Charles Darwin

by Janet Browne

  Pray bear in mind that if a naturalist is once considered, though unjustly, as not quite trustworthy, it takes long years before he can recover his reputation for accuracy.62

  And to be sure, excited claims by Huxley, Carpenter, and Haeckel that they had found primitive organisms, even naked protoplasm, in the seabed’s ooze had been exposed as an embarrassing mistake.63 Other announcements merely complicated the puzzle of life. Almost alone among practising scientists, John Tyndall put the weight of modern physics behind the germ theory of disease, in which it was contentiously suggested that one germ is always born of another germ, a point of view that immediately ruled out spontaneous generation. But a young researcher called Henry Bastian indicated that there was no real boundary between organic and inorganic substances—“transubstantiation will be nothing to this if it turns out to be true,” proclaimed Huxley with a sneer. John Hughes Bennett similarly thought he had evidence for “active molecules.” And although cell theory was by now firmly established, the status of bacteria and protozoa as single-celled organisms remained indistinct—Darwin’s friend Ferdinand Cohn was attacking this problem head-on.

  To onlookers, the interconnections between these ideas and the people who proposed them appeared close—evolutionary theory and the physical basis of life seemed part and parcel of the same sprawling intellectual enigma of scepticism, agnosticism, and materialism. So Huxley’s provocative lecture in 1869 on “the physical basis of life” was immediately taken as the Darwinists’ declaration of support for spontaneous generation, though Huxley afterwards denied it. When Tyndall succinctly dismissed theology—prayers, cassock, pulpit, and all—during his notorious address at the British Association meeting in Belfast in 1874, it looked as if naturalists were asserting the sole sufficiency of science as a means of comprehending the entire universe. As popular rumour had it, Huxley declared, “Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet and Faust therefrom.”64 Darwin had long been anxious that wavering evolutionists should not be confronted with such starkly impious speculations.

  After reading Bastian’s enormous two-volume publication on the chemical beginnings of life in 1872, and Wallace’s review of it in Nature, Darwin therefore wrote to Wallace in an ambivalent frame of mind. Bastian intimated that Lamarck’s notion of a constantly replenished source of primitive organisms might be accurate. “I am bewildered and astonished by his statements, but am not convinced.… I must have more evidence,” said Darwin. Wallace suggested that these rapid transformations of simple matter could quicken evolution to the point where Thomson’s warnings about the shortened age of the earth could safely be ignored. Darwin saw the value in this. He would like to see spontaneous generation proved true, he told Wallace, “for it would be a discovery of transcendent importance.”65 For the rest of his life he watched and pondered.

  VI

  In 1872, Emma arranged that they should take a house in London for a month in January, an innovation that became a regular habit. That first year they went to Devonshire Street, where Henrietta and her husband joined them. They wanted to keep an eye on her delicate health. The following year, Henrietta had improved enough for her to establish her own married household in Bryanston Street, close to Erasmus. From then on, Darwin and Emma stayed with Henrietta rather than Erasmus or the Hensleigh Wedgwoods. Indeed, Henrietta took on much of the role that Erasmus had earlier played in Darwin’s life, providing a safe haven in London and agreeable social connections. Henrietta participated in Litchfield’s liberal circles of friends, including F. D. Maurice, John Ruskin, Leslie Stephen, and Arthur Munby, all of whom incidentally appreciated the subtle lure of knowing one of Darwin’s daughters. Had Henrietta been anyone else’s daughter, it is doubtful whether Munby would have paid her quite so much attention.

  Tuesday, 19 November [1872] … to 2 Bryanston Street, and dined with Litchfield. Only his wife & her brother George Darwin. Her father’s new book on the expression of emotion was on the table; and Mrs. L. said that often, at home, he used to make her and his other children go out in the garden and look steadfastly at some object, such [as] a particular twig on a tree, to study their faces as they looked. But often, she added, when her father in his rides had stopped to notice the expression of some crying child’s face, he found himself saying ‘Poor little thing!’ and losing his power of observation in his sympathy with the object observed.66

  During these London months there was plenty of relaxed mingling. “Charles had much rather stay at home, but he knows his place and submits,” said Emma approvingly. When added to an annual trip to Southampton to see William at his house, Basset in the New Forest (“a really hideous Victorian villa,” said Darwin’s granddaughter Gwen Raverat), the days passed agreeably by.

  While next in London in 1873, Darwin was disconcerted to discover that Huxley was on the brink of nervous collapse. He was doing too much, too often, at too high a pitch, and for woefully inadequate pay—and Darwin was shocked that he had not noticed before. Sympathetically, the wives suggested to their husbands that a few close friends might club together to give Huxley enough money for a holiday. Henrietta Litchfield said, “My father took eagerly to the idea and became the active promoter of the scheme.” His heart was easily fired by Huxley’s problems. He longed to do something—anything—to show his affection and high regard. After a conspiratorial talk with Lyell and Hooker, in which they found themselves puzzled how to prevent Huxley taking offence, he wrote letter after letter to mutual friends asking for subscriptions, stashing up the cash in secret until he could present it to Huxley as a cheque. The total came to £2,100, a huge amount for the day (some two years’ salary for Huxley) that testified to the respect with which Huxley was regarded.

  If you could have heard what was said [wrote Darwin], or could have read what was, as I believe, our inmost thoughts, you would know that we all feel towards you, as we should to an honoured and much loved brother. I am sure you will return this feeling, and will therefore be glad to give us the opportunity of aiding you in some degree, as this will be a happiness to us to the last day of our lives.67

  Touched, Huxley accepted the gift as it was intended. The friends, however, took no chances—they knew their man inside out. First, they put Hooker in charge of him, recognising that it would be a tough job making the patient relax as completely as Andrew Clark, his medical supervisor, recommended. Off the pair went, leaving their wives and families behind, for a walking holiday in the Alps, a favourite occupation from the time when, as energetic young men, Hooker, Huxley, and Tyndall used to hike through the mountains, glacier-spotting and plant-hunting, calling themselves Smith, Brown, and Robinson after the popular Victorian satire on tourism. But they were no Smith, Brown, and Robinson now. Huxley was the leading biologist of the era, Tyndall the leading physicist, and Hooker president of the Royal Society.

  Hooker encountered one or two testing moments. At a Swiss railway bookstall, he had to wrestle a book about the miracles at Lourdes out of Huxley’s hands in case he lost his temper over Catholicism and Mivart all over again. In France, he rashly let Huxley climb the Pic de Sancy, only to see him feverishly making notes about previously unsuspected glacial action. In a small provincial museum, Huxley thought he saw an unrecorded prehistoric human skeleton and could not rest until he had taken details of the bones. But eventually the unruly ward calmed down. When Hooker left, and Henrietta Huxley came out to join her husband, leaving the children in Emma’s care, Huxley proclaimed himself “wonderfully better.” He never forgot his friends’ kindness in this affair. In one of his most buoyant moods, he dashed off a note to Tyndall telling him he had shaved off his beard as a token of his affection.

  VII

  Early in 1873, Francis Galton gave Darwin something different to think about. He asked Darwin to list the special mental qualities that he felt he might possess. Galton was immersed in a survey of the mental attributes of scientific men, intending to identify in quantitative terms the “genius” or talent for science
that, as he believed, characterised the British nation. His conclusions would primarily be based on questionnaires circulated among fellows of the Royal Society. His book was published in 1874 as English Men of Science, Their Nature and Nurture.

  Galton had been collecting these statistics for a long time, although not always so methodically. He was pushed into action by a critique of his Hereditary Genius by the Swiss plant geographer Alphonse de Candolle, whose work was admired by Darwin. The links between botany and human heredity were unexpectedly close in de Candolle’s mind because he concerned himself with a plant’s adaptation to the environment, an approach that enabled him to see many faults in Galton’s case for the hereditary transmission of characteristics. Then in 1873 de Candolle produced a biographical history of science in which he delved further into the same issue. “I have hardly ever read anything more original and interesting than your treatment of the causes which favour the development of scientific men,” Darwin said appreciatively to de Candolle. Galton decided to look again at the role of upbringing in early development.

  Galton was not the first to ask Darwin such questions. By now several people had inquired into what they imagined Darwin’s private mental life might be. Some questions originated in simple curiosity about the likes and dislikes of the famous. Others stemmed from a growing interest in what would come to be called developmental psychology, or sought some form of idealised vignette about the scientific “character.”68 Darwin was occasionally asked for his views on school education, for example, and was always ready to repeat his low opinion of Latin and Greek. “I am rather inclined to think that real education does not begin till after school & college days; at least I am sure this was the case with myself.”69 These maverick views did not endear him to many headmasters, and it is worth noting that Darwin’s schooldays were not turned into a moralising story for boys, at least not during the nineteenth century when such narratives were commonplace. Nor were his travels on the Beagle used as a basis for popular adventure stories, perhaps because the scientific theories that had emerged from the voyage were still highly contested knowledge. Arthur Nicols’s account of the history of the earth, written for children and called The Puzzle of Life (1877), certainly included descriptions of Darwin’s South American fossils but avoided any direct reference to Darwin himself and came to an elevated theological conclusion. There was probably at that time little scope for a suitably Victorian ethos to be drawn from Darwin’s life story. David Livingstone’s missionary travels in Africa and the search in the Arctic wastes for the missing explorer John Franklin were popular alternatives.

  More frequently, he was asked for biographical information, requests that were part of the fashion in Victorian England for real-life stories that might match the abundance of contemporary tropes about character and personality. Samuel Smiles’s doctrines of self-help and determination in overcoming difficulties featured widely in this literature. One acquaintance of Darwin’s, William Preyer, a physiologist and psychologist in the University of Jena and a friend of Haeckel’s and Dohrn’s, wrote to him in 1870 to ask whether he could publish a biographical sketch. For some years now Preyer had been teaching Darwinismus to biological students in classes numbering up to five hundred. Preyer was alert to the formal honours of science, arranging in 1868 for Darwin to be awarded an honorary degree from the medical school at Bonn. He explained he was particularly interested in Darwin’s mental development and asked “which book or books made deep impressions on you in youth.”

  Flattered at the request, Darwin supplied Preyer with a generously long account of his memories of Edinburgh and Cambridge universities, his love for Henslow, his admiration of the writings of Gilbert White and Humboldt, and his belief that his “education in fact began on board the Beagle.” Simple as it was, with this in his hands Preyer had as much to go on as any other biographer of the period. Even with the best will in the world, Darwin never probed very far into his own character and usually relied on comfortable stereotypes that simultaneously conveyed what he regarded as the truth about himself and relatively unexceptional traits that echoed the conventions of his time. He was reserved. These kinds of self-analytic writings were difficult for him. Yet he felt the resulting article was fuller, and truer, than anything hitherto published about him—probably because so much of it came from his own hand.70 But he laughed at Preyer’s description of cart-tracks leading to Down House: “you give … too bad a character to our roads or rather lanes; they are rather narrow and rather bad; but when you come to England, I hope that you will prove by visiting me here that they are not impassable.”71

  By responding to inquiries like these, Darwin took an increasingly active part in constructing his public persona and codifying his role in introducing evolution to the world. In 1874, Nature began a series of “Scientific Worthies” in which Darwin appeared in an article written by Asa Gray. A similar article was written for the Judische Literaturblatt of 1878, edited by Dr. Moritz Rahmer, which featured Lamarck, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Haeckel, and Darwin as the founding fathers of evolution.72 Arabella Buckley, Lyell’s secretary, wrote A Short History of Natural Science for Young People (1876), which included biographical remarks about Darwin and Wallace and their independent construction of evolution by natural selection. “You have crowned Wallace and myself with much honour and glory,” remarked Darwin cordially.73

  Galton’s request pushed Darwin into a much more self-analytic framework, and he did his best to respond. The questionnaire was seven pages long, covering family background, health, temperament, religious beliefs, education, and scientific interests. A second column asked for the same information about Darwin’s father. Darwin found the personal questions were the hardest. He felt obliged to ask his son George for his opinion to answer one of them. “George thinks this applies to me,” he wrote in response to Galton’s inquiry about “originality or eccentricity.”

  I do not think so—ie. as far as eccentricity. I suppose that I have shown originality in science, as I have made discoveries with regard to common objects.74

  Others were more straightforward. “I consider that all I have learnt of any value has been self-taught,” he declared. Where Galton asked, “Do your scientific tastes appear to have been innate?” Darwin replied they were “certainly innate … my innate taste for natural history strongly confirmed and directed by the voyage in the Beagle.”75 To the question “Has the religious creed taught in your youth had any deterrent effect on the freedom of your researches?” he replied, “No.” He gave his religious affiliation as “Nominally to Church of England.”

  As for the rest, “I have filled up the answers as well as I could, but it is simply impossible for me to estimate the degrees.”

  Politics?—Liberal or radical.

  Health?—Good when young—bad for last 33 years.

  Temperament?—Somewhat nervous.

  Energy of body?—Energy shown by much activity, and whilst I had health, power of resisting fatigue.… An early riser in the morning.

  Energy of mind?—Shown by rigorous and long-continued work on same subject, as 20 years on the “Origin of Species” and 9 years on Cirripedia.

  Memory?—Memory very bad for dates, and for learning by rote; but good in retaining a general or vague recollection of many facts.

  Studiousness?—Very studious, but not large acquirements.

  Independence of Judgement?—I think fairly independent; but I can give no instances. I gave up common religious belief almost independently from my own reflections.

  Strongly marked mental peculiarities?—Steadiness, great curiosity about facts and their meaning. Some love of the new and marvellous.

  For the final question, he buoyantly disregarded all his contributions to scientific thought and claimed that his only special talent lay in business and finance.

  Special talents?—None, except for business, as evinced by keeping accounts, replies to correspondence, and investing money very well. Very methodical in all my habit
s.

  At the heart of it lay the conviction that his results were brought about by his own “rigorous and long-continued work.” Perhaps he needed to believe this. Had Darwin been able to see himself with the eyes of another, he could not have ignored the intellectual resourcefulness he displayed throughout his thinking life, admittedly in untrained form in the earliest pre-Beagle days, but then developing through the highly productive years of On the Origin of Species and culminating in The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in 1871 and 1872. His customary veneer of modesty here allowed him to deflect personal inquiries without the need for any discomforting self-examination.

  On another level, however, he may have sensed that the quality of perseverance was indeed the single most important feature of his personality, or at least the feature that had contributed most to his success in science. This is not to say that he regarded diligence as a sure way to scientific achievement, although he did here and there make exactly that kind of assertion and often praised those men who revealed similar qualities. It was more that he identified in himself the ability to persist, and retrospectively turned it into an all-consuming methodology and justification—that this was his way of tackling questions. Whereas Huxley or Wallace might have relied on flashes of brilliance, or Hooker on his prodigious memory, it seems possible that Darwin may genuinely have regarded his special talent for science to lie in mental determination. He had given his life to the ceaseless documentation of facts, pushing and pulling at species until everything fell into place. From time to time, he used the expression “It’s dogged as does it,” drawing on the phrase used by Anthony Trollope in The Last Chronicle of Barset.76