Creation (Movie Tie-In)

by Randal Keynes

  Etty remembered several nursery songs her mother used to sing to the children when they were very young. “When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land” was one, and “There was an Old Woman as I’ve Heard Tell” was another. Emma also had “a particular lilt for the babies when they were being joggled on her knee.” She had a special trick of cutting out animals in paper. She could do bears and lions, but Etty remembered “pigs as being her chefs d’œuvre.”

  In the family’s first years at Down, Charles worked quietly in his study on his theory of the origin of species. In 1843, he met the young botanist Joseph Hooker in London, when it was arranged for Hooker to identify and describe all the plants which Charles had collected in South America and on the Galapagos. At the time, Hooker’s father, Sir William, was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Joseph had been the naturalist on Sir James Ross’s expedition to the Antarctic between 1839 and 1843, and was working on his Flora Antarctica. Charles found his work on plants in different habitats and locations very helpful for his own ideas about plant distribution and the flora of islands, and their bearing on the species question. He referred to Hooker as “the first authority in Europe on that grand subject, that almost key-stone of the laws of creation, geographical distribution,” and asked for his views on every point on which he might be able to help. Hooker quickly became Charles’s closest and most trusted friend, and his most penetrating, helpful and encouraging critic. He was to remain both for the rest of Charles’s life.

  In January 1844, Charles let Hooker into the secret he had been living with since coming back from the Beagle voyage. He wrote to him that he had for some time been engaged in “a very presumptuous work” which everyone he knew would say was “a very foolish one.” He explained how he had started with his Galapagos specimens and the Patagonian fossils, and that he was now “almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable . . . I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends. You will now groan, and think to yourself ‘On what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to.’ I should, five years ago, have thought so.” Hooker wrote back that he could believe there might have been “a gradual change of species” and would be interested to hear how Charles thought it might have taken place “as no presently conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject.”

  Joseph Hooker by T. H. Maguire

  As his young children played around the house, Charles worked up his outline of the case for evolution by natural selection into an essay, arguing each step carefully, identifying all the strongest arguments against it, and dealing with each as best he could. Using the idea of natural laws in the way Herschel had suggested, focusing on the never-ending struggle for existence, and proposing natural selection as the mechanism for developing new species, he sketched out a simple process which explained the infinite variety and richness of the natural world and allowed for endless further developments in any direction. “There is much grandeur in looking at every existing organic being either as the lineal successor of some form now buried under thousands of feet of solid rock, or as being the co-descendant of that buried form of some more ancient and utterly lost inhabitant of this world.” He suggested that it accorded with “what we know of the laws impressed by the Creator” on the physical world, that species should be developed through the operation of natural causes. We feel at first that they must each have been separately designed and created, but he argued that “there is a simple grandeur in this view of life . . . that from so simple an origin, through the selection of infinitesimal varieties, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved.”

  The range and depth of this conjecture together with the simplicity of the process which led to change were the essence of Charles’s view of natural and human life, and he saw the primary laws he was hoping to work out as universal principles that could take their place in a philosophy of nature to be considered alongside Scriptural Revelation. He spoke of God’s “most magnificent laws,” of everything flowing “from some grand and simple laws,” and suggested that “the existence of such laws should exalt our notion of the omniscient Creator.”

  He had still to deal with his concern about the problem of pain and suffering. In one book he had read, the Whig politician Lord Brougham had declared that he could not explain why a benevolent Creator had made a world full of misery and death, as it was “repugnant” to all our feelings and reason to suppose that God desired “the misery of all sentient beings.” Henry Hallam touched on the question in his survey of European thought which Charles also looked through. Hallam wrote that he had found no answer, and concluded that “the creation of a world so full of evil must ever remain the most inscrutable of mysteries.”

  Now, paradoxically, by placing the struggle for existence at the heart of his theory, Charles believed he had part of an answer. Cruelty and pain were not a moral issue because they were the outcome of purely natural processes. By 1839, Charles had abandoned the idea that God had a particular providence for humans. He had then noted: “Man acts on and is acted on by the organic and inorganic agents of this earth, like every other animal.” He now argued that what held for individuals held also for all species. “To marvel at the extermination of a species appears to me to be the same thing as . . . to look at illness as an ordinary event, [but] nevertheless to conclude, when the sick man dies, that his death has been caused by some unknown and violent agency.” He distinguished between the natural laws ordained by God and the processes that resulted from them; he believed that God had no particular concerns about any of the individual consequences of those processes in the infinite elaboration of events. “We cease to be astonished that a group of animals should have been formed to lay their eggs in the bowels and flesh of other sensitive beings; that some animals should live by and even delight in cruelty . . . that annually there should be an incalculable waste of the pollen, eggs, and immature beings; for we see in all this the inevitable consequences of one great law, of the multiplication of organic beings not created immutable.”

  In taking this view, Charles implicitly rejected one of his favourite poet’s main tenets, which had become one of the presumptions of the age, that nature was at heart benign. Wordsworth had claimed in his “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” that Nature never did betray

  The heart that loved her; ’tis her privilege,

  Through all the years of this our life, to lead

  From joy to joy.

  There was clearly value in the idea for all who were able to find comfort or inspiration in experiences of the natural world, but it was not true of nature in all its workings. Charles now saw what Matthew Arnold was to write five years later:Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;

  Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;

  Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;

  Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;

  Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.

  Man must begin—know this—where Nature ends;

  Nature and man can never be fast friends.

  In July 1844, when Annie was three, Charles wrote a note for Emma: “I have just finished my sketch of my species theory. If, as I believe . . . my theory is true, and 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 and last request, which I am sure that you will consider the same as if legally entered in my will, that you will devote £400 to its publication.” He showed the essay to Emma and she found time to read it carefully, noting a few places where she did not understand his train of thought. She also questioned one important point in his argument. Paley in his Natural Theology and generations of naturalists before him had found the structure and functioning of the eye the most persuasive of all the proofs of the existence of God “from design.” It was clearly the contrivance o
f a creative mind, and Paley claimed it was impossible to imagine how such a complex mechanism could have developed by a chance succession of small steps from an organ with another function. Charles recognised that if he was to persuade others to accept his theory, he must be able to show that the structure could have evolved in this way by a purely natural process. He wrote in the essay that this was “the greatest difficulty to the whole theory” and offered an ingenious suggestion as to how the development might have occurred. But Emma was not persuaded by his argument, and wrote in the margin “A great assumption—E.D.” Charles’s suggestion was, indeed, a “great assumption,” and Emma knew that it was a key part of the argument for the theory which he hoped would be a major contribution to science. It was only ever a conjecture; the evidence for it was widely scattered, indirect and fragmentary. For Emma to question the point in the direct way that she did was to strike at the heart of the theory.

  Charles put the essay away while he carried on with other work. He was now confident that the theory would prove to be sound, but was reluctant to publish until he was ready to cope with the close and fierce criticism to which his argument was certain to be subjected. He had to find convincing answers to the various difficulties he had identified; he needed to gather all the evidence that would be required to support his most challenging claims, and he wanted to build his scientific reputation so that when the time came, his argument would be given the careful attention it would need for any hope of a fair judgement. He planned to build up his case carefully and looked forward to announcing it in due course, but he saw no reason to hurry. Some years later he wrote to Hooker: “How awfully flat I shall feel, if when I get my notes together on species &c &c, the whole thing explodes like an empty puff-ball.”

  Watching Annie at three, Charles could appreciate a poem Wordsworth had written about his daughter Catherine at the same age.Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;

  And innocence hath privilege in her

  To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes;

  And feats of cunning; and the pretty round

  Of trespasses, affected to provoke

  Mock-chastisement and partnership in play.

  In the next year the time came for Annie and Willy to learn to read. When Emma had taught at the Sunday school for the villagers at Maer, she had written some stories and had them printed in large letters as a reading book for her pupils. She now read the book with her own children, and they enjoyed the stories. One was about a boy who ate a plum pie and then lied to his mother about it. He was very sad all the next day, and at last admitted what he had done. “ ‘But I am very sorry now, and I wish I had not taken the pie, for I knew how wrong it was at the time.’ ‘Well my dear boy,’ said his mother, ‘I am glad you have told me, and I hope you will try never to say what is not true again. I hope you will ask God to forgive you, for a lie is a sin in the sight of God.’ ”

  Annie may also have known a story book, Cobwebs to Catch Flies, with which her aunt Caroline taught her cousins Sophy, Lucy and Greata to read. One theme which many books for children touched on was kindness to animals, or “humanity to the brute creation.” In one story a maid let fall a drop of honey as she mixed milk for the little boy she was serving. A fly landed on the edge of the boy’s bowl to suck the honey. “The good child laid aside his spoon to avoid frightening the poor fly. His mamma asked: ‘What is the matter, William? Are you not hungry?’ ‘Yes, mamma; but I would not hinder this little fly from getting his breakfast.’ ‘Good child,’ said his mamma, rising from her tea, ‘we will look at him as he eats. See how he sucks through his long tube. How pleased he is.’ ” Later, she told the boy about insects which disguise themselves to escape the dangers which they meet. “She picked up a wood-louse, and laid it gently on his little hand. ‘There,’ said she, ‘you see the wood-louse roll itself into a little ball, like a pea: let it lie awhile, and when it thinks you do not observe it—’ ‘Ah! mamma, it unrolls. Oh! it will run away; shall I not hold it?’ ‘No, my dear, you would hurt it.’ ‘I would not hurt any creature, mamma.’ ‘No, surely. He who made you, made all creatures to be happy.’ ”

  When Emma was away staying with her parents, Charles wrote to her about each day’s happenings. One morning he did hardly any work and was “much overcome” by the children. “The day was so thick and wet a fog, that none of them went out.” John Lewis, the village builder, came to mend the plumbing and paper the water closet. Willy, Annie and Bessy the nursemaid were there, and the one-year-old Etty “insisted on going in, I dare say, greatly to the disturbance of Bessy’s delicacy.”

  Willy was good-natured as an elder brother, but Annie got caught in the rough and tumble. “Poor Annie has had a baddish knock by Willy’s ball in her eye—it is swelled a bit, but not otherwise bad.” A few days later, “Willy told me to tell you that he had been very good and had given Annie only one tiny knock.” Charles felt “It is really wonderful how good and quiet the children have been; sitting quite still during two or three visits, conversing about everything, and much about you and your return. When I said ‘I shall jump for joy, when I hear the dinner bell,’ Willy said ‘I know when you will jump much more—when Mamma come home.’ ‘And so shall I’ responded many times Annie.” Charles ended one letter: “Played with children till 6 o’clock; read again and now have nothing to do, but most heartily wish you back again.”

  Charles told Emma that Etty had been neglecting him “and would not play. She could not eat any jam, because she had eaten so much at tea . . . She was rather fidgety, going in and out of the room, and Brodie declares she was looking for you. I did not believe it, but when she was sitting on my knee afterwards and was looking eagerly at pictures, I said, ‘Where is poor Mama?’ She instantaneously pushed herself off, trotted straight to the door, and then to the green door, saying ‘Kitch’; and then Brodie let her through, when she trotted in, looked all around her and began to cry; but some coffee-grains quite comforted her.”

  Emma was always easygoing with her young children. The Darwins’ neighbour, Louisa Nash, remembered her saying that she had never thwarted them needlessly, but would say: “You seem to care very much about so and so, and I don’t care at all, and when you are older you won’t care for it either, so you may have it now.” She would often use small bribes to get over “small childish difficulties.” According to her grandson Bernard, “Nobody could have been firmer on what she deemed to be matters of principle, and the most bold-faced child could never have taken a liberty with her; but she had a wide-minded sense of proportion, and in what she deemed immaterial things, she believed in corruption rather than coercion.” Willy, Annie and Etty were obedient children, “and anything like deliberate disobedience may be said to have never entered our heads. The rules of life were very simple, and when anything could be explained to us it was, and even when it could not, we never questioned the absoluteness of a definite command.”

  Emma cared little about neatness or order in the household. When she was young, she had been “Little Miss Slip-slop” to her elder sister’s “Mrs Pedigree.” Her Aunt Jessie had expected her to “lark it through life” as she had a “pretty gaiety” about her, “always ready to answer to any liveliness and sometimes to throw it out herself.” But Etty remembered her as “serene but somewhat grave. The jokes and the merriment would all come from my father.” Emma always disliked displays of emotion but at some time in the 1830s or 1840s, perhaps with the strain of looking after her sick mother, then Charles and then her children, she developed the deep restraint and determined self-sufficiency which she kept for the rest of her life. There was “a certain reserved gravity in her expression” which acquaintances sometimes “strangely misunderstood” before she spoke. She talked herself once of her “foolish habit of not looking in people’s faces.” She avoided exuberant expression; Etty wrote that “Simplicity, even bareness of manner, was more to her taste.” She was also “calm over music, deeply as she enjoyed it.”

  Charles playe
d often with the children when they were small. He liked to hold them, and he liked them to be close and affectionate to him. He also, though, had to cope with their furies, and comparisons came to mind when he did so. He wrote many years later in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: “Everyone who has had much to do with young children must have seen how naturally they take to biting when in a passion. It seems as instinctive in them as in young crocodiles who snap their little jaws as soon as they emerge from the egg.”

  Etty remembered her father as “the most delightful play-fellow” to Annie and herself. He had a number of games which she specially loved. “One was called ‘Taglioni,’ a sort of opera dancing on his knees.” The Taglionis were a celebrated family of ballet dancers and a Taglioni was a kind of dancer’s dress. Charles also laid Etty on his knees and drummed on her with “a large voice for the big drums and a little voice for the little drums.” Her oddest enjoyment was to lie on the floor and have “a mysterious quaking sensation produced by his gently shaking us with his foot.” He would also tickle her knees and chant to a monotonous tune, “If you be a fair lady as I do hope you be, then you will not laugh at the tickling of your knee.” He had a story about an old woman with nine little pigs, and there were other games of “arms that flew about, and crocodiles which were ‘very naughty beasts,’ and worms that crawled in and worms that crawled out.” According to Francis, his father’s body was very hairy; the children would put their hands inside his shirt “and he would growl like a bear at us.” After Charles’s rest every day, he used to have his back rubbed, and this had a pleasant or comforting effect on him. One of Francis’s earliest recollections was of beating or patting his father’s back all over in time to silent tunes.