by Janet Browne
“I shall get it tomorrow,” he said: “I keep all those things. Have you seen me in the Hornet?” As I had not seen the number referred to, he asked one of his sons to fetch the paper from upstairs. It contained a grotesque caricature representing a great gorilla having Darwin’s head and face, standing by the trunk of a tree with a club in his hand. Darwin showed it off very pleasantly, saying, slowly and with characteristic criticism, “The head is cleverly done, but the gorilla is bad: too much chest; it couldn’t be like that.”21
Still, a dangerous note could be identified here and there. One caricature by the French artist André Gill (L. A. Gosset de Guine) in the Parisian journal La Lune, printed in August 1878, extrapolated mercilessly from Darwin’s Descent of Man. This print made the links between natural selection and the philosophical doctrine of materialism absolutely clear. Under the caption “L’homme descend du singe,” Darwin appeared as a monkey at the circus, bursting through a paper hoop labelled “Credulité” and aiming for another marked “Superstitions—Erreurs.” The hoops were held by Émile Littré, the medical writer and populariser of Comte, who was repeatedly denounced as the archfiend of French scientific positivism. The threatening implications of Darwinism were thus made obvious to the men and women of the Third Republic, locked in controversy over positivism, republicanism, the Catholic Church, the chemical origin of life, free thought, and the question of progress. While very few Frenchmen or women accepted Darwin’s ideas, much preferring their own versions of environmental determinism, Gill evidently wanted to show how Darwin’s ideas were being taken up by positivists.
On the other side of the Atlantic, racial issues made an ugly appearance when Sol Eytinge used Darwinism to expose the divisions in American culture. A close personal friend of Charles Dickens, and at one point Dickens’s American illustrator, Eytinge regularly commented on black causes during the most difficult years after the Civil War. In his occasional “Blackville” series for Harper’s Weekly from 1874, the key period for civil rights issues, he customarily placed Negro families in typically white situations. In January 1879 he sketched an imaginary hometown political debate in which the black chairman asked “wedder Lord Dorwin involved hisself or somebody else” in his theory of evolution. The implication that only Negroes might have descended from apes reflected much contemporary theory, harking back to the views broadcast by Agassiz, James Hunt, and others during the war period who maintained Negroes must be a different and inferior species of mankind.22 However, the artists at Harper’s were unsure exactly where they stood on the colour question. Another sketch from a different hand presented “Darwinian Development” with barbed animosity. A rural black couple in a draper’s store ask for a chignon for the lady, implying impossible social aspirations.23 In these pictures deep-seated divisions were made plain.
Darwin also made an appearance as a minor character in a vast satirical broadsheet published under the name “Ion” in London in 1873 (with another version following afterwards in 1883). This satire was attributed (probably correctly) to clever, mild-mannered George Holyoake, the leading radical secularist of the period and author of Half-Hours with Freethinkers, the survivor of a notorious show trial for blasphemy in 1842. Holyoake had dedicated his life to creating a secular alternative to the established British church, a high-minded liberal movement taken over and dominated by Charles Bradlaugh, the much tougher, hard-nosed, charismatic leader of the National Secular Society.24 The broadsheet linked ecclesiastical dissent with descent. It was titled Our National Church and provided an all-embracing critique on the fragmenting religious beliefs of the nation, depicting rival sects of Broad Church, Low Church, High Church, Dissenters, “No Church,” Catholicism, and Science. Up in a corner it included the three priests of scientific naturalism, Darwin, Huxley, and John Tyndall. This complex picture primarily played on James Martineau’s widely publicised attempts during the 1870s to unite all clergymen under the single umbrella of a “national” church, and evolutionary theory was merely one of several perceived threats to the theological establishment.
The print showed the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral as a giant umbrella unable to shelter religious traditionalists from the stormy winds of doctrinal unrest. Nonconformists pull the chocks away, atheists rant in a corner, Catholic converts follow a signpost “To Rome,” and neither the broad churchmen nor the low churchmen can handle the dome’s straining guyropes in the gale. A donkey rudely calls, “Let us bray.” It was fair comment, said the radical divine Moncure Daniel Conway.25 Huxley, Tyndall, and the renegade clergyman Bishop Colenso push upwards towards the apish figure of Darwin on a hillside, who calls, “This way to daylight, my sons.” The tightly packed text informed readers that over the horizon lay the dawn of an intellectual era which would dispel “the chilling influence of the church.”
The second version, usually printed in red and black, was revised to emphasise the evolutionary point. This later version showed an ape carrying the flag of Darwinism, followed by a trail of well-known agnostic philosophers and dissenting clergymen, including Spencer (“Philosophy”), Conway (“We must move on”), Huxley, and Tyndall (“Science”), all aiming for a plinth on which stood Darwin’s bust surrounded by a cloud of “Protoplasm.”26 Both versions of the print were in Darwin’s personal collection, although it is not known how many others were printed and distributed, or to whom.27 The artist, whoever he was, considered Darwin and his theory an integral part of the secular, highly politicised world coming into being around him.
Such powerful visual statements propelled the idea of evolution out of the arcane realms of learned societies and literary magazines into the ordinary world of humour, newspapers, and demotic literature. Without Mr. Punch’s monkeys and gorillas, Figaro’s mirror of nature, and Holyoake’s cloud of protoplasm, the transformation in nineteenth-century thought would probably have remained predominantly an elite phenomenon. The full implications of human descent would have taken much longer to sink in. These caricatures were not just a transparent medium of illustration but an actual shaper of contemporary thought, as representative in their own way as any of the fine arts or literary texts of the period. The themes of Darwin’s Descent of Man were graphically repackaged in a versatile cultural form enjoying wide distribution and popular appeal. The cartoons might appear on the tables of any middle-class home in the country.
“Might we not enter thus a mild protest against Darwin at dinner and Darwin at tea?” inquired a cynical journalist in the Globe.28
III
People wanted to see him in the flesh too. An ordinary member of the public could usually hope to catch only the most fleeting glimpse of eminent Victorians. Opportunities to hear their voices were even rarer. Duchesses might be seen rattling past in a coach-and-four or opening a hospital, Gladstone might occasionally appear on the hustings, Tennyson might read to a party of friends, or Dickens might tour the provinces with elaborately staged theatrical readings. Yet before long, Victorian celebrities of one kind or another began making more obvious public showings of themselves, explicitly feeding their audiences’ wishes. It hardly mattered that such opportunities were highly structured and limited, little more than a version of the ritual display that has always been an aspect of leadership. A queen and her people, for example, expected both to see and be seen. The ceremonial elements of such occasions were straightforward. A genuinely personal encounter, on the other hand, could create a remarkable thrill, as Browning understood in his famous line “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?” These sightings were recorded as memorable incidents in the lives of those who came face to face with a star. Many of the people who met Darwin as a private individual consequently could not resist writing about him, even when aware that such comments were a poor return for his hospitable attention. There was an indefinable sense of the public’s growing right to sit at the firesides of the famous.
By going to see a celebrity in person, a devotee could in addition satisfy his or her curiosity and bypass or supple
ment in important ways the whole laborious process of reading. In the nineteenth century, pilgrimages to literary figures began in earnest. Wordsworth was pestered in the Lake District, and snoopers became such a nuisance to Tennyson on the Isle of Wight that he fled to the closely wooded hills of Surrey. “I can’t be anonymous … by reason of your confounded photographs,” he complained to Mrs. Cameron in August 1868.29 Darwin discovered his position was little different.
Through the 1870s and early 1880s, a stream of sightseers visited or attempted to visit Darwin at Down House. In retrospect, this was quite an undertaking. The journey from London was inconvenient, involving a train journey and then the hire of transport from the nearest railway station. From the outside, too, Down House presented an intimidating appearance to socially unsophisticated callers. The gravelled drive, closed gates, and imposing front door that would be opened by a servant signalled that this was an Englishman’s private domain. Relaxed and intimate though the stories were about Darwin’s family setting, such pleasantries were only for the people who had an entrée.
Nevertheless, the people came. Several of these visitors Darwin knew by repute or through letters of introduction from friends; some were already acquaintances by correspondence; others became warm friends and visited again and again. The rest were unknown and uninvited, and to Darwin unwelcome. A few were an actual trial. Darwin grumbled with his family about the need to gush over Lady Dorothy Nevill when she arrived to discuss orchids. Still, he regarded his obligation to entertain as an unavoidable duty. Emma Darwin’s diaries indicate that although he guarded his privacy jealously, he received many more visitors than his reputation for seclusion suggested.
Interconnections between Darwin’s fame, the increasing leverage of his theories, and his shrewd management of personal publicity can be identified here. Many of these visitors regarded a meeting with Darwin as a turning point in their lives. Anton Dohrn, the young Prussian naturalist, longed to visit him during a trip to England in 1867 but was afraid to ask. He had heard so much about Darwin from Haeckel, his teacher and professional colleague at Jena, that he wished literally to sit at Darwin’s feet and venerate him. After several years of zoological correspondence, Darwin politely invited him for lunch in 1870. Dohrn described the day as a cherished memory, although noting in a puzzled manner that Darwin did not seem nearly so ill as he expected.30 The time for private discussion was rationed to one hour. On this occasion, Darwin unashamedly manipulated his reputation for poor health—his time was limited, his strength was weak, his prestige was high. As a result, Dohrn felt he was meeting royalty. He went away glowing with Darwin’s endorsement of his biological endeavours. For his own part, Darwin liked this young man who adopted the evolutionary project with such ardour. Both benefitted from the relationship. Darwin became a patron of Dohrn’s Zoological Research Station founded in Naples in 1874, and afterwards did a good deal to further the work of the station through gifts and personal recommendations.31 In return, the station became a leading centre for evolutionary researches—in Dohrn’s case, for working on the evolutionary connections between different arthropods and the ancestral origins of vertebrates.
Grown men could crumble in the presence of the god. The American mathematician and philosopher Chauncey Wright paid a call on Darwin in 1872 and burbled about a near-religious experience. Fresh from the natural science tripos at Cambridge University, twenty-two-year-old George Romanes breathlessly recorded that Darwin greeted him with the unexpected words “How glad I am that you are so young!” Romanes became one of Darwin’s most dedicated English disciples during the 1870s. John Lubbock said that another admirer of Darwin, whom he brought over to Down House for an hour’s courtesy call, burst into tears when safely on the way home. The visitor had been so overcome during the visit that he could not summon up courage to speak to the great man.32 A few of these young men turned Darwin into a secular saint and Darwinism into a religion.
Occasionally, Darwin was uncertain whether visitors were taking undue advantage. Sometimes acquaintances would arrive with an unknown colleague in tow. If so, Darwin would simply manipulate the elaborate social rituals built up by the Victorian country gentry, presenting himself for viewing only for as long as etiquette required. He would make his excuses and leave, citing his ill health, his need for privacy or for a nap, or the unremitting duties of scientific work, according to the audience. Intimate friends usually conspired to help these plans along. Mary Lyell wrote to an American geologist who proposed a visit reminding her correspondent that although he “might find Mr. Darwin looking well and strong, I should remember his really delicate strength, and not stay too long.” Lubbock would solicitously say, “You will I am sure be tired & must not overdo yourself.” Guests seldom noticed how selfish these escape mechanisms were, designed to minimise disruption to Darwin alone. Like an old-time patriarch, Darwin granted only what was convenient and more or less ignored the activities among his friends and household that ensured everything would go smoothly.
In this respect, Darwin’s entourage worked as if they were a family firm, protecting and supporting their figurehead. Emma Darwin and whichever sons or daughters might be at home were expected to rally round and take a major part in entertaining guests. Either Hooker or Huxley was often invited to ease the proceedings along. Francis Darwin was needed for his languages or to explain botanical experiments, George for his chit-chat about the senior commonrooms of Cambridge University, Leonard for stories of military life, Henrietta for piano recitals. Darwin’s household was an integrated corporate enterprise.33 Emma and Parslow ran the business with practised efficiency.
Inevitably, these social events came to be regarded with a certain weary cynicism within the privacy of the family circle.
We have been rather overdone with Germans this week. Haeckel came on Tuesday. He was very nice and hearty and affectionate, but he bellowed out his bad English in such a voice that he nearly deafened us. However that was nothing to yesterday when Professor Cohn (quite deaf) and his wife (very pleasing) and a Professor R. came to lunch—anything like the noise they made I never heard. Both visits were short and F. was glad to have seen them.34
In this manner, strangers were drawn into the personalised web of Darwin’s work, his home, and his family. Making a visit to Down House became an important abstraction in its own right, representing Darwin’s status and, it should be said, the intellectual achievement of the visitor. Mischievously, Huxley sent a sketch of someone paying his devotions at the shrine of “Pope Darwin.”35 Pulled as they were into the ambit of Down House and the family, many of these visitors became Darwin’s staunchest defenders.
IV
The famous came too. Thomas Carlyle was astonished to see Darwin’s cheerful demeanour when he visited him in 1875. He had expected an invalid.
I had not seen him for twenty years. He is a pleasant jolly-minded man with much observation and a clear way of expressing it. Has long been an invalid. I asked him if he thought there was a possibility of men turning back into apes again. He laughed much at this, and came back to it over and over again.36
This meeting somewhat eased Carlyle’s views on evolution, softening him up sufficiently to declare to Huxley at an Edinburgh dinner, “If my progenitor was an ape I will thank you, Mr. Huxley, to be polite enough not to mention it.” Evolution was “rather a humiliating discovery and the less said about it the better.”37 This remark possibly formed the grounds of George Bernard Shaw’s anecdote involving a duchess who expresses the same view.
Samuel Smiles arrived in 1876 and was also startled by the noise of crashing illusions. He was taken aback by Darwin’s vivacity. “He almost embraced me. I staid to lunch with him & his family. He was full of talk—and he, as well as myself, could scarcely eat for speaking.… He went over no end of things. What keen penetration he has. He seems to have an insight into everything. I was almost glad to get away, for his cheeks began to flush; & he is accustomed on such occasions to rush out of the room & ta
ke refuge on his sofa in his study.”38 Underneath Smiles’s words lay the suspicion of a hint that Darwin might be a bore when he got going. Smiles brought with him a copy of his latest book, Life of a Scotch Naturalist: Thomas Edward (1876), another of his tales of heroic self-improvement. Darwin thanked him, saying he had read every one of his biographies with “extreme pleasure.”
Hooker, Huxley, and others all testified to Darwin’s good humour and lively conversation. At home, on his own terrain, where he was confident that he could control interactions with callers, Darwin appeared to guests as a talkative, hospitable, engaging man, not a sickly hermit. It was his very ordinariness, if anything, that captivated people expecting to meet a sage. “I sometimes feel it is very odd that anyone belonging to me should be making such a noise in the world,” Emma told Aunt Fanny Allen.39
The more unusual guests naturally etched themselves into the family’s collective memory. Emma Darwin wrote to one of the children:
Do you remember a working man from Australia who rushed in to shake hands with him a year ago and was for going straight off again without another word? We have heard of him again from a Canadian who met him on the road to California, on foot, with nothing on but drawers and shirt, in the pocket of which he carried his pipe and a letter from F. of which he is very proud and shows to everybody.40
Some, like the new doctor in Downe, were merely boring. “He sat an hour and a half & expressed so much pleasure at the thought of a chat with Prof D.,” said Emma tartly, “that I am afraid the Professor will have to snub him a little to get rid of him.”41