The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

by David Quammen

  comments in the notebook about “my theory”: Ibid.

  “Study the wars of organic being”: Ibid., 262.

  “a most laborious, & painful effort”: Ibid., 263.

  the “whole fabric totters & falls”: Ibid.

  “But Man—wonderful Man”: Ibid.

  concluding firmly that, no, “he is no exception”: Ibid.

  “I have not been very well of late”: Correspondence 2: 47.

  “anything which flurries me completely knocks me up”: Ibid., 2: 51–52.

  he repeated to his old friend W. D. Fox: Ibid., 2: 91.

  “If not marry,” he wrote: Ibid., 2: 443.

  “If marry,” he wrote: Ibid.

  this time “Marry” headed the longer column: Ibid., 2: 444.

  “It being proved necessary”: Ibid.

  “Mine is a bold theory”: CD’s Notebooks, 340.

  “There must be some law”: Ibid., 347.

  he “thought much upon religion”: Correspondence 2: 432.

  “their crowding and interfering with each other’s”: Wrigley and Souden, eds. (1986), 7.

  prevented what Malthus called “checks”: Ibid., 14.

  “moral restraint, vice, and misery”: Ibid., 16.

  “the warring of the species as inference”: CD’s Notebooks, 375.

  “One may say there is a force”: Ibid., 375–76.

  a burst of comments on the “differences”: Ibid., 391.

  increasingly confident references to “my theory”: Ibid., 397–98.

  labeled “N,” which was devoted to “metaphysical enquiries”: Ibid., 561.

  whether “love of the deity” might result: Ibid., 291.

  “Having proved mens & brutes bodies”: Ibid., 409.

  He wanted to illuminate those “laws of life”: Ibid., 411.

  Emma felt “bewildered” rather than giddy: Quoted in Browne (1996), 391.

  she called it “a painful void between us”: Correspondence 2: 123.

  his “most sincere love & hearty gratitude”: Ibid., 2: 114.

  “Three principles, will account for all”: CD’s Notebooks, 412–13.

  “Wasted entirely the last week of November”: Correspondence 2: 432.

  “stupid & comfortable”: Ibid., 2: 156.

  The Kiwi’s Egg

  a multi-part paper titled “On the Anatomy of the Apteryx”: Owen (1838).

  referred to it in his notebook “D”: CD’s Notebooks, 340–41.

  “Sometimes the egg-bearing female”: Grzelewski (2000), 83.

  “while you are acting conscientiously”: Autobiography, 235–37.

  This “sketch,” as he called it: Correspondence 2: 435.

  what he called here “the natural means of selection”: F. Darwin, ed. (1909), 4.

  would be to “alter forms”: Ibid., 9.

  with their “deceptive appearance”: Ibid., 49.

  “not from one law of gravity”: Ibid.

  “death, famine, rapine, and the concealed war”: Ibid., 52.

  “There is a simple grandeur”: Ibid.

  “impious doctrines” such as atheism and socialism: Desmond and Moore (1991), 297, quoting The Times in August 1842.

  to his “dear old Titty” or his “dear Mammy”: Correspondence 2: 398; Ibid., 4: 146.

  “classification consists in grouping beings”: Ibid., 2: 376.

  “a most strange fact”: Ibid., 3: 421.

  asking Hooker’s help with “one little fact”: Ibid., 3: 2.

  “I have been now ever since my return”: Ibid.

  “Heaven forfend me from Lamarck”: Ibid.

  with its casual suggestion about “one living filament”: CD’s Notebooks, 170, note 1.5.

  Lamarck thought, by “the supreme author of all things”: Quoted in Mayr (1982), 353.

  certain “subtle fluids” somehow: Burkhardt, ed. (1977), 155–56; Bowler (1989), 84.

  Lamarck’s sentiment intérieur: Burkhardt, ed. (1977), 169.

  a sort of “feeling of existence”: Packard (1901), 325.

  one particular organism, the “sea mat”: Desmond and Moore (1991), 37; Autobiography, 50.

  “I listened in silent astonishment”: Autobiography, 49.

  it “has met with some degree of favour”: Lyell (1989), 2: 18.

  “& also a gradual change of species”: Correspondence 3: 7.

  intended for reading “in case of my sudden death”: Ibid., 3: 43.

  “it will be a considerable step in science”: Ibid.

  somehow leads to the “creation or production”: Ibid., 3: 61.

  “I have continued steadily reading”: Ibid., 3: 67.

  “The general conclusion at which I have slowly”: Ibid.

  “It has pleased Providence to arrange”: Chambers (1994), 234.

  he seemed to be…a “funny fellow”: Correspondence 3: 103.

  he’d been “somewhat less amused”: Ibid., 3: 108.

  Darwin realized that “Mr. Vestiges”: Ibid., 3: 253.

  Point of Attachment

  “Darwin’s Delay”: Gould (1977), 21.

  “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure”: Journal of Researches (1845), reprinted as The Voyage of the Beagle (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 339.

  about how “the creative power”: Journal of Researches (1839), facsimile reprint (New York: Hafner, 1952), 474. See also pp. 461–62 for Darwin’s cursory 1839 comments on diversity of beak shape among the finches.

  marveling at “the amount of creative force”: Journal of Researches (1845, 2001), 355.

  he admitted feeling “astonished”: Ibid., 337.

  “Hence, both in space and time”: Ibid.

  “the replacement of extinct species by others”: CD’s Notebooks, 413, note 59.2.

  made him a landlord, “a Lincolnshire squire”: Correspondence 3: 181.

  “My life goes on like Clockwork”: Ibid., 3: 345.

  “How much time lost by illness!”: Ibid., 3: 397.

  “Where does your father do his barnacles?”: Browne (1996), 473.

  “I am not inclined to take much for granted”: Correspondence 3: 250.

  “How painfully (to me) true”: Ibid., 3: 253.

  mentioning it fondly as “Mr. Arthrobalanus”: Ibid., 3: 356.

  Geoffroy discerned “unity of plan”: Desmond (1992), 47; Mayr (1982), 362.

  “lies in our ignorance of what”: Correspondence 2: 375.

  that classification should reflect “consanguinity”: Ibid., 2: 376.

  that Gray “intended to anticipate” Darwin’s work: Ibid., 4: 162.

  or as Charles sometimes called him, “the Governor”: See, e.g., ibid., 2: 86, 118.

  “the kindest man I ever knew”: Autobiography, 28.

  “unusually unwell, with swimming of head”: Correspondence 4: 384.

  “My own ever dear Mammy”: Ibid., 4: 183.

  rationalized that it was “only a ceremony”: Ibid., 5: 9.

  rudimentary or “abortive” structures: Ibid., 3: 365.

  “I have been struck”: Ibid., 4: 344.

  “Systematic work wd be easy were it not”: Ibid.

  “My cirripedial task is an eternal one”: Ibid., 4: 319.

  “a small, poor first fruit”: Ibid., 4: 344.

  “of which creatures I am wonderfully tired”: Ibid., 5: 100.

  “a shout of paeans for the Barnacles”: Ibid., 4: 406.

  The Royal Medal was “quite a nugget”: Ibid., 6: 55.

  “Health very bad with much sickness”: Ibid., 4: 385.

  caused “nervous dyspepsia”: Ibid., 4: 225, note 1.

  “sugar, butter, spices tea bacon”: Ibid., 4: 224.

  “I am turned into a mere walking”: Ibid., 4: 234.

  “that it induces in most people”: Ibid., 4: 235–36.

  he’d gotten to like his own “aquatic life”: Ibid., 4: 344.

  “Her whole mind was pure & transparent”: Ibid., 5: 541.

  worried that she had inherite
d his “wretched digestion”: Ibid., 5:9.

  A modern scholar named Randal Keynes: See Keynes (2002), 241–45.

  “her face lighted up”: Correspondence 5: 13.

  she vomited badly, and “from hour to hour”: Ibid., 5: 14.

  Annie’s “hard, sharp pinched features”: Ibid., 5: 16.

  “I quite thank you”: Ibid., 5: 19.

  The governess immediately had “one of her attacks”: Keynes (2002), 216.

  “I am in bed not very well with my stomach”: Correspondence 5: 24.

  “She went to her final sleep most tranquilly”: Ibid., 5: 24.

  “We shall be much less miserable together”: Ibid., 5: 25.

  “Sometime,” he added, he would like to know: Ibid., 5: 28.

  “I never gave up Christianity until I was”: Desmond and Moore (1991), 658.

  Christianity was “not supported by evidence”: Browne (2002), 484.

  “disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate”: Autobiography, 87.

  “Everything in nature,” he concluded coldly: Ibid.

  Later, “with many fluctuations”: Ibid., 93.

  he simply called himself “muddled”: Correspondence 8: 275.

  attacked by Leibniz as “subversive” of natural religion: Ibid., 8: 106, Darwin quoting Brewster’s life of Newton.

  Gravity was “an occult quality”: Ibid.

  “I cannot believe that there is a bit more”: Ibid., 8: 258.

  “I cannot see, as plainly as others do”: Ibid., 8: 224.

  “An innocent & good man stands”: Ibid., 8: 275.

  “Blessings on her”: Ibid., 5: 542.

  A Duck for Mr. Darwin

  “the theory of the progressive development”: Wallace (1905) 1: 254.

  Wallace found his book “very philosophical”: Ibid.

  “shining out like a mass of brilliant flame”: Wallace (1889), 152.

  “good resolutions soon fade”: Wallace (1905), 1: 309.

  What he termed “closely allied species”: Wallace (1852), reprinted in Camerini, ed. (2002), 101.

  “only the announcement of the theory”: Marchant (1975), 54.

  He also wrote about the “creation” of new species: Wallace (1969), 8–10.

  He used the term “antitype”: Ibid., 6.

  “are all explained and illustrated by it”: Ibid., 18.

  “Such phenomena as are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands”: Ibid., 8.

  “Every species has come into existence coincident”: Ibid., 6.

  “began sorting notes for Species Theory”: Correspondence 5: 537.

  what he called “accidental means” of plant species dispersal: The Origin of Species, facsimile 1st edn. (1964; cited hereafter as The Origin), 358.

  putrid and stinky “in a quite extraordinary degree”: Correspondence 5: 332.

  “a wonderful quantity of mucus”: Ibid., 5: 305.

  “I have puppies of Bull-dogs & Greyhound in salt”: Ibid., 5: 326.

  “I am getting on splendidly”: Ibid., 6: 45.

  “Skins,” it began: “Any domestic breed or race”: Ibid., 5: 510.

  Halfway down the list appeared an inconspicuous: Ibid.

  “What think you of Wallace’s paper”: Ibid., 5: 519.

  but offered “nothing very new”: Ibid., 5: 522.

  “It seems all creation with him”: Ibid.

  “The domestic duck var. is for Mr. Darwin”: Ibid., 6: 290.

  “By your letter, & even still more”: Ibid., 6: 387.

  “I wish you would publish some small fragment”: Ibid., 6: 89.

  “I rather hate the idea of writing”: Ibid., 6: 100.

  “I had a good talk with Lyell”: Ibid., 6: 106.

  though not necessarily against a “preliminary essay”: Ibid., 6: 109.

  “I am working very steadily at my big Book”: Ibid., 6: 265.

  “This summer will make the 20th year (!)”: Ibid., 6: 387.

  His Abominable Volume

  “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely”: Wallace (1858), reprinted as part of the full Darwin-Wallace presentation to the Linnean Society, in Weigel, ed. (1975). The Wallace paper alone is also reprinted in Wallace (1969).

  posited “a general principle in nature”: Weigel, ed. (1975), 28.

  “The life of wild animals”: Ibid.

  “the weakest & least perfectly organized”: Ibid., 32.

  “variations from the typical form of a species”: Ibid., 34.

  Those creatures “best adapted” as a result: Ibid., 32.

  The result would be “continued divergence”: Ibid., 36.

  “successive variations departing further and further”: Ibid., 28.

  “all the phenomena presented by organized beings”: Ibid., 42.

  “Ternate, February 1858”: Ibid.

  “And the answer,” as he recollected long afterward: Wallace (1905), 1: 362.

  “The more I thought over it”: Ibid.

  “Your words have come true with a vengeance”: Correspondence 7: 107.

  “without its full share of intelligence”: Litchfield (1915), 2: 162.

  describes baby Charles as “severely retarded”: Desmond and Moore (1991), 467.

  “may have been slightly retarded”: Browne (2002), 37, 503.

  “It was the most blessed relief”: Correspondence 7: 121.

  “after their first sorrow, they could only feel”: Litchfield (1915), 2: 162.

  “nice little bubbling noises”: Correspondence 7: 521.

  “I shd. be extremely glad now to publish”: Ibid., 7: 117.

  “This is a trumpery letter”: Ibid., 7: 118.

  “I daresay all is too late”: Ibid., 7: 122.

  though Darwin did allude to “the origin of species”: Abstract of Darwin’s letter to Asa Gray, printed in Darwin and Wallace(1858), reprinted in Weigel, ed. (1975), 22.

  that Darwin and Wallace’s paper “would not be worthy of notice”: Correspondence 7: 292.

  savored it as “a taste of the future”: Ibid., 7: 291.

  “I shall never forget the impression”: Quoted in Browne (2002), 49.

  references to the “ingenious and original reasonings”: Quoted in ibid., 50.

  “any of those striking discoveries which at once”: Quoted in ibid., 42.

  “I am quite prostrated & can do nothing”: Correspondence 7: 121.

  he seized the idea of writing a sleek “abstract”: Ibid., 7: 130.

  “When we look to the individuals”: The Origin, 7.

  suffering “the old severe vomiting”: Correspondence 7: 247.

  “My abstract is the cause”: Ibid., 7: 247.

  “a comparatively free man”: Ibid.

  “I had absolutely nothing whatever to do”: Ibid., 7: 240.

  “written in 1839 now just 20 years ago!”: Ibid., 7: 241.

  “perfect, quite clear & most courteous”: Ibid., 7: 129.

  if Mr. Darwin’s “excess of generosity” had resulted: Ibid., 7: 166.

  “strictly just to both parties”: Ibid.

  “who thought so highly of it that they immediately”: Marchant (1975), 57.

  “This assures me the acquaintance and assistance”: Ibid.

  “This insures me the acquaintance of these eminent men”: Wallace (1905), 1: 365.

  “incredibly bad, & most difficult”: Correspondence 7: 303.

  His proposed title was deadly dull: Ibid., 7: plate facing p. 283.

  “So much for my abominable volume”: Ibid., 7: 336.

  “no possible means of drawing [a]line”: Ibid., 7: 349.

  their skills at “the American game”: Ibid.

  “You cannot think how refreshing it is”: Ibid., 7: 350.

  “My dear Sir, I have received”: Ibid., 7: 365.

  “Your father says he shall never think”: Ibid., 7: 395, note 1.

  “If a monkey has become a man”: Peckham (1959), 16.

  “the Survival of the Fittest”: Ibid., 22, 164.

&
nbsp; a whole new chapter, “Miscellaneous Objections”: Ibid., 23, 226.

  struck the word “On” from his title: Ibid., 23, 71.

  “When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle’”: The Origin, 1.

  “innumerable species inhabiting this world”: Ibid., 3.

  “perfection of structure and coadaptation”: Ibid.

  that the mechanism he calls “natural selection”: Ibid., 5. Darwin puts the phrase in initial capitals, “Natural Selection,” at this first mention, but later (e.g., p. 81) he leaves it lowercase.

  “have been, and are being, evolved”: Ibid., 490.

  talks in these opening pages about “modification and coadaptation”: Ibid., 4.

  “descent with modification”: Ibid., 331.

  or his “theory of descent”: Ibid., 426.

  in his introduction is the “struggle for existence”: Ibid., 4. Again, capitalized as “Struggle for Existence” on first use, but not always later, e.g., p. 5.

  “As many more individuals”: Ibid., 5.

  “No one supposes that all the individuals”: Ibid., 45.

  “much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary”: Ibid., 48.

  “Darwin revolutionized our study of nature”: Lewontin (2000), 67.

  “all nature is at war”: The allusion to de Candolle is at The Origin, p. 62; the quote is from Darwin’s 1844 essay, in F. Darwin, ed. (1909), 87.

  “The face of Nature may be compared to”: The Origin, 67.

  “what may not nature effect”: Ibid., 83.

  “In such case, every slight modification”: Ibid., 82.

  “The more diversified the descendants”: Ibid., 112.

  “every species has come into existence coincident”: Ibid., 355, quoted from Wallace (1855).

  “We see in these facts some deep organic bond”: The Origin, 350.

  “On the theory of descent with modification”: Ibid., 340.

  “the animal in its less modified state”: Ibid., 449.

  the “very soul” of natural history: Ibid., 434.

  And the “same great law” of homologous parts: Ibid.

  “that it has so pleased the Creator”: Ibid.

  but somehow “natural” and objective: Ibid., 413.

  simply “reveals the plan of the Creator”: Ibid.

  “all true classification is genealogical”: Ibid., 420.

  “the hidden bond which naturalists”: Ibid.

  he also calls them “atrophied” or “aborted”: Ibid., 450.

  the entire book is essentially “one long argument”: Ibid., 459.

  “a considerable revolution in natural history”: Ibid., 484.