During this visit Emma discovered that bribery was a good way to get a child to do what you wanted. She overheard one of the nursemaids trying to convince little Erny to put on a warm coat. He refused. Emma intervened. She told him that she would give him a shilling if he wore it now, and would give him a shilling every time he put it on. He put on the coat for the shilling. The next day he put it on again and declared, “I don’t want to have that shilling, Aunt Emma; this coat is so nice now I have got it on.”
The children said that Emma never used bribery in important moral matters, such as being kind to another person or an animal, but if she wanted a child to put on a coat or shoes, or talk a little more softly at lunch, she had no problem offering a bribe. Emma and Charles were not strict, and they took pains to explain to the children clearly what few rules there were. There was, therefore, very little willful disobedience. But sometimes, a small bribe was just the thing.
The hustle and bustle of all the children helped Emma with her grief over the death of her baby, and it distracted her from worry about her ill parents. Charles’s work and the house renovations comforted him. And Charles and Emma found consolation in each other. In a few months Emma was pregnant again.
But by the next summer, when Emma was seven months pregnant, her fears were realized. Josiah had grown weaker and in July 1843, he died. Emma went to Maer to be with her family and that September 25, Henrietta was born. They called her Etty. There were now three healthy children for Charles and Emma to love.
Charles missed them terribly when, a few months after Etty was born, he went to Shrewsbury to see his father and sisters. He wrote to Emma, “I got into a transport over the thought of Doddy and talked, like an old fool, for nearly an hour about nothing else…I ended with protest that although I had done Doddy justice, they were not to suppose that Annie was not a good little soul—bless her little body. Absence makes me very much in love with my own dear three chickens.”
But always percolating and demanding his attention was Charles’s species book. In January 1844, he wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker, a botanist, that he was working on a theory about the origin of species. “At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.”
He most certainly did not want to murder God. But he felt certain he was right that species were changeable, and were changing. He continued to make observations and amass facts. As usual when Charles had a question, he went to someone who knew far more about the subject than he. Not just geologists, paleontologists, and ornithologists, but also farmers, breeders, and his hairdresser. He had written in his “D” notebook, “My hairdresser (Willis) says that strength of hair goes with colour. Black being strongest.” Was there a hereditary reason for that, he wondered, or for skin color? Would dark skin prevent malaria?
All the observations he made—on himself, his children, the animals and plants around him—were in service to his theory of natural selection. Looking at each organism he studied, he tried to work out how that species had been formed. He always thought, too, about the objections people would raise. And by the next summer, Charles had finished his book Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands Visited During the Voyage of HMS Beagle. So it was with great purpose that, as soon as he sent his volcano book in to his publisher, Charles turned back to the thirty-five-page species draft he had written two summers before at Maer. By early July 1844, he had expanded and rewritten the rough pencil draft. He felt it was good enough to be copied out by someone with a neater hand, so he gave it to the schoolmaster at Down.
When he got it back, seeing his species theory in print—in handwriting other than his own—was scary. His draft did not answer every objection he could think of, and there were probably still more objections he hadn’t thought of yet. He knew his ideas were practically blasphemous and so his book had to be as irrefutable as he could make it. He wasn’t nearly ready to publish yet.
But what if he died before he felt ready to publish it? It was not unreasonable for him to anticipate his own death—he had been ill for so long, and the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him. Had he contracted an illness on the voyage? Did he have some fatal disease? He did not know if his stomach problems and his heart palpitations would lead to his death. He could succumb at any moment—in fact, anyone could.
He had to entrust this draft to someone and give that person instructions on how to publish it in the event of his death. Whom could he trust to make sure it would happen? He didn’t turn to Hensleigh, or even to his brother Erasmus, who would not be at all shocked by his theory or have any reluctance to publish it. He turned instead to the one person he had the most faith in, the person he could trust above all others to carry out his wishes.
On July 5, 1844, he wrote, “My. Dear. Emma. I have just finished my sketch of my species theory. If, as I believe that my theory is true & if it be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in science. I therefore write this, in case of my sudden death, as my most solemn & last request…that you will devote 400£ to its publication & further will yourself, or through Hensleigh, take trouble in promoting it…” He went on to suggest possible editors for the book—Lyell, or perhaps Henslow.
He rarely sent anything out without Emma reading it first. But how would she respond to his bold theory? In between nursing baby Etty, supervising the kitchen and nursery staffs, taking care of Charles, and playing with the older children, Emma read the draft. She made notes in places where she didn’t understand what he was saying, as she often did on his papers.
“Not clear,” she wrote a few times, when she thought his language could be more lucid. In two places, where Charles explained how the eye, such a complex organ, had evolved, she challenged his theory. “A great assumption/E.D.,” she wrote. And two pages later, “Another bold saying.” To believe that the eye had evolved from tiny changes over many years was, to Emma, to make a leap of faith.
Charles had been worried about the eye two summers earlier when he wrote that pencil draft. In fact, he was worried about the formation of the eye and other complex organs even back when he was still living in London. He had written in his “D” notebook, “it will be necessary to show how the first eye is formed.” Charles felt that if he could explain the evolution of the eye, he could convince even the harshest skeptic that he was right. Emma was in so many ways the perfect reader. And despite her misgivings about the religious ramifications, Emma not only agreed she would publish this draft in case of his sudden death, she also helped him make it better.
After Emma’s reading, he was ready to test it out on a few others. He sent a copy to Joseph Hooker and later to another botanist, in America, Asa Gray. Slowly he started to let his idea out to other trusted friends. He had a unique theory; he knew he was sitting on something big, and original.
But in October of 1844, a book called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation came out. It was published anonymously. The author argued that species were transforming all the time. The author used several of the examples and many of the same arguments as Charles had just done in his draft. The author used Lyell’s geological theories, that the earth was constantly changing, and applied it to the living world, just as Charles did. Vestiges’ argument included fossils, the development of embryos, similarities in anatomy among species, and even behavior, just as Charles did. The book differed in two major ways (other than the anonymity, which Charles would not do): the Vestiges author had not figured out evolution by natural selection, the mechanism that Charles believed drove the creation of species. And the Vestiges author did do something Charles had not done even in his sketch—the book included mankind and the origin of all life in its scheme. It said that human beings came from orangutans, like Jenny in the zoo. Under the protection of anonymity, the author felt free to go against God.
What upset Charles most about Vestiges was the huge public reaction
to the book—both positive and negative. Even though it was highly controversial for all the reasons Charles knew that his would be, it sold extremely well. There were three more editions in the first year, and it was published in America almost immediately.
Charles watched as in drawing rooms and scientific clubs all over the British Empire, in newspapers and journals around the English-speaking world, people argued about the book. Not only what it said, but who wrote it. (The author turned out to be a journalist named Robert Chambers, who only confessed to its authorship at the end of his life.)
Hooker was amused by the book, which annoyed Charles to no end. He wrote to his friend, “I have also read the ‘Vestiges,’ but have been somewhat less amused at it than you appear to have been: the writing and arrangement are certainly admirable, but his geology strikes me as bad, and his zoology far worse.” Adam Sedgwick, Charles’s old geology professor from Cambridge, declared that Vestiges was so uninformed and so inaccurate it could have been written by a woman! Some religious people were furious that it ignored the biblical account of creation and man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In general, people who felt England needed a new social order found Vestiges appealing; those who wanted society to remain as it was hated the book.
Charles knew that in order to avoid the criticisms being leveled at Vestiges, he would have to build up his argument even more, and gather more examples, more indisputable factual evidence. His own species book had suffered a serious blow, if not a sudden death. He decided to work on a new edition of his Journal of Researches, putting in some more hints about his species view. But he had no desire to be the center of a controversy like the one Vestiges had started. He would find something else to write about.
Chapter 18
Barnacles and Babies
My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life has
been scientific work; and the excitement from such work makes
me for the time forget, or drives away, my daily discomfort.
—CHARLES, IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In July 1845, about nine months after Charles read Vestiges, George Darwin was born. There were now four children at Down House. And Charles finished the second edition of his first literary child, The Voyage of the Beagle, which he sent off to a new publisher, John Murray. Murray would not withhold royalties as his first publisher had, and he would not make Charles pay him to have his books published, as some other publishers did.
At Maer, Bessy was failing, so Emma went home to see her. She went without the children, which was quite unusual, leaving Charles to negotiate his work around them. He kept her apprised of his success (and failure): “In the morning I was baddish, and did hardly any work, and was much overcome by my children…” He reported that the children were romping “in the drawing-room, jumping on everything and butting like young bulls at every chair and sofa, that I am going to have the dining-room fire lighted to-morrow and keep them out of the drawing-room. I declare a month’s such wear would spoil everything in the whole drawing-room.”
Emma and Charles had been very practical when it came to furnishing their house. The chairs and sofas were to be comfortable, sturdy, and long-lasting. Only after satisfying those requirements did Emma and Charles care what anything might look like. It was a good thing the furniture was sturdy.
In many upper-class Victorian households, the children spent most of their time in the nursery with the nurse or governess or in the kitchen having their meals alone, and were trotted out to say hello to the parents once in a while. At Down the children were not confined to the nursery and the kitchen at all. In fact, a cousin exclaimed after a visit that the only place to be sure not to find a child was in the nursery.
And the only place to be sure to find what you were looking for was in Charles’s study. Emma had not become more organized or tidy as time went on. This meant that the children were in and out of his study looking for rulers and scissors and scraps of paper to draw on.
Once when Etty was the third or fourth child to run into his study of a morning, Charles gave her “his patient look” and said, “Don’t you think you could not come in again, I have been interrupted very often.”
The children were sensitive to Charles’s needs and routine, but they couldn’t help bothering him sometimes. They did try hard to avoid going into his study when they were bleeding and needed a sticking plaster to put over the cut, because they knew Charles hated the sight of blood. Etty later wrote, “I well remember lurking about the passage till he was safe away, and then stealing in for the plaster.”
One October day in 1846, in his study, Charles took out one of his last specimens from the voyage. It was a barnacle that he had found on the southern coast of Chile. It was a tiny thing, perhaps the smallest barnacle in the world. Looking at the volcano-shaped creature, he knew what some of his friends had been trying to tell him was correct. To work out his species theory he had to become adept at describing at least one creature in minute detail. Darwin looked at this barnacle under his microscope. Then he looked at other barnacles under his microscope. He was thrilled to see how many small variations there were from barnacle to barnacle, from species to species. He wrote to FitzRoy that he was spending day after day “hard at work dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin’s head…and I could spend another month, and daily see more beautiful structure.”
A century earlier, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus had come up with a system for classifying living beings—from kingdoms (plant and animal) to class (such as mammal), order (Carnivora), family (Canidae), genus (Canis), and species (Canis familiaris, or dog). The system presumed that all species had already been fixed and would not change. Up until this point, if a natural historian saw variation between creatures thought to be of the same species, he ignored it. Charles could not—would not—ignore the variations. He asked other scientists to send him their barnacle collections, and over the next days, weeks, and months he pulled down more bottles of barnacles from his shelves. As he looked at the many minute variations in the Cirripedia under his microscope he saw the opposite of the prevailing assumption, and confirmation of his presumption: species were mutable; there was no barrier preventing the creation of new species. And he kept discovering new species of barnacle. Soon the horizontal surfaces in his study were covered with barnacles from all over the earth. By the end of that year, he decided that he would make a detailed study of all the barnacles he could get his hands on.
Even though he continued to suffer from illness (“at present I am suffering from four boils & swellings, one of which hardly allows me the use of my right arm & has stopped all my work & damped all my spirits,” he wrote in a letter to Joseph Hooker in April 1847), the next years brought on more barnacles and more babies. In July 1847, another daughter, Elizabeth, was born. The following August, Francis, called Frank, joined the family as the sixth child. Charles did not stop using his children as specimens.
“I asked one of my boys to shout as loudly as he possibly could, and as soon as he began, he firmly contracted his orbicular [eye] muscles.” Charles kept making his son yell, and every time he did, he closed his eyes. When Charles asked him why he did that, his son answered that he was not aware he was closing his eyes. So Charles wrote it down to instinct.
These years brought more death, too. Emma’s mother, Bessy, had died in March of 1846. Now Dr. Darwin, their last parent, was getting sicker and sicker. Charles hated to leave Down House, but he made the trip up to Shrewsbury to visit his father. He and Emma kept in constant touch, and when she told him about the latest with the children, he wrote back about Annie, “I suppose now and be-hanged to you, you will allow Annie is ‘something.’ I believe…that she is a second Mozart; anyhow she is more than a Mozart considering her Darwin blood.” Practically everything he wrote about related to his theory. How did Annie get her musical talent? Certainly not from him, but from Emma. And given the tone-deaf Darwin inheritance she had to overcome, she was clearly a musical geni
us.
He missed his children dearly as he walked around his old childhood home and its grounds.
This lovely day makes me pine rather to be with you and the dear little ones on the lawn. Thank Willy and Annie for their very nice notes, which told me a great many things I wished to hear; they are very nicely written. Give them and my dear Etty and Georgy my best love. This place is looking lovely, but yet I could not live here: the sounds of the town, and blackguards talking, and want of privacy, convince me every time I come here that rurality is the main element in one’s home.
In November 1848, Charles got word that his father was on his deathbed. Erasmus wanted him to come up to London and go on to Shrewsbury with him. But Charles himself was too sick to go right away. He was also too sad, and too uneasy with death to push himself. Charles would miss his father, the man whose advice he had received (and usually followed) throughout his life. He never spoke of him with anything other than respect and admiration; he said that his father was the wisest man he had ever known. His notebooks were filled with sentences that began, “My father says” and “According to my father.” And Dr. Darwin had been supportive of him over the years, both financially and emotionally. Even so, Charles’s sisters worried that Charles didn’t realize how proud their father had been of him, and they told him so.
But Charles could not move quickly, and Erasmus went on to Shrewsbury without him. Dr. Darwin died, and Charles arrived at the Mount only after the funeral.
Charles’s body responded to his father’s death, or at least it seemed that way. His illnesses were becoming so bad and so frequent that he sometimes could not work more than twenty minutes at a time without having a pain or discomfort somewhere. Finally, in 1849, the whole family packed up to go to Malvern, where he could get an extensive treatment called a water cure with a doctor named James Gully. The water cure consisted mostly of applying cold water to the outside of the patient’s body—with cold showers and baths. The patients were also packed and wrapped in wet sheets. The nurses applied friction, or rubbing. Steam baths were prescribed, too. Charles was concerned that the treatment was delaying his barnacle work, but on May 6 he wrote to Henslow that the water cure was doing him good. “You will be surprised to hear that we all—children, servants, and all—have been here for nearly two months. All last autumn and winter my health grew worse and worse: incessant sickness, tremulous hands, and swimming head. I thought that I was going the way of all flesh.” But his illness lessened and he got stronger. At Malvern the regime consisted not only of the water cure but also of plain food and springwater to drink. It was all to be pure air, pure water, pure food.
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