by James Morrow
Naturally Kurland never bothered learning the names Mr. Darwin had given his tortoises—but Chloe soon did: Boswell and Johnson from James Isle, Tristan and Isolde from Charles Isle, Perseus and Andromeda from Indefatigable. As for the lizards, they had yet to be christened, and so she set about bestowing biblical names on the aquatic iguanas and literary appellations on their terrestrial brethren, a task she performed with all the joy of Adam bringing taxonomy to Paradise.
The economy of the zoological dome, Chloe soon realized, turned on its elaborate network of passionflower vines, as well as its soaring stands of prickly-pear cacti. To nurture the vines, she routinely irrigated the soil with well water, thereby underwriting the survival of the tree-dwelling finches and arboreal mockingbirds, who feasted on the fruits and seeds. The cactus plants required little moisture, but she was obliged to spend many hours protecting the roots from moles—an essential task, for the low-hanging fruits were a favorite food of the tortoises, mockingbirds, and ground-dwelling finches. The land iguanas, meanwhile, preferred a menu of sunflowers, bluebells, and daisies, which she dutifully cultivated throughout the southwest sector.
Although the marine iguanas eagerly consumed the kelp that thrived in the vivarium’s pond, under Chloe’s administration they learned to appreciate whatever produce the Down House cook, Mrs. Davis, whom everyone called Daydy, had deemed unfit owing to spoilage. To augment the tortoises’ diet, Chloe again turned to the detritus of Daydy’s kitchen. The carapaced reptiles would eat almost anything, from rotting apples to fish eyes, sausage casings to poultry viscera, though they utterly lacked a predatory instinct, cheerfully ignoring the vermillion flycatchers who perched so trustingly on their heads and shells.
Beyond the Sisyphean task of keeping the zoo free of animal waste, the most unsavory of Chloe’s duties required her to scour the meadows for the remains of whatever hare, hedgehog, or badger the dogs had run to earth that week. Upon locating a carcass, she would put on canvas gloves, then use a tin pail to bear the foul thing and its attendant load of fly eggs to the vivarium. About half of the emergent maggots were consumed by the ground-dwelling birds, whilst the other half survived to become adult insects, which the flycatchers, true to their name, would snatch on the wing.
And what of Chloe’s promise to form emotional bonds with the zoo’s denizens? In the case of the birds, affection came easily, for she never tired of watching them hopping amongst the passionflower vines and cactus pads like bejeweled machines wrought by a meticulous wizard. The tortoises likewise charmed her, for they’d become in her imagination a kind of deputation advocating on behalf of all the world’s ungainly and misbegotten creatures. For a full two months she regarded the iguanas with distaste, but then they, too, won her over. Unapologetic in their homeliness, unrepentant in their self-absorption, these dragons seemed to be saying, “Love us for what we are, for we shall never be anything else”—and so she did.
Whilst Chloe looked to the welfare of Mr. Darwin’s reptiles and birds, Miss Thorley did the same for his offspring. Each morning beginning after breakfast, nine-year-old Willy and seven-year-old Annie learned about the world from their industrious governess. At one o’clock Miss Thorley would deliver Willy and Annie to the kitchen employees for a midday meal, after which the youngsters were free to play with their four siblings in the nursery or (if they so chose) assist Miss Bathurst in the vivarium. For Chloe the advantages of having a private staff were many. The arrangement not only reduced her work load, it also provided the reptiles and birds with a surfeit of nurturance—to say nothing of the fact that Willy and Annie were learning valuable lessons in animal husbandry and waste management.
“I’ve always been partial to the name ‘Annie,’” Chloe told Mr. Darwin’s eldest daughter. “In my days as an Adelphi player, I received favorable notices for my interpretation of a pirate called Anne Bonney.”
“You were an actress, Miss Bathurst?” gushed Annie, a child of sunny disposition and luminous intelligence. (She would never be so foolish as to wish for a wicked stepmother.) “How exciting!”
“I trod the boards for nearly nine years, beginning when I was sixteen.” Chloe and Annie were crouched beside the vivarium’s furnace, watching Willy use a garden trowel to remove the ashes from the firebox preparatory to supplying it with fresh coal.
“You played a pirate?” said the boy with uncharacteristic fervor. (He was normally as gloomy as his sister was effervescent.) “I like pirates. Did you ever disembowel anyone?”
“Willy, that’s a horrid question,” said Annie.
“On the stage I’ve skewered many a blackguard, but rarely in real life,” said Chloe, opening the knapsack containing the children’s gifts. “We shall now address a happier topic.” From the sack she produced the snow globe and passed it to Willy. Inside the sphere a comical scarlet Satan lounged on a golden throne. “This is for you, Master William.”
“Is that the Devil himself?” asked Willy, cleaning his sooty hands by rubbing them on a passionflower leaf. “I love it!” He shook the globe, causing porcelain chips to swirl through the trapped water—the proverbial snowstorm in Hell. “Begone, Lucifer! Willy Darwin has brought you a blizzard!”
“And this is for you, Miss Annie,” said Chloe, retrieving the Red Riding Hood doll and pressing it into the child’s grasp. The doll’s ceramic face—a confluence of ruby lips, apple cheeks, and merry eyes—uncannily mirrored the features of the person in whose possession it now lay.
“How lovely!”
“She comes all the way from France,” said Chloe. “Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.”
Annie threw her spindly arms about Chloe and kissed her fleetingly on the lips. “Oh, Miss Bathurst, I shall treasure it always. Now if I only had a wolf.”
“Tell Father to whittle you one,” grumbled Willy. “He does whatever you ask of him.”
At this juncture Chloe was tempted to spellbind the children with the lurid and sardonic tale Willy’s snow globe inevitably called to mind, Mr. Poe’s “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” But then she thought better of the idea, sensing that Mrs. Darwin would not approve, likewise the ghost of Monsieur Rousseau, so instead she simply asked her charges to assist her in dismantling the furnace pipes and purging them of soot.
* * *
In time Chloe noted that an irony flourished within the noisy estate she now called home. The Charles Darwin who took such an inordinate interest in earthworms was condemned by certain infirmities to assume the posture of his beloved annelids. Although this horizontality doubtless served well for producing children, it surely frustrated his scientific endeavors (the botany projects he pursued in the potting sheds, the pigeon-breeding experiments he conducted in the backyard cote, the barnacle dissections he performed in his study). On his worst days he was up and about for only two or three hours, after which, beset by a wracking headache and a high fever, he took to his couch, not far from the basin that, owing to his spells of vomiting, he was obliged to keep at hand, occluded by a Chinese screen.
Not surprisingly, he rarely left the villa. Only once that autumn did he go to London, where he bought a cameo brooch for Mrs. Darwin and attended a meeting of the Geological Society. He much preferred that his colleagues come to him—and come they did. Amongst the illustrious visitors to Down House were the virile young botanist Mr. Joseph Hooker, recently returned from an expedition to the Antarctic, the affable Mr. John Gould, England’s greatest ornithologist, and the crusty Professor Charles Lyell, celebrated throughout Her Majesty’s realm for his Principles of Geology (a book that, as Mr. Darwin remarked to Chloe, “will be favorably impressing its readers even after the mountains for which it so eloquently accounts have turned to dust”). Occasionally the scientific triumvirate of Hooker, Gould, and Lyell spent the night, but usually they made a day trip of it, staying only long enough to partake of an afternoon meal. Because these luncheons normally occurred in the vivarium, Chloe oft-times found herself eavesdropping on the sages’ conversation (understanding
but a fraction of what she heard), meanwhile pursuing her zookeeping tasks and supervising the children as they rode about the dome astride the tortoises like sheiks on camels.
Gradually it dawned on her that the master of Down House was no less renowned than Professor Lyell, thanks largely to his book chronicling his journey around the world. When Chloe asked Mr. Darwin if she might peruse The Voyage of the Beagle, he lent her a copy of the third edition. Every night, upon retiring to her little room, she read another chapter. Having scant interest in coral reefs, barrier beaches, silicified trees, sea slugs, cuttlefish, or fossil quadrupeds, she skipped the sections treating of these subjects, savoring instead the scenes in which Mr. Darwin held center stage. In his youth he’d been quite the adventurer, galloping with gauchos across the Pampas, hacking his way through a Patagonian jungle seething with hostile Indians, and traversing the Andes on a mule. He’d survived a volcano in Chile, an earthquake in Concepción, and the mountainous seas off Cape Horn, which had nearly capsized his ship.
But the most striking passages in The Voyage of the Beagle were the author’s fiery denunciations of chattel slavery, an institution Chloe herself had come to detest whilst appearing as the Southern belle Pansy Winslow in Lanterns on the Levee. “On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil,” Mr. Darwin wrote in the final chapter. “I thank God I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings when, passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured.” And then, a paragraph later, “These deeds are done by men who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that His will be done on Earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”
The sacred imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount versus the sordid institution of the Christian slave trade: so it appeared that Chloe’s employer, like she herself, was attuned to irony—a coincidence she planned to exploit to her father’s advantage. Here we are, sir, the most civilized nation on Earth, sending innocent folk to abominable workhouses, as if they’d deliberately arranged to be poor. One might as well imprison a malaria victim for having the audacity to run a fever. Do you not agree?
She wondered what sum Mr. Darwin might be persuaded to donate to Papa’s deliverance. Certainly not the whole two thousand pounds. (A man will spend that much in acquiring a house but not on assuaging his indignation.) Perhaps she could convince him to part with two hundred. It is beyond your powers to liberate the Brazilian slaves, she would argue, and the American slaves as well, but you can help to save one blameless wretch from death by toil. Contribute to my fund, sir, and God will reward you with your first good night’s sleep in years.
* * *
On the twentieth day in April, 1849, Mr. Darwin sponsored at Down House a luncheon of particular import, for this would be his last opportunity to see Mr. Hooker prior to the swashbuckling botanist’s departure on yet another plant collecting adventure. Chloe spent the morning mucking out the zoological dome, whilst Daydy passed the same interval preparing roasted joints of lamb, plus puréed turnips, stewed spinach, and broiled mushrooms.
Upon their arrival, Mr. Darwin conducted the scientific triumvirate towards the vivarium. Parslow the butler followed with a salver holding ginger biscuits and three bottles of sherry wine. Entering the contrived jungle, Mr. Gould and Professor Lyell acknowledged the children with friendly waves—Master Willy was riding Johnson the tortoise, and Miss Annie had just mounted Isolde—whilst Mr. Hooker, as prepossessing as ever behind his spectacles, favored Chloe with an amiable wink.
Shortly after the guests assumed their places at the linen-draped table, Mr. Gould and Mr. Hooker began conversing about a noxious phenomenon on which the Evening Standard had been reporting for the past four months. It concerned the Percy Bysshe Shelley Society: a band of young, wealthy, sybaritic Oxford graduates who’d recently acquired for their debauches a private manse in the heart of town. Under the guidance of Lord Rupert Woolfenden, the twenty Byssheans were staging at Alastor Hall a competition whereby they would award an immense cash prize of £10,000 to the first scholar, scientist, or theologian who could prove, or disprove, the existence of God.
“What a scandalous project,” said the dour Professor Lyell, who’d evidently not heard of the prize despite its being, in Mr. Hooker’s words, “the talk of all London.”
“I quite agree,” said the roly-poly Mr. Gould, pouring a glass of oloroso. “Though the problem is not without a certain, shall we say, philosophical interest?”
“From my own perusal of the late Mr. Shelley, I infer that he possessed a first-rate mind.” Mr. Hooker availed himself of the amontillado. “True, it was reckless of him to write ‘On the Necessity of Atheism,’ though I feel that, in sending Shelley down for it, the University College officials displayed a decided want of imagination.”
Chloe’s first instinct was to hustle Willy and Annie out of the zoo, lest they learn prematurely there was such a thing as atheism, but she elected to stay, partly because the children seemed oblivious to the scientists’ chatter but mostly because the phrase “ten thousand pounds” held an intrinsic allure. After settling down beside the iguana pond, she distributed her attention amongst five activities: minding her charges, sipping tea, eating hard-boiled eggs, pretending to read a pamphlet titled The Fruit Farmer’s Guide to Mole Management, and listening furtively to the gentlemen’s conversation.
“You know what this damnable prize amounts to?” said Lyell, filling his glass with Manzanilla. “It’s a ten-thousand-pound bounty on the head of God.”
“Judas got but thirty pieces of silver,” said Hooker in a tone Chloe thought oddly jocular given the seriousness of the subject.
“One might assume that on first principles these Oxford rakehells would skew the competition towards the atheist view,” said Gould, “and yet by the Standard’s account they happily entertain arguments on the Almighty’s behalf.”
“But how do they sort the robust proofs of God from the feeble?” asked Lyell.
“The same way they sort the substantive refutations from the trivial,” said Gould, sipping his wine. “Each contestant makes his case before a panel comprising three Anglican and three freethinking judges. The whole sorry circus convenes every fortnight, with a preselected theist and a corresponding unbeliever traveling to Oxford and presenting their arguments.” The ornithologist clamped a friendly hand on Mr. Darwin’s knee. “Charles, you’ve been strangely silent concerning the Great God Contest. Are you not outraged that these flâneurs would turn theology into a game?”
“Nowadays I make a point of abstaining from outrage,” Mr. Darwin replied. “It’s bad for the digestion. That said, I feel bound to reveal that, were I to conduct the judges about my little zoo, I might very well collect the prize, provided they understood my commentary.”
“I’ll wager I could understand it,” said Hooker, savoring his sherry. “Pray tell, sir, what manner of God proof lurks within your menagerie?”
“Charles has in mind the Argument from Design,” said Lyell. “William Paley’s Natural Theology and all that. No watch without a watchmaker.”
“You misunderstand me, gentlemen,” said Mr. Darwin, biting into a ginger biscuit. “I would win the contest by negating the Deity.”
Somehow Chloe prevented a mouthful of tea from reversing direction and spouting out her nose.
“Piffle,” said Lyell.
“Needless to say, I have no intention of entering the competition,” Mr. Darwin declared. “For one thing, my wife would never hear of it.”
“And for another, you’d be violating your own religious convictions,” said Lyell.
“Up to a point,” said Mr. Darwin with a raffish smile.
“Charles, you hold us on tenterhooks,” said Gould. “Please e
xplain yourself.”
“I cannot explain myself—only God, wherever He may be, can do that—but I shall attempt to explain my theory.” Mr. Darwin brushed biscuit crumbs from his lower lip. “Look about you, gentlemen, and you’ll see the Encantadas replicated on a small scale. A question springs to mind. Why did God treat each Galápagos island as if it were—almost, but not quite—a biologically sovereign realm? Why did He install slim-beaked warbler finches on Albemarle Isle but large-beaked ground finches on Chatham? Why do the tortoises on the northern islands have shells suggesting igloos, whilst the specimens on the southern islands have shells resembling saddles, and the centrally located creatures wear simple sloping shells? What’s more, when we travel to other equatorial archipelagos, why do we meet no reptiles or birds that mirror the Galápagos types?”
“Scintillating questions,” said Gould.
“As an analogy,” said Hooker, “I’ve often wondered why the Kerguelan cabbage, quite the most ridiculous of vegetables, flourishes in the Indian Ocean but nowhere else.”
“Simply because God initially laid down a template for every species, that doesn’t preclude the emergence of variations, even ridiculous variations,” said Lyell. “When I consider how the Almighty built a benign plasticity into the scheme of things, my faith is renewed, not shaken.”
“Spend a moment contemplating three marine iguanas from different Galápagos islands,” Mr. Darwin persisted, “and a conundrum presents itself. So utterly distinctive, these creatures, and yet so fundamentally similar. Miss Bathurst, will you please show us some living illustrations of this mystery?”
Startled to be drawn into the conversation, Chloe dropped the hard-boiled egg she was about to peel. “Certainly, sir,” she said as the egg wobbled away. Gaining her feet, she stretched her arms over the iguana pond like a heathen priestess blessing its waters. “That red aquatic lizard is Jezebel from Hood’s Isle. Note also black Melchior from Tower. Our big multicolored fellow is Shadrack from Narborough.”