by John Darnton
We went out for a walk in the garden, it being unseasonably warm, and we opened our hearts to each other. She confessed to me how upset she had been when Papa did not attend her father’s funeral, pointing out that the berth on the Beagle had come about through her father’s intercession and that he was the one who had received the crates of Papa’s famous specimens. I was obliged to make his excuses, which of course revolved around his ill-health, and then suddenly I blurted out that I found it odd that Papa continually avoids funerals, even that of his own father. I remarked that it was a grievous shortcoming and then found myself reciting various other shortcomings in him. It was a great relief to be able to confide in someone.
I did not talk about my investigation or my deepest suspicions but simply said that I needed to talk to Captain FitzRoy. She said that would be difficult because he had lately moved from South Kensington to Upper Norwood, south of London. I most assuredly would not be invited there, she noted. But then she had an idea. She had it on good authority that FitzRoy, now in the Meteorological Office, would shortly meet Matthew Maury, his counterpart in the American navy. My Uncle Ras could surely discover the schedule and arrange for an encounter that would appear accidental.
I thanked her and hugged her. She then cautioned me, saying that she had heard that FitzRoy had become unhinged through grief and misfortune. She recounted his woes, which did indeed seem legion. His ambitions have been frustrated at every turn. His surveying work on the Beagle did not bring him the recognition he expected and he turned to politics. He won a vacant seat in Durham but got embroiled in a vicious rivalry with a fellow Tory candidate that led to a brawl outside his club in the Mall. The scandal dogged him in office and so he accepted the governorship of New Zealand, only to fall prey to a bitter land dispute between settlers and native Maoris. It proved his undoing, leading to his recall, and after a horrible voyage home, his wife Mary died, leaving him with four motherless children. Then his eldest daughter died. Bit by bit, his fortune has dwindled to nothing.
Aware of his destitute state, his colleagues—‘including your own papa’, said Frances—got him elected to the Royal Society. The Society recommended him to the Board of Trade to be appointed weather statistician, a post that was not glamorous but held interest for a scientific man. He remarried and attempted to make the most of his new position, embracing the use of the barometer, and had tried to collect all sorts of observations not simply to record weather as it occurred but to make predictions for the future. He called it ‘weather-forecasting’ and thought it could save ships at sea; but despite some initial successes, it had not worked out. His faulty predictions were widely ridiculed—and The Times had recently dropped his ‘forecasts’.
‘You should know too he is no friend of your dear father’s,’ Frances said.
‘I am aware of that,’ I replied. ‘Papa says he has been attacking him in reviews under the name of “Senex”. He recognises his arguments from the old days.’
‘There’s little doubt that his religious fervour has increased. He’s become a strict literalist of the Bible. My husband has often remarked on the turn of fate that made the Beagle into a cradle for the faith of one man and a coffin for the faith of another.’
Frances then said that of all the shocks and jolts FitzRoy had received, the one that cut the deepest was the news of the massacre of the crew of the Allen Gardiner and the accusation that Jemmy Button himself had led it. We began to discuss the shocking tale, but at that point others joined us in the garden and so we broke off.
21 April 1865
I am staying with Uncle Ras, who is amused by my interest in Papa’s past and has kindly agreed to arrange a meeting with FitzRoy in a week’s time, promising to keep the matter ‘our own little secret’. He, too, warned me about the Captain, saying that the man was succumbing to what he himself has termed ‘the blue evils’.
To pass the time, I decided to learn more about the massacre in Tierra del Fuego, and so I called upon William Parker Snow, the Captain who found Jemmy Button twenty-two years after Captain FitzRoy had returned him to the wild. Mr Snow, then employed by the Patagonian Missionary Society and now its major antagonist, has seized upon Jemmy’s vengeful guilt in the massacre as part of his campaign to bring the Society’s work to an end.
He received me most graciously in his second-floor office on Harley Street, holding a chair for me to be seated and saying that it was an honour to meet
‘Professor Darwin’s daughter’. I promptly assured him that my father was not a professor by any means, but simply an amateur naturalist, to which he replied: ‘Were all amateurs of his ilk, we would be fortunate indeed.’
After such inconsequential talk, I asked him to recount the story of the massacre. His brow furrowed and he told me the bare bones of what was known. I made notes of what he said.
‘When Jemmy was returned to Tierra del Fuego, he disappeared for years. I found him in November 1855 and was astounded at the change in him. We sailed in through the narrows into Yahgashaga and spotted fires burning on a small island. I ran up the ensign and two canoes approached, one carrying a fat, dirty, naked Indian who stood up and shouted “Where’s the ladder?” We brought him on board and couldn’t believe it was really Jemmy Button: he seemed to have totally reverted to a primitive state. But he hadn’t forgotten his English. And another curious thing—he refused to answer to the name Jemmy. He said he wanted to be called Orundellico instead. I have no idea what that was all about.
‘It was awkward and Jemmy was none too friendly. He demanded clothes and so I gave him a pair of my own trousers and a shirt, but he was too fat to wear them. He wanted meat, but when we took him belowdecks to feed him, he was too overwhelmed to eat. I asked him if he wanted to go to the new mission station on the Falklands and he resolutely refused. I gave him some gifts, including a music-box, which delighted him, and I told him to come back the next morning for more.
‘At daybreak, more canoes surrounded us. Jemmy and his brothers and other men came on board and the mood turned ugly. I gave Jemmy more presents than he could carry. They were shouting “Yammerschooner” over and over. That means “give me” and believe me, once you’ve heard it you never forget it. Some of the others pushed me, saying “Ingliss come—Ingliss give—
Ingliss plenty.” Jemmy would not help us. So I shouted for the sails to be loosened, which made them think we were leaving, and fearful that we would kidnap them, they scrambled over the side. That was my last sight of Jemmy, as we sailed off—he and his wife in a canoe, fighting off the others to keep their pile of gifts.’
Mr Snow explained what happened next. A new missionary leader arrived, the Reverend G. Pakenham Despard, fixed on the idea that Jemmy should become the spearhead of a mass conversion. He hired a new captain, who returned to Tierra del Fuego and somehow brought Jemmy and his family to the mission settlement at Keppel in the Falklands. They learnt little, did little and stayed there only four months. To go home, they had to promise others would take their place, and so an exchange was made on the next trip—Jemmy returned to his island and nine more Indians came. They had appeared to fit in at the settlement, singing hymns and being baptised. But their return voyage began badly. Despard believed they had stolen things from the missionary workers and ordered a search. They threw their bundles down on the deck of the ship, furious at being called thieves, and when articles were indeed discovered and confiscated, they became even more angry.
Their fury did not dissipate during the rough crossing. When the Allen Gardiner dropped anchor, and the other Indians rowed out to the ship, those on board raised a clamour. Jemmy was brought on board to mediate and he took the side of his tribesmen, demanding more gifts as compensation. But there were no more. Then a sailor told the Captain that some of his personal items were missing. Another search was ordered—the items were discovered—and the Indians went into a frenzy, tearing their clothes off, throwing away their Bibles and all trappings of civilisation, and, naked, clambering dow
n into the canoes. Their shrieks resounded from shore until nightfall and fires were lit, billowing smoke into the dark sky.
For days the ship gently rocked in the bay, as the crew constructed a rudimentary mission-house on a quiet spot above the beach and hundreds of canoes bearing Indians arrived from all directions. On Sunday, the missionary decided to hold a service in the house. Dressed in clean shirts, leaving only the cook on board, the crew rowed to the beach and made their way through crowds of Indians. The cook watched from the boat. Once the Captain and crew were inside, the Indians seized the long-boat and pushed it into the water. A hymn struck up from within the house, then an outcry, then shrieks. The white men stumbled out into the sunlight, as the Indians pursued them, beating them with clubs and stones. Others arrived with spears.
One sailor reached the water, waded out to his waist and was felled with a stone to the temple. The beach was soaked in blood. The terrified cook lowered a dinghy, rowed frantically to shore and disappeared into the woods. He was rescued half-crazed, months later, by a ship sent to investigate, naked and covered with boils, his eyebrows and beard plucked out by the Indians.
He told a tale of horror. The ship that returned him to the Falklands also brought Jemmy Button.
Mr Snow sighed and said, ‘I expect you know the rest from the newspapers.’ And indeed, I did. An official enquiry was held. Amid a welter of confusing testimony and political opinion running against the Patagonian Missionary Society, Jemmy was not found guilty, despite the statements of the cook, who said, among other things, that Mr Button had climbed aboard the ship after the massacre and spent the night sleeping in the Captain’s quarters.
‘All very sad,’ opined Mr Snow. ‘But I knew in my bones that something like this would happen. It was a chain of events set in motion by the meeting of the first Englishman and the first Indian. It was pre-ordained from the moment that Captain FitzRoy tore that button from his uniform and paid for that young boy.’
I felt myself nodding in agreement.
‘And as I expected, it has ended badly for the Indians. At last report, their ranks have been decimated by disease. Here, look at this—’
And so saying, he handed me a copy of the Mission’s newsletter, The Voice of Pity. I saw there an article reporting ‘a burst of mournful news’—
the death of Jemmy Button. Mr Snow waited until I had read it, then spoke again.
‘I knew that underneath all the smiles and bowing, Jemmy didn’t really respect the glories of Western culture. That very first evening on board, when I found him after his long reversion to his primitive habitation, he said something I have never forgotten. He said: “Inglish sigh-eenz is for the Devil.”
It took me some time to understand what he was saying—that our science is not all that he expected it to be. He said it with what can only be called contempt.’
Mr Snow looked me in the eye and added: ‘It seems strange to be telling that to Darwin’s daughter.’
28 April 1865
My interview with Captain FitzRoy did not go at all well. I was totally unnerved by it and I fear that it did little good to the Captain—quite the contrary. I fear I have worsened his condition, which, I can now attest, is quite wretched.
At Uncle Ras’ suggestion, I asked for the Captain in the antechamber of the Meteorological Office, where I arrived without an appointment, knowing that he would be there to meet with Lieutenant Maury. An assistant, hearing my request, raised an eyebrow and smirked in a most disconcerting way, as if to say I did not know the half of it, and appeared to be weighing whether or not he should notify the Captain of my arrival. He held a ruler in his left hand, banging it on his opposite palm, and kept me standing there while he thought upon the matter. I doubt I have been treated so rudely in all my life.
When finally he did agree, he left the room, making it clear that he would not return, so that the idea of being alone with a person who might not be quite right in the head filled me with apprehension.
The room itself was oppressive and might have been described by our own Mr Dickens. It was heavily curtained and quite dark, with a single gas-lamp in the centre. Old wooden cabinets lined the walls up to midway, above which hung yellowed charts and water-stained prints of ships, the frames tilting at odd angles. Dust was everywhere, covering even the inkwells on the cracked leather desk and the faded green velvet chairs. A threadbare carpet completed the picture. It had the appearance not of a Government office but of a mortuary.
I was musing on the disarray when I heard a step bounding down the hall staircase. In popped Captain FitzRoy, looking most queer. He had lost his military bearing and was oddly stooped, his head hung slightly to one side, his eyes so wide-open as to appear bulging. His hair was unkempt, his beard scraggly. Indeed, it seemed he had travelled a long and arduous road from those days when he proudly commanded a ship in Her Majesty’s Navy.
He appeared puzzled by my presence, but thrust out his hand in some vestigial memory of politeness, gave a short awkward bow and proceeded to sputter, thus: ‘Captain Robert FitzRoy . . . To what do I owe . . . To whom . . .
What is the purpose . . . hmmm.’ And so on—unable to complete a thought.
He had a most daunting sense of energy, like a tightly wound spring in a child’s toy, and he kept moving his hands up and down and his legs side to side. His constant agitation made it most difficult to concentrate. Gathering my courage, I led him to a chair and forced him to sit down. I sat next to him.
There was nothing for it but to start right in.
‘Captain FitzRoy,’ I began, ‘I am sorry to burst in on you, and I pray you will not think me unmannerly, but I would dearly like to ask you some questions pertaining to the Beagle and her voyage.’
‘By all means . . . by all means . . .’
I then mentioned South America and Tierra del Fugeo, and the very name seemed to derange him further. ‘The land of fire . . . land of fire,’ he began, and his words poured out so quickly that I could hardly catch them. I realised he was talking about the early explorers who named it for the fact that the natives lighted fires on shore, leading the sailors to believe they were gazing upon Hades itself—which was not, he said in a bitter aside, far from the truth.
Those were the last coherent words I heard from him. I asked him about the nuit de feu and he gave me a most singular look, started to talk several times, then broke off in mid-sentence. It was a jumble of nonsense. He kept shaking his head, to show disagreement, and saying ‘No . . . no . . . not Tierra del Fuego, the Galápagos . . . the enchanted isles—heh! That’s where it all happened . . .’ and then he fixed me with a frightening look and said, in that singular singsong, those horrible words, ‘So that’s how it is, eh, Mr Darwin?’ After which, he laughed; a low-pitched, hollow, evil sound.
I was on the point of leaving when he placed his hand upon my arm, holding me down, and said with urgency: ‘Seven wounds, that’s what they found.
Seven wounds . . . like our Saviour Christ’s wounds . . . that’s what it is to be Captain . . . the loneliness, salt in your lungs . . . all my money gone, spent on the Adventurer . . . enemies and ingrates in the Admiralty. I was warned . . . beware, they said . . . Sulivan, my very own second lieutenant, knighted, knighted . . . And me—what am I?’
He said this last fragment with such vehemence that I bolted up. But he did not release my arm and leapt up next to me, leaning close to my face, still babbling. I felt a spray of his saliva on my forehead and my heart was pounding.
‘Darwin’s a heretic, an infidel . . . the Devil’s hand-maiden . . . The stones on the beach do not lie, they’re rounded, from the Flood . . . The Flood
happened just as the Bible relates, I tell you . . . the door of the Ark was too small to admit the Mastodon . . . Heresy’s a sin and so are violations of the Commandments, eh, Mr Darwin? So that’s how it is, eh?’
I resolved to leave at once and tore my arm from his grasp.
‘Jemmy Button,’ he cried. ‘Jemmy Button
did not do it! They attempted to crucify him . . . as they are crucifying me!’
‘Kindly let me leave,’ I cried.
‘You English—no lifeless,’ he screamed in an accent, as if he himself were the Indian boy.
At that, I grabbed up my skirts in both hands and rushed towards the door without a backward look. I heard a flood of invective follow me and more incomprehensible words and that horrible hoarse laugh.
I rushed out the front door and down the steps. I managed to wave down a phaeton—they almost never stop but I suspect the driver took pity, seeing my dishevelled state—and I went directly to Uncle Ras’. I did not recover easily, even after several cups of hot tea.
That night, as I was trying fruitlessly to sleep, his grotesque words echoed through my head, especially that meaningless final phrase, ‘You English—no lifeless.’
30 April 1865
Horror upon horrors! I have just heard that Captain FitzRoy took his own life. I can scarcely believe it! And here I saw him not more than two days ago.
Uncle Ras informed me of it, and he did not spare my feelings but in his excitement described it in gruesome detail. The account had been told by FitzRoy’s poor wife and was the talk of the Athenaeum. The day before his death, FitzRoy could not sit still; he would spring up, pace around, start to speak, then stop and sit down again. He insisted he needed to go to his office, but having set out turned back, then left for London in the afternoon, returning in the evening extremely upset and rambling incoherently. He insisted he must see Maury again, even though the next day was a Sunday and they had already said good-bye.
He did not sleep well that night. In the morning, when his wife stirred, his eyes were already open. He asked why the maid had not awakened them and she told him it was Sunday. He remained in bed by her side for half an hour, rose quietly, went into an adjoining room and kissed his daughter, Laura. Then he went into the dressing-room and bolted the lock. A minute later, she heard his body strike the floor. She screamed for the servants, who smashed through the door and there he was lying in a pool of blood. He had taken a straight razor from his shaving-kit and, with a single stroke, perhaps even looking into the mirror, ended his misery by pulling it swiftly across his throat.