The Darwin Affair

by Tim Mason

  “I can read the writing on the wall, Sam,” he said privately to his young constable, the two of them having a pint at the end of a long day. “I’m for it. I only hope they spare you, lad. Here’s to Prince Albert.”

  “To Prince Albert,” said Llewellyn. “And Josiah Kilvert.”

  “To Josiah Kilvert.”

  Field said nothing to his good wife about his situation. He would find work; he would take care of Jane and the young people who had become the children for which they had always longed.

  With Albert’s death, the kingdom entered a prolonged period of mourning. For the Queen, the mourning never ended, throughout the many years that were left her. In the Field household, the survivors of blade, flame, and fear shared some of this collective grief. Nevertheless it was Christmastime, and Charles and Jane Field were determined to celebrate the holiday properly. Christmas Eve found the house in Bow Street filled with wonderful aromas, Jane laboring mightily in her kitchen while Bessie Shoreham proclaimed herself run ragged between quiet nips taken in the pantry. Up in the dining room, Belinda trimmed the tree from a step stool and rushed to the window every few moments to see if anyone might be arriving.

  “God sent us snow,” she whispered, although no one was there to hear her. “Just look!” The flakes swirled round the street lamps outside, but within doors the fires blazed and all was warm. The bell jangled and Tom, dressed in a suit chosen by Jane and purchased by Mr. Field, arrived with his mother, who was looking almost her old self again. Jake Figgis arrived soon after, ever solicitous of Mrs. Ginty, and she seemed not unappreciative of his care. Sergeant Willette came down from Oxford with a Miss Draper, young, shy, and apparently happy to be in his company. Sam Llewellyn arrived bearing a bottle-shaped parcel and a bag of oranges.

  When the greetings and the coats had been disposed of, Field bundled his guests up into the dining room. The meal was abundant; the wine flowed. During supper the inspector went round the table twice, kissing each of the females, even Bessie, thereby setting a precedent. After the meal, the master and mistress of the house led their guests in toasts, Christmas carols, and much laughter. Tom did not speak often, but Belinda did. The snow gradually muffled the usual noise of the city. It became a nearly silent night in London, and the world, lamplit, seemed almost clean.

  Afterword

  The Queen lived forty years after Albert’s death and wore mourning her entire life. She was the target of several other would-be assassins but survived them all, winning great approbation from her subjects. Victoria, however, withdrew as much as she could from public life. She became a frequent traveler and returned more than once to Coburg. Her late husband’s hopes for a progressive Prussia were dashed by the throat cancer that early on took Crown Prince Frederick’s life. As for the grandson with the maimed arm whom Victoria had called her dearest William, the world, to its sorrow, would come to know him as Kaiser Wilhelm.

  Sir Richard Owen was appointed first director of the British Museum of Natural History. His overweening malice eventually caught up with him, however, along with his penchant for claiming discoveries that were not entirely his own. He finally was forced to resign from the Royal Society’s Zoological Council because of plagiarism. Nevertheless, his statue stood in the main hall of the Natural History Museum until 2009, when it was replaced by a statue of Charles Darwin. Owen’s obituary recounted one of his favorite anecdotes, about a human head he had stolen as a young medical student.

  In 1865, despite achieving fame in his own right as a weather prognosticator (and despite his wife’s attempts to keep all sharp household objects from him), Captain Robert FitzRoy retrieved a folding blade from its hiding place and cut his own throat with it. He died deeply in debt, but many (including Darwin) contributed to a fund for his widow.

  After twenty-four years in the Diocese of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce was transferred to the Bishopric of Winchester. He died in a fall from his horse near Dorking, Surrey. Thomas Huxley commented that Wilberforce’s brain had at last come into contact with reality, and the result had been fatal.

  It was in the summer of 1860, not long after the boy named Button had found the bag and the man in the shallows of the Thames, that he made another discovery. A compact wooden chest came squelching from the muck at the river’s bottom. It contained a small fortune in coin, which Button managed prudently, having learned from previous errors. His remarkable rise in the world was followed in the press. He was never admitted to society (he remained thoroughly unpresentable throughout his life), but Charles Dickens gave him immortality of a sort and put him (or a distant version of him) in a book.

  Acknowledgments

  This story required research. In London Jane Hill helped me greatly with Victorian period detail and language, and Donald Olson directed me to the old operating theater at St. Thomas’ Hospital. In Oxford Julian and Alison Munby got me into the room at the Museum of Natural History where the great Huxley-Wilberforce debate took place. At Jesus College, Oxford, I slept on a remarkably uncomfortable student bed, taking research a step too far.

  I want to thank early readers for their input and encouragement: Mel and Angela Marvin, Anne Carney, Bill Lawrence, Craig Slaight, Jon Bok, Russell Sharon, Kara Pickman, and Solveig Kjeseth. I am indebted to my indomitable agent, Gail Hochman, and Ira Silverberg who introduced me to Gail and to my editor, Charles F. Adams, a guiding light. For story help, start to finish, I am deeply grateful to my husband, Leo Geter.

  Tim Mason is a playwright whose work has enjoyed numerous productions in New York and California. Among the awards he has received are a Kennedy Center Award, the Hollywood Drama-Logue Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Rockefeller Foundation grant. In addition to his dramatic plays, he wrote the book for Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, which appeared on Broadway and is produced nationally every December. He is the author of one young adult novel published in 2009. The Darwin Affair is his first adult novel.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2019 by Tim Mason.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are

  based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037996

  eISBN: 978-1-61620-946-9