by Janet Browne
The biography was published in November 1879. Darwin blundered thoughtlessly when he came to send the material to Murray for publication. Coincidentally, in May 1879, Samuel Butler had published an essay on the history of evolutionary theory which included a comparison between old Erasmus Darwin and his grandson Charles, called Evolution Old and New, or the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck Compared with That of Mr. Charles Darwin. Butler carried a noteworthy name himself, being the grandson of the Dr. Butler who had been Darwin’s headmaster at Shrewsbury School and a descendant of the seventeenth-century Samuel Butler who wrote Hudibras. In 1872 this Butler had published the novel Erewhon, a vigorous satire on Victorian life, drawing on evolutionary science for a literary set-piece in which a utopian race of human beings abolishes all machinery because it begins to evolve mental ability. Later on, Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously) was an unrelentingly bitter saga of the degradation of a family line. In his nonfiction he was one of the first seriously to compare different evolutionary theories.
Butler regarded natural selection with refreshing dislike. Although he endorsed evolution as a general idea, and as a youth had admired the Origin of Species, he had come to feel increasing distaste for Charles Darwin’s principles and thought there was much to commend in earlier schemes that relied on the internal drive of organisms to power evolutionary change, such as Lamarck’s or Erasmus Darwin’s proposals. His book Evolution Old and New was aimed partly at reinstating these older schemes. Like Wallace and Spencer he hoped to reshape evolutionary theory and use it as a means of describing the progress of the human mind. But unlike them, he kicked against the mechanism of natural selection, emerging as a leading figure in the anti-Darwinian backlash that was to take shape in the 1880s and 1890s.60
Unsurprisingly, Darwin did not think much of Butler’s book. He sent it to Krause, along with a note indicating that he thought it had little merit, “without anything new having been added.” Krause inserted a critical remark about it into his shortened essay on Dr. Darwin. More than this, Krause apparently copied a few useful phrases to help his argument along, and paraphrased another. When Erasmus Darwin was published in English by Murray in November 1879, Darwin omitted to mention that the original German essay had been shortened, changed, and updated. In reality, Darwin had begun to say some of this in his draft for the preface, but Krause said he did not wish to advertise the fact that Darwin had abridged his work. In response Darwin deleted the remarks from the proofs. Now, in final printed form, Darwin’s preface made it sound as if the original German article had been published before the Butler volume and the criticisms of Butler had been present in Krause’s original essay. Neither was true. Butler was outraged, accused Darwin of publishing a falsehood, and in the letter pages of the Athenaeum demanded a public apology.61 As George Darwin afterwards put it, Butler claimed that “this book was fraudulently antedated & was intended as a covert attack on him.”62 A few weeks later, Butler accused Darwin of plagiarism as well.
As in his disagreement with Mivart, Darwin was simultaneously angry at being wrong-footed and unsure how to proceed. He never expected a little book about his grandfather to inspire such venom. Nor was he accustomed to meeting someone who was prepared to fight back. Nevertheless, his first impulse was to explain his position. He drafted a letter for the Athenaeum and sent it up to London for Henrietta’s and Richard Litchfield’s advice, while Emma notified the rest of the family.
F. got so anxious to get his answer to Butler’s attack off his mind that he sent John up with it to R & Hen for their approval. They sent it down again with 2 very sensible letters from R & Hen warmly dissuading him from taking any notice. Their arguments were so good that I (& F) quite changed our opinions.… F has ended up referring the matter to Huxley, & he will be glad if he decides against publishing an answer. Meanwhile Dallas [the translator] wants to answer the attack & I have no doubt Krause will also, so Butler will be in the atmosphere of hot water which will be his delight.63
Friends and relatives offered conflicting advice. All the sons were involved, as were Richard Litchfield, Huxley, and Leslie Stephen, the last by virtue of his experience as a man of letters, who recommended Darwin to “take no notice of Butler whatever.” Erasmus called it a “boggle,” reporting to Julia Wedgwood that Darwin’s riposte was “suppressed by the Litches” and that he hoped her new book would be more successful than “our attempt to glorify the Darwins.” Letters hummed across Bloomsbury, Kent, Cambridge, and down to Southampton.
Today came Leslie Stephens’ award [verdict] which will be sent to you in due course. It is decidedly to do nothing; which I think will please some of you very much & satisfy everyone but steady old Leo. F. is quite satisfied. Huxley alluded to the matter in rather a poor joke as “the Butler spilling some more dirty water out of his pantry.”
In actuality, silence was the worst course to follow, as Francis Darwin subsequently realised.64 Darwin was in the wrong and should have apologised. Butler convinced himself he was the victim of a conspiracy, virulently attacking again and again. Both men took irreparable offence.
Like the Mivart affair, too, this quarrel involved a combination of personal, intellectual, and public concerns. The two men fenced with different weapons. Butler made direct use of the power of the press in order to make his accusations public. Darwin activated his subterranean network of private influence. And even if the quarrel had been promptly resolved, the underlying message was hard for Darwin to accept: he could not always expect his own way; a handful of younger evolutionists were coming to regard the theory of natural selection as inadequate; Darwinism was perceived, at least by some, as a growing orthodoxy that needed to be reevaluated. Darwin himself, moreover, might increasingly be considered the triumphant master of a clique, too grandiose to contemplate alternative opinions, too elevated to apologise, too quick to use his influence to trample on rivals without a second thought. Like Mivart, Butler at heart objected to the rising sycophantic tide of acquiescence.
The reactions of Darwin’s confidants were also entirely predictable. By now all Darwin had to do was to wind up Huxley and watch him move into action. In April 1880, Huxley deliberately knocked Butler on the head, although only in passing, in a rousing speech at the Royal Institution called “On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species,” an allusion to the twenty-first anniversary of the book’s publication. In this title Huxley intended to convey the dual meaning of both chronological and intellectual maturity. His talk was a statement that the Origin’s place in science was assured.
Darwin appreciated Huxley’s gesture. But he was not satisfied. Frustrated by his family’s advice to remain silent, he secretly encouraged Frank Balfour, the embryologist, to translate Krause’s letter of explanation and send it along to Nature. This was published in January 1881. Nor did he object when George Romanes went too far with a cutting review of Butler’s next book, Unconscious Memory. Taking a personal interest, Anthony Rich joined in.
Who the Devil’s Mr. Butler? When he can say, as you can say, that he has opened out to the knowledge of mankind a new field of Science, and has cultivated it through a life time with marvellous skill and industry, till all the most able men of every country have come to acknowledge the work as one of the greatest and most important discoveries of the age, while the worker is regarded with respect and honour by all who know him—well, when he can say that it will be time enough for you to pay attention to anything he may say. P.S. My lawn is the Paradise of earth-worms.65
The controversy had brought deeper currents of change to the surface. The body of thought generally labelled Darwinism was entering another phase of existence, easing out of the grip of its first protagonists. Darwin and Butler each took his resentment of the other to the grave.66
VII
Nor did Darwin immediately get his way in another battle of wills. Horace Darwin, his youngest son, wanted to marry Ida Farrer, Thomas Farrer’s daughter by his first wife, Fanny. The
two had been courting for some time. Unexpectedly, Farrer forbade the marriage, saying that Horace was an invalid and held so few prospects of professional advancement that Ida could not possibly lead the kind of married life that he, as her father, desired for her.
Darwin was dismayed by Farrer’s negative response. He tried hard not to be offended, for it was insulting to realise that although he might be an intimate friend, and admired for his intellect, he was deemed unsuitable to join the family as a father-in-law. Letters between him and Farrer became tense as Darwin stated Horace’s case. Tetchily, he inquired of his solicitor, the pragmatic William Hacon, how much he could afford to settle on his youngest son. Hacon mentioned a sum that he thought might induce Farrer to look more kindly on the marriage. Eventually Darwin asked Farrer for a personal interview, at which he explained Horace’s situation. Emma put the plan of campaign succinctly in a letter to Henrietta.
… especially his turn for mechanical invention, which is his profession tho’ not a profitable one; also Dr. C’s opinion that he was so likely to get well as life goes on, & that it was suppressed gout. Also how well off he wd. be, which is a matter of some consequence when you are not likely to make money.
Farrer relented in the autumn of 1879, and Horace and Ida married early in 1880. The couple went to live in Cambridge.
Eager for a diversion, the remaining family set out in August 1879 for a month’s holiday in the Lake District, travelling by train with Henrietta, Francis, and two-year-old Bernard in a private railway carriage hired for the occasion. Darwin complained about the extravagance but Emma said “we shd. have been quite killed but for the saloon carriage.” Admitting defeat, he jettisoned all pretence at invalidism and enjoyed the journey with “the freshness of a boy,” greatly savouring the vista of Morecambe Bay as the train snaked around the edge, one of the most dramatic combinations of railway engineering and coastal scenery in the United Kingdom.67 They stayed in a hotel in Coniston owned by Victor Marshall, the cousin of their architect at Down House, with views over the lake and gardens. Everyone remembered this holiday with pleasure. Darwin was more relaxed than the family had known him for a long time. On a day’s excursion to Grasmere, Henrietta said, “I shall never forget my father’s enthusiastic delight, jumping up from his seat in the carriage to see better at every striking moment.” Darwin recognised the unusual situation himself. “The scenery gave me more pleasure than I thought my soul, or whatever remains of it, was capable of feeling,” he told Romanes afterwards. Jovially, he wrote to Marshall to express his thanks, and volunteered to send him a young oak tree from Down House grown from an unusual specimen in his father’s garden at Shrewsbury. He agreed to return to the Lake District to Ullswater for another visit in 1881.
On that first trip, Darwin made the acquaintance of John Ruskin, the critic and author, who lived in seclusion at Brantwood on the shore of Lake Coniston. The two had much to talk about, not least the friends they held in common. Richard Litchfield knew Ruskin well from their time as teachers together at the Working Men’s College. Darwin listened sympathetically while Ruskin confided that his mind was becoming “clouded.” A few days later Darwin paid a return call during which Ruskin took him into a back room to show him his collection of J. M. Turner’s water-colours. Politely, Darwin murmured some appreciative words. Afterwards, he confessed “he could make out absolutely nothing of what Mr. Ruskin saw in them.”68 Victor Marshall reported that Ruskin subsequently spoke about this meeting in high good humour, mentioning Darwin’s “deep & tender interest about the brightly coloured hinder half of certain monkeys.”69
Early the following year, Darwin’s children arranged a surprise for him. They gave him a fur coat to keep out the winter cold, “a gift planned because we thought it in vain to expect him to be so extravagant as to give himself one.”70 Francis effected the delivery, leaving the coat surreptitiously in Darwin’s study during his afternoon rest.
I think the coat exploded very well. I left it on the study table furry side out and letter on the top at 3, so that he would find it at 4 when he started his walk. Jackson was 2nd conspirator, with a broad grin and the coat over his arm peeping thro’ the green baize door while I saw the coast clear in the study. You will see from father’s delightful letter to us how much pleased he was. He was quite affected and had tears in his eyes when he came out to see me, and said something like what dear good children you all are. I think it does very well being long and loose.71
Darwin said he would not be himself if he did not protest that “you have all been shamefully extravagant to spend so much money over your old father, however deeply you may have pleased him.”
Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants in November 1880, arranging for a German translation by Julius Carus to be released early in 1881. This was an unexpectedly controversial book. The views on root movements that he set out were energetically contested by Julius Sachs, who sneered at Darwin’s suggestion that the tip of the root might be compared to the brain of a simple organism and declared that Darwin’s home-based experimental techniques were laughably defective. Furthermore, Sachs’s botanical colleagues and co-workers were unable to replicate Darwin’s results—the customary criterion of a valid experiment. The message from Würzburg was that Darwin must have inadvertently maimed the living roots in some way, and that Darwin’s practical skills were weak. This hit Darwin where it hurt most. In retrospect, Sachs’s criticism undoubtedly rested on the growing gap between laboratory and country-house styles of investigation, underpinned by a hefty dose of institutional pride and nationalist feeling. For Sachs, skill lay not just in the experimenters’ hands. Skill could be present only in the proper place, that is, in the laboratory—his laboratory.72 Had Darwin but known it, he was ultimately more in the right than Sachs, for his results prefigured the line of research that was to lead to the identification of plant “hormones,” and the “stimulus” that he thought was transmitted from the root tip was ultimately isolated and named auxin by Firtiz von Went in 1928, himself following some of Darwin’s experiments. And yet Sachs was justified in his attack on Darwin’s informal and unstructured experimental procedures. The centre of attention for physiological research was shifting decisively, and permanently, into the laboratory.
Half-heartedly Darwin made a few defensive replies. But his mind was not in it. He did not return to the subject in any direct form, leaving Francis to pursue the argument in subsequent editions.
VIII
More and more, he enjoyed the company of worms. He spent a good deal of time thinking about them during 1880 and 1881.
Darwin made a thorough survey of annelid behaviour and activities, potting up worms from his flower beds as if they were plants, and keeping them in his study for observations, once again transforming his house and garden into nature’s observatory. He and Francis would creep downstairs at night to see what the worms were up to in their flowerpots, or stealthily move through the moonlight to spy on them under the lime trees or at work ejecting casts on the surface of the Sandwalk. In the daytime, if it was fine, Darwin dug for burrows. He discovered that worms lined their holes with leaves and that they often plugged them at the top as well. One morning he removed 227 leaves out of a series of burrows, seventy of which came from the row of lime trees near the house. If the weather turned rainy, so much the better for his researches. He tracked the worms’ trails across the damp paths, wondering how far their ambitions had taken them. Unfailingly curious, he pursued what he called “fool’s experiments” by asking Francis to play his bassoon close to worms in pots to see if they detected sound. He blew a whistle, breathed tobacco fumes, and waved a red-hot poker over them. Finally, with an embarrassed laugh, he put them (in their pots) on top of the Broadwood piano and requested Emma to play the keys loudly. He “has taken to training earthworms,” she said resignedly, “but does not make much progress, as they can neither see nor hear. They are, however, amusing and spend hours in seizing hold of the edge of a cabbage leaf an
d trying to pull it into their holes. They give such tugs they shake the whole leaf.”
Darwin was convinced that worms possessed a modicum of intelligence. This was displayed most evidently in their feeding patterns. He fed his potted specimens as assiduously as he had once fed insectivorous plants, supplying them with leaves from many different kinds of tree, shrub, and vegetable, some of which came from tropical species grown only at Kew and would never have been previously encountered by Kentish worms. They liked cabbage best of all. He went on to observe their dexterity in pulling unevenly shaped leaves into their burrows. Each worm was capable of finding either the pointed end of a leaf or the stalk, or could locate the mid-point of a long thin leaf and pull it so that it folded into two halves. Standing under the Scotch firs for several nights in a row, accompanied by the dim light of a hurricane lamp, he and Francis ascertained that worms enterprisingly coped even with pine needles. Darwin surmised that this was a purely mechanical adaptation for pulling food into the burrow. To test his hypothesis he fed worms in pots with tiny paper triangles or diamonds, presenting either the sharp or flat edge to each questing worm in the evenings, no doubt wondering if he was quite right in the head as he carefully cut out shapes from Bernard’s drawing paper. “I am becoming more doubtful about the intelligence of worms,” he wrote to Galton about this. “The worst job is that they will do their work in such a slovenly manner when kept in pots, and I am beyond measure perplexed to judge how far such observations are trustworthy.”