This Thing of Darkness

  ‘I am well aware of it.’

  ‘My dear Philos, I must ask for your word as a gentleman that you will keep any such thoughts to yourself, to be aired only in private discussions such as these. That you will never make public your more ... controversial conclusions. You are, it seems, to be for ever fixed in the public mind as the naturalist of the Beagle.’

  ‘Of course. I understand completely, for I am well aware of the possible consequences of any such action. You have no cause for concern - I give you my word, FitzRoy.’

  ‘Thank you, my friend. Thank you for your invaluable contribution to this voyage, for your insights and for your companionship, which I am sure has saved me personally from the most melancholy of fates. I am personally proud to have sailed with you.’

  ‘On the contrary, FitzRoy, it is I who should thank you. You have given me a unique opportunity - an extraordinary opportunity - the like of which, I think, has been given formerly to very few naturalists, and certainly to no geologists. I shall remain eternally in your debt.’

  The two men stood up and shook hands.

  ‘And now, Philos, I have a surprise for you. At least, I hope it shall be a surprise.’

  ‘I am agog.’

  ‘My dear friend - I am to be married.’

  ‘Married?’

  Darwin was too stunned to offer his congratulations. He simply reeled. ‘Married? But . . . to whom?’

  ‘To Miss Mary Henrietta O’Brien, the daughter of Major General Edward O‘Brien. I asked her father for her hand five years ago, before we sailed from Devonport.’

  Darwin felt as if he had been shot. Five years confined in a tiny cabin with this man, all the confidences he had shared, and all the while . . . ! Objections and queries fought each other in his mind, competing to get to the front of a very long queue. ‘But, FitzRoy, you do not write letters home,’ he offered weakly, and sat down, his mental confusion apparently sapping his physical strength. ‘You have not written to her.’

  ‘My first and absolute duty on board is always to my men. I told her that it would be so. Of course, there was a risk that she might not wish to wait for me - a risk I had no option but to take into account. I am a serving naval officer. But Miss O’Brien wrote to Cape Town to confirm the arrangement. So you see, Philos, I am a very happy man.

  ‘But you never mentioned her! Not once. I told you everything. About Fanny Owen’s betrothal. About Fanny Wedgwood’s death. About my feelings for Emma Wedgwood. I confided my most private thoughts on the subject of marriage. And you - all the while, you concealed this most enormous of secrets from me - from everybody.’ Darwin’s stare was openly hostile and accusing now.

  ‘My friend, forgive me, but that is simply the way I preferred it.’

  FitzRoy looked him directly in the eye. Why should I share my innermost confidences with you, or with anyone? My command of the Beagle is a matter for public record — but my emotions, my most private feelings and fears? They are a matter for myself and my God alone, and not for your prying ears. I cannot and will not share such confidences.

  Darwin stood up again, as FitzRoy sat down. ‘You have my congratulations,’ he finally managed to say, and walked stiffly and silently from the cabin.

  Barrelling before the south-westerly blow, the Beagle sighted land, to cheers and hugs, on the first day of October. She made Plymouth dockyard on the second, in softly falling autumn rain. FitzRoy put on his dress uniform, and composed himself before his looking-glass. He was rake-thin, he knew, his skin a weatherbeaten copper, a pale, wiry exhausted shadow of the handsome young man who had put to sea five years previously. He was thirty-one. In all, he had spent nearly a quarter of his life aboard the Beagle. It was the same for the philosopher, he reflected, who had spent five of his twenty-seven years folded into his tiny quarters. Darwin, a once-burly six-footer, was no more than eleven stone in weight now, his prematurely thinning hair and thickening eyebrows combining with his long arms to lend him even more of a simian aspect than before. But whereas Darwin was champing at the bit to get off the ship, FitzRoy realized with a pang that this would be one of the most painful partings of his life. This ship was his body, its men his lifeblood. His relationship to the little vessel felt organic, indivisible and well-nigh impossible to break.

  A surprisingly large crowd was gathering on the quay as they approached, augmented all the time by dark, running figures heading from the town. A small brass band had assembled in the drizzle, and had started to play a popular song apparently entitled ‘Railways Now Are All The Go, Steam, Steam, Steam’.

  ‘Is there a man-of-war due?’ asked Wickham, glancing round worriedly as if the Beagle were about to be run down.

  ‘I think it’s all for us,’ said Sulivan at last.

  ‘For us? Whatever for?’

  The crew were crowded at the rail or clinging to the rigging, desperate for a glimpse of their loved ones; but most of those on the dockside appeared to be strangers.

  ‘Who the deuce are they all?’ asked Wickham, with furrowed brow.

  ‘My dear Wickham - you must excuse me! Oh, my God!’

  With this most uncharacteristic exclamation, Sulivan tore himself away and threw himself excitedly at the rail. For there, hurtling down the white, marble-chipped avenue from the dockyard gates, her skirt flying, her bonnet-ribbons streaming behind her, her companion lagging breathless in her wake, all pretence of dignity thrown to the winds, was the overjoyed figure of Sophia Young.

  The accommodation-ladder was put down, and the result was pandemonium, with as many people trying to get on to the ship as off. FitzRoy came forward to try to make some sense of the chaos. A press of aggressively ill-mannered men made a rush forward, all shouting at once.

  ‘George Dance, Morning Post. I believe you have the celebrated Mr Darwin on board?’

  ‘Where is Mr Darwin?’

  ‘Arthur Hodgson, Hampshire Telegraph. May I speak to Mr Darwin?’

  ‘Gentlemen, I beg you, order, please. I am Captain FitzRoy. I would kindly request that you speak one at a time.’

  ‘You are the captain of the Beagle, sir? What was it like sailing with the world-famous Mr Darwin?’

  ‘James Burling, Times. Could you describe Mr Darwin to us, sir?’

  ‘May we speak to the great man?’

  ‘Would you say it was an honour, sir, to have sailed with Mr Darwin?’

  ‘What does Mr Darwin eat for his breakfast?’

  ‘Is there a Mrs Darwin, sir?’

  On the quayside, two young girls had unfurled a home-made banner reading ‘Welcome home Mr Darwin’. FitzRoy wished he had been man enough to feel no wound to his vanity, for he considered the sin of pride one of his more regrettable weaknesses, but on this occasion he had no option but to concede defeat. He retreated, and left the maindeck to the stentorian tones of Lieutenant Wickham. Marine sentries were posted at the bottom of the accommodation-ladder, with orders to admit only respectable-looking persons aboard. The crowd continued to gather, meanwhile, as sightseers came down to view the Beagle, to lay a hand on her well-travelled hull, perhaps even to catch a glimpse of the celebrated Mr Darwin.

  After a few minutes, FitzRoy was astonished to witness the elegant bonnet of a stylishly dressed woman appear at the rail, before the bonnet’s owner somehow clambered up the battens and over the gunwale. Her rather more plainly dressed husband followed, and introduced himself to the bemused FitzRoy as George Airy, the newly appointed Astronomer-Royal.

  ‘I’m afraid the sentry at the accommodation-ladder would not permit . . .’

  ‘My dear sir, my dear madam, I am most terribly sorry. Please accept my most profound apologies - this is inexcusable. I shall speak to the miscreant most severely. I am afraid that this press of people has created confusion among my crew - it seems that half the country has taken up occupation as a journalist!’

  ‘You can thank the steam-press for that,’ smiled Airy. ‘As the editor of the Athenaeum said, “It takes four men to make a pin, a
nd two to describe it in a book for the working classes.” ’

  Stokes was quickly deputized to show the dignitaries below, while an irritable FitzRoy took issue with the marine sentry.

  ‘Damn it, Burgess, I have just had the Astronomer-Royal and his wife, no less, hauling themselves up the manropes because you would not admit them aboard!’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ stammered Burgess, colouring. ‘Mr Wickham said respectable, sir, and the gentleman did not look respectable. It’s all these reporters, sir, as want to speak to Mr Darwin.’

  ‘Where the devil is the philosopher, anyway?’ FitzRoy caught sight of his steward crossing the deck. ‘Fuller! Have you seen Mr Darwin?’

  ‘He’s gone, sir.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘You mean, he has left the ship?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Fuller looked unhappy.

  ‘Gone without saying goodbye?’

  ‘Yes sir. He, er — ’

  ‘Yes, Fuller?’

  ‘He took Covington with him, sir.’

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  31 Chester Street, London, 8 October 1837

  The FitzRoys travelled the short distance to Sunday service by barouche, partly because Mrs FitzRoy was six months pregnant, and partly because - even in such a well-to-do district as Belgravia - Sunday morning was not the best time to be out on the streets. Eleven in the morning was ‘chucking-out time’, when the bars and gin-palaces finally disgorged the drunken revellers of the night before, and it was not uncommon for churchgoers to have to negotiate brawling prostitutes, quarrelling labourers and any number of helpless or unconscious devotees of that other great spirit. FitzRoy liked to worship at the vast, Romanesque, pale-brick edifice of St Peter’s, Eaton Square, for its ceiling caught the light from its great window and flung it down upon the congregation from high above, an important consideration for one who had spent the previous five years in the middle of the vaulting ocean. With its massive portico and six Ionic columns of honey-coloured stone the church resembled a temple of Ancient Rome, but he did not subscribe to the current and censorious school of thought that decried such architecture as pagan.

  He liked to watch his wife at prayer, for the serenity of her devotions always reminded him of the night they’d met, and the calm, almost beatific manner in which she had seemed to float across the dance-floor. They had married at the end of December, Sulivan acting as groomsman just a couple of weeks before his own wedding to Miss Young, the Beagle’s officers reunited joyfully twice in a fortnight. FitzRoy had barely known his bride, of course - they were only just getting to know each other even now - but right from the first her wisdom, her confidence and her sheer certainty that theirs was a union made in heaven had banished any doubts he might have felt. Their wedding night had been, quite simply, a revelation. There, in the dark, holding her in his arms for the first time, he had experienced feelings of happiness so profound and so unexpected that he could not have believed such an experience possible. He had fallen in love with his wife, utterly and without reservation, from that moment. It was, he felt, as if God had touched them both at the same instant.

  They had taken the house in Chester Street while he laboured six days a week at the Admiralty, often late into the night, upon his charts and sailing directions, and upon the story of the voyage. They had holidayed just once — a visit to his sister’s family at Bromham, near Bedford — but he had found the enforced lay-off frustrating. The compulsory rest day of the Sabbath was, of course, a weekly hindrance, but he was aware, too, of the benefits that such a respite afforded his physical, mental and spiritual health; and, of course, he wished to spend as much time with his new wife as possible before he returned to sea. After church they would join the traditional promenade of the great and good through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and around Shrewsbury Clock. Despite her condition, Mary FitzRoy always insisted that a little light walk along the banks of the Serpentine river would do her good. On this particular Sunday, however, the crowds were thin: it was not just the hunting season that was taking its toll but the first of the winter smogs, a thin, yellow, insinuating, vinegary mist that dampened their clothing and caused their lungs to ache. He suggested that they cut short their constitutional, but she would not hear of it; indeed, she insisted on walking as far as the Uxbridge Road, which bordered the north side of the park.

  There, outside the railings, a different world stared in, like spectators at the zoo. Drunken vagrants and starving agricultural labourers up from the countryside jostled for space with gaunt Irishmen.

  ‘Spare a penny for a poor Johnny-raw, sir,’ yelled a voice, but whose voice amid the forest of hands it was impossible to tell.

  The high price of corn, the doctrines of the Reverend Thomas Malthus and the terrifying new spectre of the workhouse had turned even more people out on to the streets during the Beagle’s absence, swelling the army of the hungry and dispossessed. As if to taunt them, Sunday was the principal day for the city to suck in and chew up its livestock supplies: great droves of oxen, sheep and pigs, cart- and waggon-trains full of struggling calves, goaded and propelled forward by crowds of graziers, cattle-jobbers, pig-fatteners and calf-crammers, a squealing, bleating, lowing, shouting mêlée, surged up the Uxbridge Road towards the holding pound at Paddington. A knacker’s drag jogged through the crowd of unheeding animals, laden with the obscenely mangled carcasses of dead and used-up horses, their torn-out bowels dangling over the side. Rabble-rousers moved among the mud and blood-spattered multitude distributing pamphlets and protest sheets, keen to provoke the dispossessed to anger; others sold Bible tracts, popular journals and Sunday scandal-sheets. No day, it seemed, was quite as boisterous, quite as hungry and desperate, quite as starkly bloody as the Lord’s day. Mary FitzRoy momentarily detached her gloved hand from her husband’s, went to the railing and shared the contents of her purse among the reaching hands.

  ‘Take care, my dear,’ murmured FitzRoy, his hand gripping his cane more tightly, but she moved among the beseeching supplicants like a yacht upon the sea, her donations a mere shining drop or two swallowed up by the hungry ocean.

  Darwin trotted down the front steps of number thirty-six Great Marlborough Street to find his jobbed cabriolet the only one unattended, all the others at the little stand tenanted by loafing teenage drivers with hats and pipes at the most rakish angles their owners could affect. ‘Have any of you fellows seen my devil?’ he asked peevishly.

  ‘Yer honour, he’s just gorn a little way round of the corner for summat short. Why, here he comes, sir, right as a trivet. Jump up, sir.’

  A small, gin-stunted coach-boy in frock-coat and top-boots took his place at the reins. Darwin settled in under the hood. ‘Thirty-one Chester Street. And take care, if you’ve been gilding your liver.’

  Cheerfully ignoring the gibe, the boy swung the buggy round through Argyll Place and joined the traffic stream heading south along Regent Street. From there they bore west down Conduit Street, linking up with Piccadilly via Old Bond Street, until finally they found themselves clattering down Grosvenor Place, keeping the wall of the still unnamed royal palace to their left. It was a whole year since he had seen FitzRoy; they had corresponded about their co-authored book entirely by letter, even though they lived less than two miles apart. Nor had he any particular wish to set eyes upon him now. What had occurred that morning, however, had altered matters. Gould’s letter had thrown him into a panic of excitement. Unfortunately, he would have to negotiate a boatload of tiresome courtesies before he could get down to business, but that could not be helped. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, rather late to go visiting, but he knew FitzRoy well enough for such informality.

  Grand, multi-storeyed mansions in white stucco stacked up along Grosvenor Place; Chester Street proved to be one of the narrow thoroughfares linking it to the equally grandiose terraces of Belgrave Place. It was a prosperous area, reflected Darwin; trust FitzRoy to pitch up on the aristocratic side o
f Regent Street. So much for his former cabin-mate’s supposed shortage of cash. Obviously he was enjoying the benefits of full pay while he prepared the charts from the voyage.

  A flight of white marble steps led up to a wide, stucco-fronted ground floor divided by a trio of arched windows; thereafter the house was a plain brick, its upper windows more prosaically rectangular. He handed his card to the housemaid and enquired if the FitzRoys were ‘at home’. The reply came back in the affirmative, although the matter was hardly in doubt as the lamps had already been lit to fend off the gloom of the afternoon. He was shown past a panelled dining room, up a spiral staircase at the rear of the house — the building was only one room deep, he noted, more imposing from the front than inside - and into a bright, pleasant drawing room on the first floor where the FitzRoys dwelt amid dark mahogany furniture.

  ‘My dear Darwin,’ said FitzRoy, rising, but his manner was cold, and Darwin knew immediately that something was wrong. It did not matter: his business here was more important than whatever was bothering the inflexible old curmudgeon today.

  ‘Mrs FitzRoy, may I have the honour of presenting to your acquaintance Mr Charles Darwin.’

  ‘The honour is all mine, Mrs FitzRoy, believe me. And if you will forgive so forward an observation, I see that congratulations are shortly to be in order.’

  ‘I am delighted to meet you at last, Mr Darwin.’ Mary FitzRoy extended a hand. ‘And, yes, it would appear that we are to be blessed, as I believe Lieutenant Sulivan and his wife have been earlier this week.’

  ‘I pity the poor lady, then, for I apprehend that her husband has a new commission, which will snatch him away at what must be an inopportune moment.’

  ‘Mr Sulivan has command of the Pincher, my dear, an anti-slaving schooner due to sail for West Africa,’ FitzRoy explained.