‘Then we must be happy on Mr Sulivan’s behalf. No one who enters into marriage with a naval officer can fail to be aware of the separations involved.’
Don’t patronize me, thought Darwin. I am only here on sufferance. Mrs FitzRoy was astonishingly beautiful, he decided, but he could not work out whether her solemn, direct manner betokened gracious piety or insufferable self-satisfaction. Certainly, she did not seem the sort of empty-headed woman to dote on the romantic heroines of Byron and Scott. There was something intimidating about her, something almost evangelical.
‘But I understand that we must congratulate you, Mr Darwin,’ said the object of his study, as the housemaid served tea. ‘My husband tells me that you are to be made a fellow of the Royal Society, and secretary of the Geological Society.’
‘Indeed so. The offers came about through the good offices of Mr Lyell. I often dine at his club, or he at mine - did I tell you that I had been elected to the Athenaeum, along with Mr Dickens, the novelist?’
‘What elevated circles you do move in, Mr Darwin.’
Again, Darwin had the faintest sense that he was being patronized, but he refused to be ashamed of his achievements.
‘Oh, I have made a good many interesting new friends of late. I am a frequent guest at Mr Babbage’s soirées, along with Herbert Spencer, Mr Brown the botanist, Sydney Smith, Thomas and Jane Carlyle - he writes all the articles on German literature in the French Quarterly — and Miss Martineau, of course, who is a friend of my brother.’ All fascinating and influential people, he thought, not tuppenny-ha‘penny aristocrats. ‘The company cannot be faulted - sadly, it is my own digestion that usually lets me down.’
‘You continue to remain unwell? We are sorry to hear it.’
His ill-health was evident. Darwin was even thinner and more sickly than he had been at the end of the voyage, a condition that lent his overhanging brow an air of perpetually furious concentration. He could not have weighed more than ten and a half stone.
‘Yes, I appear to be suffering some sort of chronic complaint, brought on no doubt by many years of constant seasickness.’ He grinned humourlessly at FitzRoy. ‘I have tried all sorts of physic, from calomel to quinine to arsenic - even Indian ale — but nothing seems to work.’ Damn it, this was like confessing to a Catholic priest. ‘I dare say that London’s murky atmosphere does my constitution no help.’
‘Then perhaps you would be well advised to spend more time with your family in Shropshire.’
And less time collecting influential friends like trophies, thought FitzRoy. He is here because he wants something, that much is clear. He would not come for any other reason.
‘I was back home only last week, in fact — I travelled by train as far as Birmingham. I cannot say that I was much impressed. One has to pay for one’s own candles to read, and one must hire a footwarmer to stave off the cold. It was tremendously fast, though — just five hours, once the locomotive had been pulled up to Camden by the winding-cables.’
‘And what intelligence is there of your family, Mr Darwin?’
‘Oh, we have cause for great celebration. My sister Caroline is married now, to my cousin Josiah Wedgwood - the eldest son of my uncle Jos - who has recently returned from travelling in Europe.’
‘And what of yourself? Is it your intention to take a wife?’
Mary FitzRoy posed the question with disarming directness, but Darwin deflected it. Negotiations with Emma Wedgwood were at too delicate a stage to make the matter public.
‘I fear I am too busy cataloguing the specimens from the voyage to consider capturing such a rare specimen as a wife.’
‘It would appear that both you and my husband will spend more years organizing your discoveries than you spent actually circumnavigating the world.’
‘What with the book and the charts, I feel like an ass caught between two bundles of hay,’ put in FitzRoy, who had barely spoken, and only did so now for his wife’s benefit. ‘Both hail me, and tell me they require my undivided attention to do them full justice.’
What’s biting the old goose? thought Darwin, but he ploughed on nonetheless. ‘I have been fortunate enough to enlist the most excellent help, FitzRoy. Lyell has introduced me to Richard Owen, the Hunterian professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. Do you know Owen? He is the man who first coined the term “dinosaur”. My fossils from Punta Alta are entirely new to science. He has christened the giant aquatic rodent a Toxodon, the giant armadillo is to be called a Scelidotherium, there is a giant sloth called a Glyptodon, and a giant guanaco that he has named Machrauchenia. Owen says, and this is the remarkable thing, that all the South American fossils are related to the animals still living on the same continent - it is as if there is a continuous process of change. Do forgive me, Mrs FitzRoy. All this scientific talk must be rather dull for you.’
‘Not in the least, Mr Darwin — I am fascinated. Indeed, I am intrigued to know what you make of the recent discoveries in Trafalgar Square. I apprehend that workmen laying the foundations for the column have found the bones of enormous elephants, rhinoceroses and sabre-toothed tigers.’
Touché, thought FitzRoy, with a glow of pride.
‘A fascinating discovery indeed,’ replied Darwin evasively. ‘And there are now live elephants and rhinoceroses - or should one say rhinoceri? - at the Zoological Society, and a giraffe too. They are the most astonishing creatures. You really must go, when your condition permits it. I was there yesterday — the Society is opened privately to members at weekends - did I tell you that I had been elected a member of the Zoological Society? - and I saw a chimpanzee named Tommy, who had been dressed up in human clothing and allocated a human nurse. I assure you, you would find his antics most amusing. During my visit, the nurse showed him an apple but would not give it him, whereupon Tommy threw himself on his back, and kicked and cried precisely like a human child. He then looked very sulky, and after two or three fits of passion the nurse said, “Tommy, if you stop bawling and be a good boy, I will give you the apple.” The ape certainly understood every word of this - and though, like a child, he had great work to stop whining, he at last succeeded and got the apple, jumped into an armchair and began eating it with the most contented countenance imaginable!’
‘And is your own interest in Tommy the chimpanzee a scientific one, Mr Darwin, or purely a matter of entertainment?’
‘Well, I was at the Zoological Society principally to see Mr John Gould, the taxonomist. Did I say? He has agreed to classify all the birds that I collected on the voyage. Waterhouse is attending to the insects, Bell the reptiles, and my friend Leonard Jenyns the fish. In fact, it is upon a matter of Mr Gould’s classification that I am here to see Captain FitzRoy. I wonder, Mrs FitzRoy, if you would be so kind as to permit us a few moments in private? It is a technical discussion — most tiresome, I assure you.’
‘Of course, Mr Darwin. That would be no trouble at all.’
‘Then, if you have no objection, my dear, we can repair to my study, upstairs,’ said FitzRoy. ‘Mr Darwin might like to inspect the work in progress.’
‘And may I venture to hope, dear lady, that your confinement proceeds in as smooth and untroubled a manner as possible, God willing.’
The preamble completed, FitzRoy led Darwin up the winding staircase, noticing as he did so that the philosopher pulled a silver snuff-box from his coat pocket and took a furtive pinch, before loping on after him. They went into FitzRoy’s study, as neat and tidy a workplace as his cabin in the ship had been, and shut the door.
‘It is opportune indeed that you have chosen today to pay your visit,’ remarked FitzRoy icily, ‘for there is an urgent matter I must discuss with you. But you indicated that you also have business with me.’
‘It is Gould,’ said Darwin, simply. ‘He has been working on the Galapagos finches. He says there are no fewer than four sub-groups, and that one, Geospiza, contains no fewer than six species with insensibly graduated beaks. Separate species, FitzRoy. The variants have become separate specie
s.’
‘I find that hard to credit.’
‘All three mockingbirds are different species, too, from three different islands! All of them are unknown to zoological science. And Bell says that each of the lizards from each of the different islands are different species as well. I tell you, FitzRoy, these are not variants but species! Would that I had paid more attention to Lawson’s lecture about the differing tortoise carapaces.’
‘How came you by several different types of finch? Bynoe told me that you refused my offer of a cage of finches on James Island.’
‘My assistant - Covington.’ Darwin looked shamefaced. ‘It was he who collected the birds. I failed to observe any distinction at the time. I am convinced that Covington’s birds differ from island to island, but I cannot be absolutely sure of the labelling. I fear I have mingled together the collections that he made at the different locations. I never dreamed that islands just fifty or sixty miles apart, most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, under the same climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would be differently tenanted. That is why I have come to you, FitzRoy. You and Bynoe . . . I know that you both made properly labelled and differentiated collections. I need your permission for Gould to access the collections made by yourself and Bynoe in the British Museum. I need your help, FitzRoy.’
‘You ask for my help to try to prove your transmutationist theories?’
‘I merely ask for access to the specimens.’
‘You and this ornithologist of yours - this Gould - you claim that they are different species of finch, but I still fail to see by what mechanism any creature can cross the barrier between species. They are all finches. Surely by definition they are variants?’
‘But, FitzRoy, I have the mechanism now. I have the mechanism. I read Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, and it came to me, as clear as day. Why is the world not overrun with rabbits, or flies, when they can breed at such an incredible rate? Why is the world not overrun with poor people? Answer: the weakest die off. Death, disease, famine, all take their toll. Only the best-adapted survive. It is why the lower races, such as the Fuegians and the Araucanians, will be eliminated, and why the higher, civilized white races will vanquish their territory. It is why Christianity conquers heathenism, because Christianity better meets the demands of life. Death is a creative entity! It preserves the most useful adaptations in animals, and plants, and people, and weeds out the least useful ones. So the favourable adaptations become fixed. That is how a species adapts.’
‘All this does not explain how one species could possibly transmute into another.’
‘Suppose six puppies are born. Two have longer legs, and can run faster. They are the only two of the litter that survive. The next generation - their children - shall all have longer legs. Species adapt by throwing up random variants - a process of trial and error — which persist if they are advantageous. They are selected, if you like, by nature herself, into winners and losers!’
‘You are assuming that nature acts but externally on every creature. Yet the two are indivisible. Do not creatures define their own environment just as it defines them? Does not mankind, for instance, cut down the forests?’
‘But this is where Malthus, God bless him, has given me so much! Mankind works against nature! We civilized men do our utmost to check the natural process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, we treat the sick, we institute poor laws. Vaccination has preserved thousands who would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. What we are doing is highly injurious to the race of man!’
‘You speak of Christian mercy as if it were somehow reprehensible. Malthus saw the expanding numbers of mankind as symptomatic of man’s fall, not his rise through some brutal competition! He saw such a competition as one that must be halted, not celebrated!’
‘But do you not see, FitzRoy? Every single organic being is in competition, striving to the utmost to increase in numbers! The birds that sing around us live on insects, or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life. They in turn, and their eggs, are constantly destroyed by beasts of prey. Nature is not the creation of a benevolent God! The only order in God’s universe is a coincidental side-product of the struggle among organisms for reproductive success.’
‘What of co-operation in nature? Beetles that feed on dung? Birds that live on the backs of hippopotamuses?’
‘Mere parasites.’
‘What of beauty? What of the origin of life itself? What of something as beautiful and complicated as the human eye, which can adjust itself a million times faster than any spyglass? How did such a mechanism come into being through accidental modification? Only the Creator Himself could have designed such a thing.’
‘Maybe the eye developed gradually, as man gradually designed the spyglass.’
‘The gradual design of the spyglass was the product of God-given reason.
‘Must a contrivance have a contriver?’
‘Yes, by definition! I cannot believe I am hearing you speak in this blasphemous fashion!’
‘Come, FitzRoy, the design of a man is far from perfect. We must rest for eight hours a day. We must feed ourselves three times a day. We eat and we breathe through the same orifice. We fall prey to every illness. We are not so wonderfully designed.’
‘Tell me, then, about consciousness. How do your long-legged puppies account for the creation of consciousness? How is it that we are even having this conversation, are even aware of our own existence, if God has not given us the power of rational thought? How does your all-embracing theory explain generosity, kindness to strangers, self-sacrifice — qualities that I shall admit you seem to possess in short supply - unless man is created by God in His own image?’
Darwin, effervescing, sidestepped the insult. ‘Man is arrogant indeed to think himself created by God in His image. Our image of God is merely human egotism made flesh. Whoever or whatever God is, He is more than merely mankind writ large. Humility leads me to the inescapable conclusion that we are merely animals.’
‘Humility? You?’ FitzRoy could barely splutter out the words. ‘“Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest thou?”’
‘Think about it - human and animal consciousness are not so dissimilar. Is our smile not our snarl? Are we so far from Tommy the chimpanzee? Is the black man, whose reasoning powers are only partly developed, not closer to the higher apes than the white man? Black and brown children look less like human beings than I could have fancied any degradation might have produced. Charles White has postulated an intermediate but taxonomically separate sub-group of dark-skinned people. Your Fuegians are living proof that Christian civilization is ephemeral, a mere gloss on the biologic facts — see how quickly they reverted to savagery! I tell you, FitzRoy, our Christian society is no more than an arm of nature - a Malthusian struggle for existence. Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes. We are riding a wave of chaos!’
‘I will not have this - this nonsense in my house! The civilized universe is fashioned by divine wisdom. It is a machine, and God is the mechanic!’
‘If the universe is a machine, then life exploits only its stutters.’
‘But this theory of yours, this perversion of Malthus, is a mathematical absurdity. Any single variation in any creature would be blended back into the species through breeding, being halved and halved again in successive generations until it disappeared. A marooned white sailor on an African shore could never blanch a nation of negroes!’
‘Oh come, FitzRoy, it is patently obvious that there is much inherited variation. Successful characteristics are somehow dominant, otherwise every generation would be more uniform than the previous one. And those characteristics are passed down to both sexes by inheritance. Man would be as superior in mental endowment to a woman as the peacock is in ornamental plumage to the peahen, if the beneficial characteristics of the male sex were not equally transmitted between both sexes at
the point of conception. That, my friend, is how one species of finch arrived at the Galapagos Islands, and transmuted itself gradually into a number of entirely separate species. Not variations, but separate species.’
‘It is ironic — is it not? - that you make so much of the absolute barriers between species being supposedly thus vaulted, yet by your own argument, one species gradually transmutes into another without any impediment or barrier whatsoever.’
‘You must help me, FitzRoy. You must give permission for Mr Gould to access those specimens.’
‘You gave me your word that you would not publish any transmutationist argument! Your manuscript is complete — do you intend to rewrite it?’
‘No — of course not. I shall adhere to my word. But I have to know. I must know the truth.’
‘Why then should I help you? Why should I help you when you have delivered this to my house and to the publisher?’
FitzRoy angrily lifted the proof sheets of Darwin’s manuscript from his desk and brandished them in the air.
‘Aha! Now we are getting to the nub!’ shouted Darwin. ‘I could tell by your very demeanour upon my entrance that you were harbouring some ridiculous grievance at my work.’
FitzRoy began to read quotes scornfully from his blotter. “‘No possible action of any flood could thus have modelled the land.” “Geologists formerly would have brought into play the violent action of some overwhelming débâcle, but in this case such a submission would have been quite inadmissible.”’
‘I tell you, FitzRoy, no reputable geologist believes in the flood any more! Buckland has disavowed it! Sedgwick has disavowed it! Lyell’s new volume entirely discredits the idea that there has ever been a major catastrophe on this earth! Lyell’s volume, incidentally, which laments the delay to my book on account of your tardiness. Mr Lyell agrees with me that some part of your brain wants mending, for nothing else will account for your manner of viewing things!’ Darwin was purple-faced with rage now, and FitzRoy not much better. Their argument could be heard all round the house.