The Darwin Conspiracy

by John Darnton

  Charles did not reply. He cast his mind back to naturalists he had known who had used their work to climb up the social ladder. It was certainly possible, if one amassed a fine collection and garnered a reputation as an expert, to achieve a certain status. Even a knighthood was not out of the question.

  By happy contrast, Charles was secure in the scheme of things, able to pay his own way and devote himself to science for pure epistemological motives. He told himself he was not a snob—he prided himself on his ability to mix with people from all walks of life—but he found it strange that he should feel so much more comfortable in the presence of a savage like Jemmy Button than in the company of his own countryman.

  Young King had ended the conversation, turning to face the wall in a brooding posture befitting a man who had seen much of the world’s perniciousness, by saying: “Anyway, I have read all of Byron and I don’t give a damn for anyone.”

  Pacing the deck, Charles could hardly wait to go ashore. He was the first one in the skiff. When he stepped from the boat onto the wharf, his legs wobbly on solid ground, he wandered the narrow streets, walking toward the cathedral on the main square. He felt lost among so many people and studied the crowds. There were priests in cone-shaped hats, beggars, British sailors swaggering about, and beautiful women whose long black hair streamed down their backs.

  But soon he came upon sights that made him feel he had blundered into a hell far worse than anything he had experienced on the ship: slaves from Africa, black as boot polish, being worked without mercy.

  Stripped to the waist on boats servicing the harbor, they threw their upper bodies into oars under the lash of a whip. Ashore they carried huge bundles on their heads and scurried loaded halfway to the ground to keep up with their masters.

  Beasts of burden are treated better than this, thought Charles. He noticed in dismay how the slaves scampered to get out of his way and avoided his gaze by looking at the ground. Instantly, all the anti-slavery diatribes he had witnessed at Uncle Jos’s dinner table, all the passionate speeches he had heard, all the evangelical sermons came flooding back to fire up his blood. He thought of John Edmonstone, the freed slave who years before had kindly taught him taxidermy at Edinburgh, and his anger reached such proportions he began to lose himself in the righteous feeling of it.

  At that very moment, back on the Beagle, McCormick was engaged in a conversation on the same topic with Bartholomew James Sulivan.

  The surgeon had positioned himself on the lower deck to be within ear-shot of Captain FitzRoy but pretended to be oblivious to his presence.

  “Did you not know,” remarked McCormick, “our Mr. Darwin’s family was in the forefront of the abolition campaign?”

  “No, I did not,” replied the second lieutenant.

  “Indeed, the Wedgwoods, to whom he is related both directly and through his wife, were active in the Anti-Slavery Society. They designed the china piece of the little Negro boy in chains on bended knee under the words: ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ ”

  “I’ve seen that.”

  “Undoubtedly. It is quite famous.”

  “Slavery is a most troubling but complicated issue,” said Sulivan.

  “It’s one thing to make trading illegal and quite another to abolish slave-holding in the overseas territories.”

  “I agree, but I’m afraid Mr. Darwin would not subscribe to that view.

  He is a zealot on the subject.”

  “Is he now?”

  “Most assuredly. In fact, I’ve heard him remark that he cannot bear to associate with those who think otherwise. Indeed, he says he can scarcely abide taking his meals with a man whose morality is so different from his own.”

  Sulivan was taken aback.

  “Are you referring to our Captain?”

  “Indeed. Mr. Darwin is most put out that Captain FitzRoy does not enlist the Beagle in the drive to root out the Spanish and Portuguese slave traders. I would venture to say he is most presumptuous and insolent in speaking of the Captain in this regard.”

  FitzRoy withdrew into the shadow of the mainmast, his face clouded in anger.

  That evening, when Charles returned from his promenade, he found FitzRoy unduly quiet, and throughout a meal in which neither spoke he once again fancied himself the object of the Captain’s darkly appraising eye.

  As it happened, some days later the two dined with a Captain Paget of HMS Samarang, which shared a mooring in the harbor, and the visitor, by coincidence, could talk of little else than the horrors of slavery of which he had been hearing so much. He recounted story after story—of slaves being beaten to within an inch of their lives, of families broken apart and sold to different masters, of men escaping and being hunted down like dogs.

  Some owners, Captain Paget conceded, were humane in their treatment, but even then they remained blind to the suffering of the chattel.

  He recalled one slave who said: “If I could but see my father and my two sisters once again, I should be happy. I can never forget them.”

  FitzRoy demurred. He recounted a visit to an owner of an estancia who, to prove that his slaves were not unhappy, called them up one by one and asked if they would prefer to be free.

  “And each and every one said: no, they would not. Ha. They were better off living under him than perishing of hunger on their own,” he pronounced.

  With that, the Captain finished off his last bit of mutton, drained his wine, and tossed down his napkin, as if to end all discussion on the matter. Shortly afterward, Paget returned to his ship. Charles, burning with indignation, could not let the subject drop. Over cognac he asked the Captain if he did not share his outrage at an institution that reduced human beings to the status of animals.

  “Far be it from me to defend slavery,” replied the Captain. “But what I do not share is your conviction that slaves are of necessity in misery over their God-given lot. On my family estates I have seen how grateful the peasants are when someone looks after their welfare. A kind master, it strikes me, can be a blessing to a person who has little recourse of his own, a fact that many of them will admit.”

  Charles, barely containing himself, asked if FitzRoy did not deem it likely that a slave questioned before his owner would give whatever answer he thought the owner would want to hear.

  At that FitzRoy flew into a rage.

  “The Devil take you,” he blurted out. “You can barely hide your conviction that you are morally superior to everyone around you. Your contempt ill suits you.”

  He stood up and smashed his glass against the wall.

  “If you persist in foisting your obstinate Whig views upon everyone around, then I do not see how we can continue to take our meals together.”

  And with that, he stormed out, leaving Charles sitting there with his mouth agape. He quickly followed, for he could hardly remain in the man’s cabin after such a display, and no sooner was he outside than he witnessed FitzRoy berating poor Wickham mercilessly for some imagined infraction or other. The first senior officer could do nothing but hold himself in check, staring at the deck with a reddened face.

  Later, Wickham offered to let Charles eat in the messroom with the other officers. But shortly afterward, FitzRoy, again the captive of an unpredictable mood, sent a handsomely worded apology, and Charles decided for the sake of the ship’s equilibrium to let the offense pass.

  Still, he no longer felt the same about FitzRoy. He gave up his almost boyish idolatry and vowed that when the Beagle reached Rio de Janeiro, using the city as a base for soundings up and down the coast, he would spend the time on shore.

  When the ship docked, Charles, true to his word, rented a cottage on the outskirts of town in Botofogo, at the foot of Corcovado Mountain.

  He shared it with King and Augustus Earle, the ship’s artist, who knew the city well and provided a tour of its sin-encrusted lower depths.

  Charles spent a full week packing his specimens, crating them, and shipping the lot off to Henslow in England. Then, eager to in
vestigate the interior, he fell in with a local Irishman, Patrick Lennon, and joined him on horseback for an excursion to Lennon’s coffee plantation some one hundred miles to the north.

  At last, I’m in my element, he thought, as he came face to face with Nature in myriad new and exotic guises. He encountered butterflies that ran along the ground, spiders that wove webs like sails and rode them in the air, and army ants that reduced lizards and other animals to skeletons in a matter of minutes. He slept on straw mats in vendas along the way, lulled by a chorus of cicadas and crickets and awakened by howler monkeys, screeching green parrots, and beady-eyed toucans with gigantic red beaks. He marveled at the hundreds of humming-birds, the armadillos that dug into the earth in the time it took to get off a horse, the mindless ingenuity of moths disguised as scorpions, and the mating signals of fireflies.

  He hacked his way through the jungle, past orchids sprouting from decaying tree trunks, Spanish moss and lianas dangling from tree limbs like rope. He walked under a profusion of leaves so thick they blotted out the sun and sheltered him from the short, heavy rains. His muscles were strong, his mind clear, his body taut and tanned.

  On his return, he met King, who was relaxing on the porch with his feet on the railing. The midshipman handed him a glass of rum and eyed Charles’s specimens, weighing down a pack mule, with merriment.

  “You Englishmen,” he said, excluding himself from the category, “with your fascination for peering at bugs through microscopes and your love of collecting bones—how piddling are all your preoccupations in the larger scheme of things.”

  Charles stared at him in amusement. He was accustomed to the young man’s diatribes.

  “What are you in reality next to the noble Roman, the learned Greek, even—I dare say—the noble savage of this continent?” King continued. “Simply because you have mastered the steam engine—a bit of metal that pushes other metal around—you believe you’ve earned the right to rule the entire world. You are convinced you are sitting on the top of the bloody pyramid and you have no idea of who built it or why.”

  “I say, could you give me a hand with some of my acquisitions?”

  “Certainly.”

  King leapt from the porch, lifted a wooden box, and provided a bit of welcome news.

  “By the by, I dare you to guess who has invalided,” he said, using the seamen’s term for aborting the voyage because of irreconcilable disagreements. Charles knew instantly who it was, but did not have a chance to speak before King blurted out the name.

  “McCormick.”

  “McCormick?”

  “Yes, he visited the admiralty of the station last week and obtained permission to ship home on the Tyne. He walked off early this morning, carrying his bags and sporting a parrot on his shoulder.”

  Charles could barely suppress his glee.

  “And what was the cause?” he asked.

  “A row with the Captain over you and your damnable specimens. He charged that the Captain was playing favorites, that you were able to hang all manner of nets and trawls over the side while he, the ship’s senior surgeon, was cut off from his duties as a collector. The final straw was two weeks ago when you used the ship’s carpenters to send off your bottles and boxes. It got quite heated, I hear.”

  Charles raised his glass to his good fortune.

  “I say,” continued King. “There is a bit of truth in his complaint, what?”

  “Perhaps,” replied Charles. “But Nature smiles upon those She favors.”

  King looked at him quizzically and said: “Byron himself could not have phrased it better.”

  That evening, Charles confessed his lightheartedness in his journal.

  “I feel a great weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” he wrote. “The man has some merit to his argument—custom decrees that the surgeon is the ship’s collector. But he had set himself up as my competitor and I often felt he tried to undermine my position with the Captain. Besides, he was hardly grateful to me for those specimens of his that I did include in my shipments. Altogether a most unpleasant fellow.”

  He read over the page, frowned, ripped it from the book, and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. Instead, he composed a letter to his sister Catherine, informing her, among an avalanche of other news, of McCormick’s departure, saying simply: “He’s no loss.”

  That same night, McCormick sat in the bar of the Hotel Lapa drinking with Sulivan, the sole shipmate who hadn’t deserted him. The ex–ship’s surgeon was the worse for wear—four king-sized jugs lay empty before him—and he wasn’t sure the innkeeper would honor his demand for a room for the night. The parrot was on a nearby table, pecking at crumbs.

  They had been speaking for some time and now McCormick’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial purr.

  “The trick for you, mind, is to get your own command. Only way to survive in this God-forsaken navy—otherwise the captains grind you up like a millstone and . . . toss you to the wind.”

  Sulivan nodded through the smoky haze. The words “your own command” had perked up his interest.

  “But how is that to be done?” he inquired. “The ranks are filled with lieutenants and the wait is interminable.”

  “Why, simply follow Captain FitzRoy’s example.”

  “What? So arrange the world that the commanding officer blows his bloody brains out?”

  “No, no, no. Prove your worth. Show your mettle.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  “The way Captain FitzRoy did—by impressing his commanding officer. Get hold of a sister ship. Show you can command her. Move into a position of authority and then acquit yourself so well that everyone applauds you. Wear your command like an admiral’s jacket.”

  “All well and good, but we don’t have a sister ship.”

  “Ah, that’s where you connive. You’re well acquainted with FitzRoy—

  make him buy one, work on him, tell him how necessary it is for the success of the survey. Tell him we can’t begin to finish the soundings without it. He’s got the purse for it and he’s got the desire to do it. You’ll be shouldering against an open door.”

  Sulivan was silent for a moment. The ploy might work, and in any case it couldn’t hurt. Should his pleadings fall upon deaf ears, at least they could be ascribed to enthusiasm for the mission.

  “And, of course, there is an additional consideration,” McCormick said darkly.

  “And what might that be?” asked Sulivan.

  “You yourself alluded to it but a moment ago. I’m sure we would all agree that Captain FitzRoy is hardly the finest specimen of mental health. You’ve seen his moods—he sinks into a slough of despond at the slightest provocation. Should anything happen to him—well, let’s just say that would reshuffle all the cards in the deck.”

  Sulivan stared across the table. “And what’s in it for you, pray tell?

  You’re not even on board anymore.”

  “Ah, but I could be persuaded to return. Especially if there were the prospect of another ship on the horizon. Another ship means another berth for a surgeon.”

  “You’ll still have Philos to contend with.”

  “But it would be so much easier with some seawater between us.”

  “Perhaps Wickham would get to command the sister ship—he’s number two.”

  “Then at the very least you ascend to number two on the Beagle.

  Hardly a downward move.”

  Sulivan conceded: the man had a point.

  “Buy me another ale and I’ll take your proposition to heart,” he said.

  “One more consideration,” put in McCormick.

  “Yes.”

  “Should you become Captain, I would expect you to extend me all the traditional courtesies befitting a surgeon. That includes sole responsibility for specimen collections, which are to be sent home at Government expense.”

  They said no more but touched their glasses in a silent toast that spilled not a drop.

  It was weeks later when the Beagle
returned from her local surveying to continue the southward journey. The crew was in mourning because three sailors had perished of illness during a snipe-shooting trip upriver.

  Charles had his own reason for despair, but it was so petty by comparison that he could scarcely confess it: as he was waiting on the quay, he’d spotted McCormick’s luggage, piled for boarding, complete with parrot cage.

  Blast it, he said to himself. I had thought I was done with that infernal man.

  Minutes later the surgeon himself appeared, a congenial smile on his face, acting as if nothing had been amiss.

  “I see you brought all your belongings,” said Charles. “Were you expecting a long shore leave?”

  “Quite,” came the reply. “One never knows the duration of these charting expeditions, does one?”

  Charles could think of no riposte.

  That evening, with the ship underway and his stomach once again in distress, he supped with FitzRoy and raised the subject of McCormick’s departure and reappearance. At first the Captain seemed too preoccupied to answer, but then he frowned, waved his hand vaguely, and suddenly brightened, saying: “Ha, yes, he asked to come back, pleaded with me, actually, and I thought: why not, what’s the harm in it? And so by Jupiter, you see, here he is.”

  Charles could not help looking crestfallen, so much so that FitzRoy leaned over to pat him on the arm.

  “Don’t worry so, Philos—you’re still the Beagle’s naturalist. Your collections are swamping my decks and are being sent home at His Majesty’s expense. Am I not a man of my word—what? Do I not deserve some little mention years hence when you are a famed lecturer?”

  Charles had to concede that FitzRoy had a valid point.

  Some weeks later they entered the waters of Argentina, and they soon learned firsthand that the land was far more rugged and wild than any they had seen before. As the Beagle approached the harbor of Buenos Aires, an Argentinean guard ship fired a shot across her bow, enforcing, in a most unfriendly way, a quarantine. FitzRoy was beside himself with anger; he sailed past the vessel, threatening to blast it to kingdom come, and then moved on up to Montevideo, where he convinced a British man-of-war to head back to Buenos Aires to rectify the insult to the Union Jack.