion.25

  When they returned to Downe, Henrietta was better and Darwin worse. The travelling made him feel older than he was. “I cannot stand such fatigue & am in fact a man of seventy years old.” He was actually fifty-two.

  VI

  Autumn and winter passed in a haze of family concerns. Emma’s sister Charlotte Langton became ill and died in January 1862, aged sixty-five. Charlotte’s house was to be sold, breaking up the enclave of Wedgwood sisters at Hartfield, and Emma could not imagine how Elizabeth would cope on her own. Sure enough, after a spell living in a London house close to Erasmus and Hensleigh, in 1868 Elizabeth purchased a property in Downe village, called Tromer Lodge, to be near her remaining sister.

  At Down House, influenza prostrated the household. Since Parslow was the only one left on his feet, Darwin sent him to Bromley with the horse and cart to get a doctor to minister to them all. As soon as Darwin recovered, he was struck down by eczema. It was a “miserable time.” Even so, decisions were taken. He and Emma decided at last to send Leonard to boarding school, feeling that ill health should not delay his education any longer. Darwin feared that Leonard was “rather slow & backward (in part owing to loss of time from ill-health).” Aged twelve, he followed his brothers to Clapham School at the beginning of 1862. Henrietta felt sufficiently recovered to stay with her London cousins for a few weeks early in the season.

  With Leonard and Henrietta gone, Horace emerged as a new source of anxiety. He was the youngest child, then aged ten, and began having what Darwin and Emma described as “fits,” or the shakes. They thought at first he might have developed a neurological disorder caused by a bad knock on the head. Soon Darwin got it into his mind that Horace—like the others—was sinking into a hereditary disorder. However, with hindsight it seems equally probable that Horace may have been consumed with a boyish passion for Camilla Ludwig, the young German governess, who went everywhere with them and was a family favourite. Miss Ludwig arrived from Hamburg in 1860, after Miss Latter left, probably applying to become a governess to an English family only because of unexpectedly reduced circumstances. The little information that can be gathered about her indicates that she was apprehensive about the position. To be a governess was a delicate operation in Victorian England, neither a servant nor an equal, yet more intimate with the employer’s family than with any other people beyond her own relatives or future spouse.26 She supervised the children who remained at home, teaching German to Henrietta and Bessy and helping Darwin with his German language researches. It was Miss Ludwig who soothed Horace after every attack of the shakes.

  Darwin recounted his worries to William:

  [He] has oddest attacks, many times a day, of shuddering & gasping & hysterical sobbing, semi-convulsive movements, with much distress of feeling. These semi-convulsive movements have been less during these last few days, & are never accompanied by loss of consciousness. Do you remember his being pitched out of the Truck: Mr Headland thinks his brain probably suffered a little concussion; but I cannot help thinking that it is all due to some extreme irritation of stomach. Miss Ludwig is unspeakably kind to him, & he will remain with her all day & night. We shall have no peace in life till the poor dear sweet little man gets better.27

  After a while it looked as if the mysterious attacks mostly came on after meals, and Darwin took Horace to London to see the general surgeon Mr. Headland, who prescribed “pepsine” for stomach trouble and an occasional blister to draw out any toxins. By now Darwin blamed himself, convinced that he had transmitted by inheritance his “wretched constitution” to the little boy. “We have Horace failing badly with intermittent weak pulse, like four of our children previously,” he groaned to John Innes. “It is a curious form of inheritance from my poor constitution, though I never failed in exactly that way.”28 He consulted several other doctors, including Henry Holland, who inquired whether the fidgets were caused by intestinal worms (“Does he pi
ck his nose?”). Dr. Engleheart, the village surgeon, was perhaps the most perceptive in recommending that Miss Ludwig should take a short holiday. Emma saw something in the idea. “Horace’s devotion to Miss L. is got to such a pitch that I don’t know what he will come to. He can’t bear to sit on different side of the table at meals so that he often gives up the fire side for the sake of sitting by her.”29

  Mr Engleheart is very anxious to get him away from Miss L & he thinks a change or excitement would do him good. I doubt whether it will make much difference about Miss L but I think sometimes his fondness for her agitates him & makes him worse. I think she is very judicious & quick with him.30

  Shortly afterwards, Emma decided that Miss Ludwig should pay a visit to her mother in Germany and that she and Horace would go to Southampton, ostensibly to see William in his new situation as a banker but really to give Horace something to occupy his mind. It all had to be tactfully planned. “We think it will break his heart much less to leave her here & come to you, than for her to leave first,” she notified William. The enforced separation apparently did the trick, and Horace was never so bad again. It was a bonus for the adults to discover William placidly settled in his Southampton banking career. In the interim, Frau Ludwig sent another daughter to fill in as governess for Henrietta and Bessy; and after a suitable interval Miss Ludwig herself was allowed to return. She was missed by Darwin, who liked her a great deal and needed her to translate difficult patches of scientific German. He sent a friendly note to her in Hamburg, packed with news about the family. He called her, unlike all the other governesses who came and went, by her given name, Camilla.