by John Darnton
Still, mark my words, ’tis a shore fit for pandemonium.”
The ship dropped anchor at the second island. The men threw their lines in the water and the decks were soon alive with parrot fish and angelfish flapping about in a riot of bright tropical colors. Charles and eight sailors took the whaleboat to shore. They found the black beach so hot they could feel it through the soles of their boots.
They walked along the coast: the place was teeming with life. Marine iguanas littered the lava rocks, their spotted black hides invisible at a distance but hideously distinct close up. With combs of scales along their backs, cold eyes, sagging chin pouches, and long curved tails, they looked like malevolent dragons, but were in reality sluggish and harmless. Charles picked one up by the tail and heaved it into the water.
Rounding a point, they were surrounded by a profusion of birds.
Red-footed boobies perched in trees. Below them, on the ground, masked boobies tended their nests and blue-footed boobies covered every ridge, some ponderously raising their pale blue feet one at a time in an awkward two-step mating dance. The birds paid the men no attention whatsoever. Charles raised his gun to a nearby hawk, which didn’t move, so he pushed it off the branch with the barrel.
With Covington at his side, he followed a path inland and at last came upon the islands’ most famous denizens, giant tortoises—two of them munching prickly pears. The animals hissed and withdrew their heads, but soon poked them out again and resumed eating. Charles measured the circumference of one of their shells: a full seven feet around. They walked on and came to a sight that stopped them in their tracks: a wide path that was a veritable thoroughfare for tortoises, long processions of them mounting and descending.
The two followed the trail to the top of the hill where a spring-fed pool was filled with an entire congregation of the creatures. Some sank up to their eyes in the pure cold water, swallowing it in great, lugubrious gulps. Others wallowed deep in the mud. Charles was overwhelmed—he felt he had blundered upon some clandestine rite, an antediluvian spectacle in which beasts had dropped their savage masks and revealed their innocent natures.
The men turned and pursued the tortoises that were lumbering downhill. On the spur of the moment, Charles climbed up one and sat on it, then so did Covington. They rocked back and forth with the movement and held on to the edges of the shells to keep from falling.
Looking at each other, they burst out laughing. They rode down the hill, overcome by waves of merriment until they rounded a corner at the bottom. There, to their astonishment, they came upon a scene that quickly sobered them. Their shipmates were slaughtering the tortoises, turning them over and slitting open their pale undersides. Dozens lay on their backs, their legs flailing in the air, awaiting transport to the ship’s hold. The beach was already littered with carapaces.
The sailors were as surprised as they were. “Better jump off and be quick about it,” shouted one, “or you’ll end up in turtle soup.”
Aboard the Beagle that evening, Charles was shaken by a tumult of emotions. He had recently begun to see everything in a new, effulgent dimension: the fish, the iguanas, the birds, the tortoises. He was a witness to primordial Nature and her workings—the beauty of it and the savagery too—and he felt he understood it, as if he had observed a moment of creation. Opening his notebook, he wrote: “Here, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”
The next day the Beagle sailed on to Charles Island, the site of a penal colony that held two hundred exiled prisoners. The English acting governor, Nicholas Lawson, entertained a party from the ship for lunch on his verandah set in a plantain grove. Serving chunks of roasted tortoise meat and grog, he regaled them with stories of castaways and pirates.
At one point, discussing the tortoises, he chanced to remark that he could tell which of the twenty or so islands any one of them had come from merely by examining its shell. This was proof, he said, that somehow their differing habitats had bred distinctions. FitzRoy and the others paid little attention to the comment, but Charles took it in and quickly glanced around. There was McCormick, sitting directly across and looking back at Charles, as if he too had noted the observation and perhaps mined its significance.
That afternoon, the group rowed over to James Island. Charles wanted to expand his collection of birds. They too seemed to follow the rule that had caught the eye of the acting governor: on every island they displayed minute differences, as if adapting to their various habitats. On each island he visited, Charles made a point of shooting several birds—especially the finches—tagging them, stuffing them, and keeping a meticulous record. As always, Covington was with him that afternoon, and the two wandered off alone.
The sun was beating down mercilessly and Charles was feeling dizzy from the heat. They came to a lowland thicket and found dozens of finches and mockingbirds flying around the bushes. Guns were not necessary, for they had discovered that by holding up a branch and making a shushing sound they could lure a finch to land on it, then grab it.
Seeing an unusual yellow one, Charles pursued it alone, stumbling through the wood as it flew off. His foot struck something hard and he looked down and gasped. There, sticking out from a bunch of leaves and shining in the sun, was a human skull.
He felt a wave of nausea and held on to a tree to steady himself.
Then he reached down and pulled the skull from the earth. He held it up, turning it in his hand; it was both repellent and irresistible—the bleached white dome, the serrated cracks in the temples, the dark trian-gle of a nose, and the rotted teeth pulled back in a hideous grin, a hive of maggots where the tongue would have been.
He again felt faint. Listening closely, he heard not silence but a steady soft roar, the sound of insects everywhere, a multitude of them, flying, buzzing, rubbing their wings, munching on leaves. He could hear the birds diving into the sea for fish and the iguanas chewing algae.
Panic seized him, something he had never felt before. Of a moment, it all was too much—the hot lava rocks, the hideous lizards, the slaughtered tortoises, the skull, the maggots. It was a ghastly cycle of life and death, repeating itself endlessly and without meaning, and he was a prisoner of it. Nature was an omnivorous god—vile and monstrous.
Suddenly, McCormick appeared. He looked at Charles, still holding the skull.
“I say, that must have been the ship’s Captain the Governor was talking about,” he said. “It seems his crew turned mutinous and slew him on this very island.”
Covington joined them. “What shall we do with it?” he demanded.
“Add it to the collection?”
Charles was aghast at the suggestion. He ordered Covington to dig a hole and give it a proper Christian burial.
That evening, he penned a letter to Hooker. He did not tell him of the incident, but he signed off with a cri de coeur: “What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horridly cruel works of nature!”
Three days later, the ship anchored off Indefatigable Island. The weather was warm, with a slight breeze from the west, perfect for hunting. Charles was eager to collect some underwater specimens, and McCormick, suddenly amiable, said that he would like to do the same.
The two set off in a boat with Second Lieutenant Sulivan and Philip Gidley King.
They found a good spot to anchor and dove for several hours, leaving one person in the boat as a lifeguard since none were accomplished swimmers. By noon, they had brought up all manner of fish, crabs, seaweed, and coral, so they headed to the shore for lunch. The beach was lined with sea lions, lolling in the sun, showing not a whit of interest in the two-legged creatures. Charles pulled out his matches to start a fire, and they grilled some fish, washing it down with wine. Afterward King and Sulivan wanted to rest, but Charles and McCormick returned to the boat to hunt for more specimens.
The two rowed along the shore
until they came upon a lagoon encircled by reeds. McCormick, standing watch in the bow, proclaimed it a good spot and offered to remain on board. Charles jumped in and dove half a dozen times, surfacing with shells and other treasures. Each time McCormick, peering down from above, motioned him farther away from the boat.
Charles was floating on the surface, looking down, when he saw a dark shadow beneath him, a rapid movement, the ripple of a tail. Then another and another. The water churned with dark shapes. He raised his head, stole a breath, and plunged his face back in to look again. He could see them clearly now, silvery-gray with white tips on their fins and tails, five and six feet long—sharks, four of them; no, more. A dozen.
They glided through the water sleekly, effortlessly, circling in a hunt for food. Quickly but calmly, staying close to the surface, Charles swam back to the boat, fearful of calling attention to himself. He reached up and McCormick grabbed his forearm and helped hoist him aboard.
Charles sat on the stern seat, his heart pumping. He looked at McCormick as his blood continued to race; the man was upset, babbling. “Thank the Lord you’ve made it to safety,” he said. “I warned you, I shouted, but you didn’t hear me.”
Charles said simply: “Let us leave this place.”
McCormick rowed back toward the beach. As Charles, shivering, looked behind to the near-fatal patch of water, he wondered whether he could see small bits of fish, perhaps the remnants of their noon-day meal, floating upon the surface—the few that the sharks had not devoured.
CHAPTER 20
Sonnenberg Clinic
Zuriberg
Zürich, die Schweiz
10 April 1872
My dear Mary Ann,
You are kind enough to ask how I am. My answer can be summed up in one simple word—wretched! Alone in the world, despised by my family, betrayed by the man I loved—all this has been heaped upon me, payment enough, I think, for the sin that has blackened my soul. But now to undergo this final punishment, the utmost sorrow for any woman . . . it is insupportable. I speak truly, Mary Ann, when I say that I fear it is more than my mind can bear.
Even now, sitting on the sun-porch of this clinic, I feel nothing but hopeless despondency. Nothing helps me. I recoil at the loveliness of this place, the wildflowers, the blue lake, the snowy Alps. It should be a sight to soothe my soul but it has no power to heal my suffering, for I am sunk too low. And to think that I brought this misery upon myself only makes it the harder to endure.
I hesitate to commit the sad tale to a letter, but for the thought that confession may prove balm for pain. Some of it you know already—namely, my infatuation, nay, my love, for X.
What you do not know is that during our family sojourn in the Lake District, I contrived to meet X secretly in the woods and not just once or twice but five times. They were amorous encounters. I could not help myself. Each time for me was more heated than the previous one. So carried away was I by passion that I put off all consideration of the consequences of my actions.
Indeed, I thought of nothing but him and desired nothing except to be with him.
Imagine then my distress when I felt him drawing away from me. Each occasion, it seemed, fed my ardour but acted to lessen his. At first, after inti-macy, he was solicitous, holding me in his arms and praising my qualities, which did help somewhat to mitigate my guilt for having given in to his silken entreaties. But soon he seemed to think he had call upon my person, indeed, upon my body, as of right, and he began to show disrespect. I felt that I was prisoner of a drama that sprang full-blown from some penny dreadful—except that what was hanging in the balance was not foolish make-believe but my very life.
At first his visits to our family in the cottage at Grasmere were thrilling. I would wait all morning for the sound of his horse galloping up to the stable-gate and delay meeting him in full company for the pure pleasure of the anticipation. When others were present I took joy in disguising my inner turmoil with a mask of insouciance. I revelled in casting a glance around the room so as to pass over him as if he were no more than an ordinary visitor.
And then there were the illicit moments—a secret look, a passing touch under the table after dinner—all this fed the flames of my desire more than I can say.
But then came the time when his visits began to taper off. He would miss a day, then two, then three. I grew so desperate and rash as to send him a note by messenger, which he did not answer. One night, after he had played in a quartet and I could hardly take my eyes off him, I caught him alone in the hall and demanded to know why he was treating me so—the words came out far differently from the casual phrases I had practised—and he pretended not to know of what I was speaking. He tore his arm from my grasp and hurried away.
I fell into a melancholy and feigned illness as an explanation. Yet I was puzzled—why, if he seemed to want no more of me, did he continue to visit our family? Was there still hope? I took walks in the morning along the path we used to take but never saw him there. Once in a moment alone with him I suggested that we fix a rendezvous, and as I said it I abased myself by lowering my eyes to the floor and casting a coquettish look, but he refused the offer, saying he had an appointment to go hunting. He departed, walking quickly away, as if in relief.
Our family returned home and I was so unhappy I did indeed fall ill and missed many gatherings in the drawing-room below. The sounds of music and merriment floated up the stairs, only serving to worsen my misery.
Then, one evening, we were all called together. Papa said he had an announcement. Etty blushed as he took her hand and held it high, smiling all the while. He said he was pleased to declare that she would soon be Mrs Richard Litchfield. Mamma cried, my brothers began making jokes and I almost fainted on the spot. I could not control myself but ran from the room in tears. So great was the commotion that only Mamma noticed my anguish.
The plans were laid hurriedly for a wedding in late August, a bare three months after he walked into our lives. George arranged the settlement—I looked at Papa’s books and saw that it amounted to £5,000, with a yearly stipend of £400. The sum would allow the couple to live in comfort, I overheard Papa say, as Litchfield had accepted a post in the Ecclesiastical Commission. Papa told George that he doubted the man was a ‘gold-digger’.
I had a single encounter with him. To arrange it I attended St Mary’s for the first time in years and we walked home trailing behind the others. I asked for an explanation for his conduct and he had at least the grace to look embarrassed. He said that he had long ago discussed with Papa the idea of courting one of us and that Papa had ruled that he should ask for Etty’s hand, she being the elder. He said that when he met me in Grasmere so unexpectedly, he had been carried away by emotion, but that soon he began to feel base and unworthy and decided to bring our meetings to an end. He said he would always regard me fondly as a sister.
I did not attend the marriage, for by mid-August, I had become aware of my condition. I informed Mamma, who could not bring herself to believe what I had done. When she did she became most distraught and angry. She slapped me full hard across the face more than once, but I did not cry out.
She said she knew who was responsible but that we must never tell anyone, especially Papa. Instead, she fabricated a story involving the son of an estate owner in the Lake District and made me promise to hold to it.
Papa was devastated. He called me into his study. He was seated in his leather chair where I had seen him hundreds of times before. He did not strike me but instead looked old and feeble as if he himself had been dealt a deathly blow, which made me feel thrice worse. He did not demand to know the name of the father, since, as Mamma had informed him the person was married, that would serve little purpose. He said I should be hard put to regain his respect, no matter how much I repented my actions, and that I was now condemned to life as a spinster. He said that he would never consent to pay a dowry but that nonetheless he would not force me out of the house, which was mine to live in for all my years.
I could not, however, keep the child. To ensure this and to protect the good name of our family, he would contact his friend, Charles Loring Brace, the American who runs the Children’s Aid Society, who he said knew how to deal with such situations. One week later, at Mr Brace’s suggestion, before my condition became visible, I was sent here to Zurich, where I have remained these eight months.
She was a baby girl. I barely had sufficient time to discover that. They let me hold her only for the few minutes it took to cut the cord and for the doctor to examine her. Then she was taken away. I am told she will remain here in Zurich for a while until she is old enough to travel and then will be placed with a good family.
I sometimes believe I can still feel her, now ten days after she has gone, and I recollect the feel of her in my arms. Her face was pink and wrinkled, her skin covered with a soft birth substance, and she had a full head of black hair. The doctor said she was a fine and healthy baby girl.
I am leaving here tomorrow and will return home. By then Papa will have received the letter I wrote last week in which I told him that I was sorry for what I had done but observed that we all have committed grievous errors in our lives. I said it ill behooved him to lecture me on morality. I added further that I knew he was not such an upstanding man because I had discovered what he had done thirty years ago on his trip to South America.
Here on the sun-porch, where I sit every day for hours on end, with nothing to distract me but my own dark thoughts, they bring me lemonade, as if my problem were nothing more than a parched throat.
I prithee, my sweet Mary Ann, think of me not too harshly and pray that I may find peace.
Yours in grateful remembrance,
Bessie
20 April 1872
My dear Mary Ann,
I received your letter only moments before I left Zurich. I thank you for it, deeply. Without your support and your comforting words, I do not know how I would survive.