Evolution's Captain

by Peter Nichols

  Darwin was made for entomology. It sent him outdoors in all weathers, on foot or horseback, to spend hours with friends and dogs, kicking over fallen logs and feeling at the same time, at last, useful. It was early days in the natural sciences, and a dedicated amateur could soon gather a collection of mounted insects that could rival a museum’s. Darwin’s enthusiasm was all-consuming.

  One day on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one that I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one.

  Darwin began his beetle hunting at the beginning of the great Victorian mania for collecting—rocks, fossils, ferns, seashells, natural objects of every possible kind, to be taken home, cataloged, occasionally discovered and named, mounted and set up on boards and in cabinets for display. It was an era of newness in the natural sciences when only the degree of industry separated the enthusiastic amateur from the expert.

  The rage for local discoveries produced a wonderful range of collecting jars, tins, nets, and, most importantly, clothing and accoutrements for purchase by the generally well-to-do classes that had the leisure time and the money to follow, and be seen to follow, such pursuits. Darwin naturally outfitted himself completely.

  “He would have made you smile,” wrote John Fowles of a young Victorian gentleman, another Charles, and the clothes he wore for a geologizing walk along a beach, in his novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

  He wore stout nailed boots and canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match; a canvas wideawake hat of an indeterminate beige; a massive ashplant, which he had bought on his way to the Cobb; and a voluminous rucksack, from which you might have shaken out an already heavy array of hammers, wrappings, notebooks, pillboxes, adzes and heaven knows what else. Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victorians; one sees it best (at its most ludicrous) in the advice so liberally handed out to travelers in the early editions of Baedecker. Where, one wonders, can any pleasure have been left? How, in the case of Charles, can he not have seen that light clothes would have been more comfortable? That a hat was not necessary? That stout nailed boots on a boulder-strewn beach are as suitable as ice skates?

  Well, we laugh. But…if we take this obsession with dressing the part, with being prepared for every eventuality, as mere stupidity, blindness to the empirical, we make, I think, a grave—or rather a frivolous—mistake about our ancestors; because it was men not unlike Charles, and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day, who laid the foundations of all our modern science. Their folly in that direction was no more than a symptom of their seriousness in a much more important one. They sensed that current accounts of the world were inadequate; that they had allowed their windows on reality to become smeared by convention, religion, social stagnation; they knew, in short, that they had things to discover, and that the discovery was of the utmost importance to the future of man.

  His disinterest in more formal studies notwithstanding, these pursuits brought Darwin into close contact with other naturalists, notably professors Henslow and Sedgwick. He became a part of their coteries, joined them for field trips, attended Henslow’s soirées. He began to feel his true calling, whether it was something that could be properly considered a profession or not. He began, with considerable excitement, to think of himself as a scientist. He read of naturalists who had ranged far beyond the fen country around Cambridge: von Humboldt’s account of his adventures in Tenerife and Brazil inflamed his imagination. He longed to travel.

  Darwin got the news of the voyage around the world after walking across north Wales for three weeks on a geological tour with Cambridge Professor Adam Sedgwick, who was hoping to correct and add to George Greenough’s 1820 map of the geology of England and Wales. He had invited young Darwin along to help him, and also to give Darwin a chance at some practical field geologizing before the Tenerife expedition that he liked to talk about.

  The two left from Darwin’s family home in Shrewsbury on August 5th, riding in Sedgwick’s carriage to Llangollen in north Wales. From there they walked along the bald rock-rimmed Vale of Clwyd toward Caernarvon on the coast. At Saint Asaph, Sedgwick sent Darwin off on his own to look for signs of a stratum of Old Red Sandstone shown on Greenough’s map. When they met up again that evening in Colwyn, neither had seen a trace of Old Red. Sedgwick told Darwin that the structure of the Vale of Clwyd would now be revised on the basis of their work. Impressed and grateful for Sedgwick’s trust in him, Darwin was “exceedingly proud.”

  He returned to his family home, The Mount, on August 29, to find a note from Henslow accompanying the now dog-eared letter from George Peacock. The invitation was breathtaking; it laid before Darwin opportunities that his training in natural science was only beginning to enable him to imagine. At a stroke it eclipsed von Humboldt’s Tenerife and Brazil. As a peruser of traveling books, he had probably also seen an edition of Captain James Cook’s accounts of his circumnavigations, with drawings and watercolors by his expedition artists William Hodges and John Webber. These (which may be seen today in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England) portray the Englishmen’s idealized views of the noble savages amid the sylvan sublimities of their natural settings in Polynesia and the remote, majestic fjordland of New Zealand—Paradise about to be lost—at the moment of contact with Europeans. Here Man and Nature were believed to still exist in the Edenic state, and fifty years after Cook the untrammeled world was thought to be—and surely was—a naturalist’s paradise.

  As soon as he read the letters, Darwin told his three sisters he would go. But his father was so strongly against the idea that Darwin almost immediately gave it up. The next morning he wrote to Peacock and Henslow, thanking them but regretfully turning down the offer.

  As far as my own mind is concerned, I should think, certainly, most gladly have accepted the opportunity, which you have so kindly offered me, [he wrote to Henslow]—But my Father, although he does not decidedly refuse me, gives such strong advice against going,—that I should not be comfortable, if I did not follow it.—My Fathers objections are these; the unfitting me to settle down as a clergyman,—my little habit of seafaring,—the shortness of the time & the chance of my not suiting Captain FitzRoy.—It certainly is a very serious objection, the very short time for all my preparations, as not only body but mind wants making up for such an undertaking.—But if it had not been for my Father, I would have taken all risks…. Even if I was to go, my Father disliking would take away all energy, & I should want a good stock of that.—Again I must thank you; it adds a little to the heavy, but pleasant load of gratitude which I owe to you.—

  Darwin lived securely and happily wrapped in the community of his family, the second youngest of six children, cosseted and fussed over by his three older sisters who formed the maternal bulwark in his life after the early death of his mother when he was eight. His father was a benign but magisterial presence at the head of the household, a physically immense man, rich, intelligent, influential, a creator of the world around him, a figure of absolute authority to his son. Charles was not a headstrong young man who would go against such a father’s wishes. When Dr. Darwin expressed his disapproval, Charles didn’t argue.

  Instead, he packed a gun and rode to his Uncle Jos’s house. Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood II enjoyed a relationship almost as close as father and son. Uncle Jos was not as formidable a man as Robert Darwin, not the authoritarian in Charles’s life, yet he was a strong influence on his nephew. The two enjoyed shooting together so much that Darwin called Maer, the Wedgwood home, “Bliss Castle.” Dr. Darwin respected Wedgwood, his brother-in-law, and the influence he had over his son. As Darwin was leaving for Maer, his father told him pointedly: “If you can find any man
of common sense who advises you to go, I will give my consent.” And he gave Darwin a note to take to his uncle:

  Charles will tell you of the offer he has had made to him of going for a voyage of discovery for 2 years.—I strongly object to it on various grounds, but I will not detail my reasons that he may have your unbiassed opinion on the subject, & if you think differently from me I shall wish him to follow your advice.

  Darwin and his Uncle Jos talked it over. He put his father’s objections on paper for Wedgwood to look at and mull over.

  1) Disreputable to my character as a Clergyman hereafter

  2) A wild scheme

  3) That they must have offered to many others before me, the place of Naturalist

  4) And from its not being accepted there must be some serious objection to the vessel or expedition

  5) That I should never settle down to a steady life hereafter

  6) That my accomodations would be most uncomfortable

  7) That you should consider it again as changing my profession

  8) That it would be a useless undertaking

  Wedgwood—the “man of common sense” whom Dr. Darwin was plainly referring to—wrote him a letter addressing each of his eight objections:

  My dear Doctor

  I feel the responsibility of your application to me on the offer that has been made to Charles as being weighty, but as you have desired Charles to consult me I cannot refuse to give the result of such consideration as I have been able to give it. Charles has put down what he conceives to be your principle objections & I think the best course I can take will be to state what occurs to me upon each of them.

  1—I should not think it would be in any degree disreputable to his character as a clergyman. I should on the contrary think the offer honorable to him, and the pursuit of Natural History, though certainly not professional, is very suitable to a Clergyman.

  2—I hardly know how to meet this objection, but he would have definite objects upon which to employ himself and might acquire and strengthen, habits of application, and I should think would be as likely to do so in any way in which he is likely to pass the next two years at home.

  3—The notion did not occur to me in reading the letters & on reading them again with that object in mind I see no ground for it.

  4—I cannot conceive that the Admiralty would send out a bad vessel on such a service. As to objections to the expedition, they will differ in each mans case & nothing would, I think, be inferred in Charles’s case if it were known that others had objected.

  5—You are a much better judge of Charles’s character than I can be. If, on comparing this mode of spending the next two years, with the way in which he will probably spend them if he does not accept this offer, you think him more likely to be rendered unsteady & unable to settle, it is undoubtedly a weighty objection—Is it not the case that sailors are prone to settle in domestic and quiet habits.

  6—I can form no opinion on this further than that, if appointed by the Admiralty, he will have a claim to be as well accomodated as the vessel will allow.

  7—If I saw Charles now absorbed in professional studies I should probably think it would not be advisable to interrupt them, but this is not, and I think will not be, the case with him. His present pursuit of knowledge is in the same track as he would have to follow in the expedition.

  8—The undertaking would be useless as regards his profession, but looking upon him as a man of enlarged curiosity, it affords him such an opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few.

  You will bear in mind that I have had very little time for consideration & that you and Charles are the persons who must decide.

  Wedgwood sent the letter off early on September 1. He and Darwin then tried to distract themselves shooting partridge—it was the first day of the season, an opportunity neither could ignore—but their hearts weren’t in it and they made a poor bag. At 10 A.M., Wedgwood impatiently decided he wanted to talk to the doctor face to face, and uncle and nephew set out in his carriage for The Mount, determined to present their opinion with persuasive arguments.

  But they found Dr. Darwin in a compliant mood. He’d had a change of heart, perhaps reflecting on the honor of the invitation by the Admiralty, passed to his son by illustrious professors who clearly thought highly of him. Perhaps his greatest objection was one not mentioned in Charles’s list: he feared for his son’s life on a voyage to the wilder parts of the little known world. Captain Cook himself, despite the protection of a boatload of armed seamen, had been killed in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) by natives who had previously revered him. In the end Dr. Darwin recognized the singular opportunity that was presenting itself, and he had decided to let Charles go—with all the considerable financial assistance and encouragement he could provide.

  But by then, it appeared, FitzRoy had asked someone else.

  11

  Or so FitzRoy told Alexander Charles Wood, his cousin, a Cambridge undergraduate and one of Peacock’s students. Wood had heard about the voyage and the opportunity for a naturalist and had written to FitzRoy enthusing about Darwin, but pointing out that he was a Whig (a liberal). FitzRoy wrote back informing Wood that the position had already been filled. Wood told Henslow. Darwin, who had by then returned to Cambridge to consult with Henslow about the coming voyage, was dismayed. Both he and Henslow were now confused, and Henslow angrily felt that Peacock had misrepresented the availability of the position, getting everybody worked up over a tantalizing maybe.

  FitzRoy may indeed have asked a friend, a “Mr. Chester,” as he later told Darwin, or he may very reasonably have been hedging his bets until he met the candidate produced by the long arm of the Admiralty and Cambridge. As much as he felt the need for a gentleman companion on such a long voyage, he knew the peril of taking the wrong gentleman, of being locked in close quarters for months and years on end with the wrong personality. Nevertheless, Darwin and FitzRoy arranged to meet in London and they kept the date.

  They were both young men—FitzRoy 26, Darwin 22—with the world and a ship at their disposal. They met and appraised each other as potential partners in a very great adventure. But FitzRoy had the experience, accomplishment, and self-confidence of someone much older, and he was the captain—a most absolute authority.

  FitzRoy stressed to Darwin the rigors of the voyage: the danger, the storms, the extremes of cold and heat, the risk of illness, the unvarying diet—he probably described these at their grimmest. Also, the voyage might not result in a circumnavigation, he told Darwin. His first duty was the completion of the South American survey, and the time taken for this might prevent them continuing on around the world. He painted as unenticing a picture as possible.

  As they talked, they sized each other up. Both men were on their best behavior, and after they had spoken a while and relaxed, both liked what they saw in the other. Like any sailor, FitzRoy would certainly have told Darwin stories of his earlier voyage in the Beagle, of Cape Horn and its weather, of the trials of surveying under such conditions. Undoubtedly he told him about the Fuegians, and the three “improved” specimens he was returning to Tierra del Fuego. All of this, the raw material of adventure, could only have whetted Darwin’s appetite. He was enormously impressed by FitzRoy’s manner, his directness, his authority, his intelligence, and probably above all his grasp of science, in which area the captain was then far more knowledgeable than the young Cambridge graduate.

  FitzRoy in turn was charmed by Darwin, by his enthusiasm and his own well-developed knowledge. More importantly, he perceived in Darwin the breed of companion he sought. Here was a young man who knew horses and guns, who had dined all his life in the company of thinkers and gentlemen, who was expansive of mind and could probably be counted on as an affable and intelligent dinner companion for a thousand and more nights at the same table. FitzRoy also knew of Erasmus Darwin, the young man’s grandfather, the poet and evolutionary thinker. And he had come with the recommendations of professors and admirals.

>   The only thing that bothered FitzRoy was Darwin’s face. His beliefs in the telling aspects of the shape of the cranium and facial features applied to Englishmen just as valuably as to savages, and Darwin’s hooded brow and large, spatulate nose gave FitzRoy serious pause. “He doubted whether anyone with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage,” Darwin later wrote.

  But this first meeting was encouraging to both. They agreed to dine together that same evening. That afternoon, Darwin wrote to his sisters.

  I have seen him; it is no use attempting to praise him as much as I feel inclined to do for you would not believe me. One thing I am certain, nothing could be more open and kind than he was to me…. He says nothing would be so miserable for him as having me with him if I was uncomfortable, as in a small vessel we must be thrown together, and thought it his duty to state everything in the worst point of view: I think I shall go on Sunday to Plymouth to see the vessel. There is something most extremely attractive in his manners and way of coming straight to the point. If I live with him, he says, I must live poorly—no wine, and the plainest of dinners…. I like his manner of proceeding. He asked me at once, “Shall you bear being told that I want the cabin to myself? when I want to be alone. If we treat each other this way, I hope we shall suit; if not probably we should wish each other at the Devil.”…I am writing in a great hurry…I dine with him today.

  The dinner was a success. Darwin wrote again to his sisters the next day.

  I write as if…it was settled, but it is not more than it was, excepting that from Capt. FitzRoy wishing me so much to go, and from his kindness. I feel a predestination I shall start. I spent a very pleasant evening with him yesterday…he is of a slight figure, and a dark but handsome edition of Mr Kynaston, and, according to my notions, pre-eminently good manners…. This is the first really cheerful day I have spent since I received the letter, and it is all owing to the sort of involuntary confidence I place in my beau ideal of a Captain.