This Thing of Darkness

  ‘I am glad. I would not want the Lord to leave behind a soul so full of virtues.’

  ‘The origin of life may be a mystery to me, my dear, but I know that it is one of the Lord’s mysteries. I seek no more than to interpret His wisdom.’

  ‘The origin of life is not entirely a mystery, Mr Darwin,’ she said flirtatiously, patting the lilac muslin that stretched over her bulging belly. She was pregnant again, and eight months gone.

  ‘More egg, sir?’ said Parslow, gloomily.

  After luncheon Darwin retired to the dark womb of his study, to take a cup of tea from his little pewter teapot and resume his correspondence. There were only five daily postal deliveries in Downe - nothing like the twelve in central London - but they brought sufficient letters to keep him occupied for several hours a day. Each letter brought facts and observations from a variety of correspondents, each fact a grain of sand in the mighty edifice he was slowly constructing. Gradually, his theory of natural selection was taking shape.

  As was usual, he could only work at his desk for the first twenty minutes or so after luncheon. Then, in keeping with his daily ritual, he hobbled over to the curtained-off privy that occupied one corner of the room, dropped his trousers and sat down. The terrible, odious flatulence that followed every meal invariably began to make itself known around this time, peaking in a cacophony of burps and rumbles after an hour or so. Then, as the stabbing pains built to a crescendo, he would sink to his knees and the vomiting would begin. Clutching the rim of his little hip-bath for support, he would void his stomach just as he had once done on the Beagle, the sickly acid taste that flooded his mouth seemingly more revolting by the day. He hoped and pretended that his family could not hear him, but he knew in his heart that they surely could.

  When the relentless waves of attacks had finally receded, he made himself presentable and left the study. Annie was waiting for him in the corridor, concerned incomprehension in her big, confused eyes. She moved towards him, put her girlish arms about his waist and held him tight.

  Somewhere down in Charles Darwin’s soul, a little voice offered a ludicrous but frightening suggestion: one that, for all the regularity with which he dismissed it, still persisted in returning. Could this illness, he wondered, possibly -just possibly - be a punishment for my presumption from the Almighty?

  Darwin was wakened at five in the morning by Parslow, already dressed in his livery, ready with the towels and the bucket of iced water. At first his brain was befuddled by the strange surroundings: this was not his bedroom. Then he remembered. He was not at Down House. He was at Malvern, with Parslow. He could be allowed no further time to grapple with the question of his whereabouts. Speed was of the essence. He climbed out of bed and stripped naked, his mottled white body shaking in the winter cold. Parslow set to work with what seemed like undue relish, flaying his master with the soaking towels until his flesh resembled a lobster’s. Then, when the servant had completed his assault, he lit the spirit lamp, and scorched his master’s skin until it streamed with perspiration. After Darwin had drunk the tumbler of iced water provided, the compress of soaked and freezing linen was placed in his underwear, his mackintosh was buttoned over the top, and he and Parslow set out for their pre-dawn route march. At least, he felt that he was the one doing the marching: Parslow seemed to trail lugubriously at his side without ever slipping behind, a suspiciously impassive expression masking the man’s feelings. Was that pleasure he saw lurking there for a moment?

  Breakfast was the same every day: fresh meat on toast, with beef tea. No vegetables, bacon, butter, sugar, milk or spices of any kind were to soil the purity of his diet. Only meat could ensure the inner cleanliness that Dr Gully demanded of his patients. Gully it was who had invented the water cure, and a host of prestigious clients had testified to its effectiveness. The Carlyles had recommended it to Darwin personally; Tennyson, Dickens and Wilkie Collins were among those who had made the pilgrimage to Malvern.

  Dr Gully, who rose considerably later than his patients, came to see Darwin after breakfast, just as his charge was undergoing the agonizing ritual of having his feet immersed in a tub of iced water seasoned with a little mustard powder. The doctor cut a mightily impressive figure, bespectacled, portly and confident, with a lion’s mane of bronzed hair poised rigid but windswept above the upper slopes of his huge brow. He made Darwin, who was a big man, feel rather small.

  ‘And how are we today?’ enquired Gully, grandly.

  ‘Improving, I feel,’ ventured Darwin. ‘Certainly the piles and skin eruptions have lessened, although I still have occasional tremblings and feelings of faintness. But my stomach actually seems to have improved since I stopped taking the blue pills.’

  ‘That is hardly surprising. One can have too much mercurous oxide.’

  ‘Dr Holland said I should take a purgative every day. He said that my stomach was being affected by toxicity of the blood - a kind of suppressed gout.’

  ‘Far be it from me to question the expertise of your Dr Holland,’ tutted Gully with a smile of pity, ‘but here at Malvern we follow the most advanced regimens known to medical science. What you are suffering from, my dear fellow, is nervous dyspepsia, caused by badly balanced digestive organs irritating the brain and spinal cord. The effect upon the stomach is purely secondary, the result of a congestion of blood in the ganglionic nerves which surround it. My water cure will provide a counteraction - an external friction to counter the internal friction, thereby balancing the inner and outer pressures upon your body. We shall have you cured in no time.’

  In the years since returning to England Darwin had tried arsenic, amyl nitrite, bismuth, electric chains, spinal anaesthesis, morphia pills, quinine and tartar emetic ointment in an effort to cure his persistent ailments. Dr Gully’s water cure was just the latest in a long list but, somehow, he had a feeling in his gut that the swaggering doctor might finally be the man to crack the mystery.

  ‘Time for the ice-water douche,’ boomed Gully, and even as the words issued from his lips, Parslow was half-way up the waiting stepladder, eagerly clutching the bucket of iced water that he would soon upend over his master’s cranium.

  Annie had been sitting by the fireside, threading ribbons and sewing clothes for her dolls - her ‘treasures’, as she liked to call them - when she had quite suddenly keeled over. At first her parents had thought her to be play-acting, but there was no mistaking the clammy sheen of sweat upon their daughter’s brow. She had been put to bed, and Dr Holland had been called. He had diagnosed bilious fever, of a typhoid character, and had prescribed an ordinary physic of camphor and ammonia. But Darwin no longer trusted Dr Holland: before the night was out, he and his wife had decided that, whatever the risks of the journey, Annie must be fetched to Malvern, and given over to the care of Dr Gully.

  The following morning Darwin had set out at dawn, together with Brodie (the children’s nurse), Miss Thorley the governess, Annie all wrapped in blankets, and little Etty, to keep her sister company. They took the Great Western Coach, for there was no train to Malvern, an exhausting, clattering journey through rolling meadows. Spring budded the fields, which would have made them feel optimistic, had not Annie cried all the way. Upon arrival, they installed themselves in lodgings at Montreal House, and Dr Gully was duly summoned. His diagnosis was simple but reassuring: just like her father, Annie’s blood had become congested. Only a water cure would show improvement.

  So began the familiar, alternating routine of icy beatings and showerings, followed by scorchings from the spirit lamp, the exhausted and bewildered child made to stand naked and shivering while an equally bewildered Brodie tipped buckets of near-freezing water over her head. What use was it, Darwin asked himself, trying to explain the workings of science to a servant or a little child? Annie’s diet was to be even more restricted than his own: only brandy and gruel were to pass her lips. Somehow, though, the treatment that had so heartened her father, the treatment he was very nearly absolutely sure had produced an im
provement, lost its bracing allure when visited upon the defenceless child he so adored. He winced every time she winced, and shuddered every time she shuddered. What was worse, the treatment seemed to be having no beneficial effect - indeed, Annie seemed to be getting mysteriously weaker. Her temperature continued to rise; she regularly vomited up the brandy-and-gruel mixture; and, when that had been comprehensively regurgitated, she brought up the bright green contents of her gall bladder, in a series of shuddering spasms.

  Please, God, Darwin prayed, bring her back. Bring back my own dear Annie, with her dear affectionate radiant face. But God did not seem to be listening. As the priory bells rang out for Easter Sunday, her bladder became paralysed, and a catheter had to be inserted. She struggled at first, but when it was done she graciously thanked the doctor in a tiny voice, and held her father’s hand. She looked, he thought, like a dear wingless angel. Barely daring to turn his back on her for one instant, he composed a short letter to his wife.

  I wish you could see her now. The perfection of gentleness, patience and gratitude - she is thankful ‘til it is truly painful to hear her, the poor, dear little soul. God only knows what will become of her.

  In the night she stopped vomiting, and flooded her little bed with diarrhoea, but she seemed more relaxed thereafter, and even tried to sing to her father. He kissed her and told her that he loved her, and inside he dared, just, to be optimistic; but Dr Gully came after breakfast and took him to one side, and admitted that her new-found relaxation probably meant only that she had given up the fight.

  Gully was correct, at least in this respect. Violent bouts of repeated diarrhoea set in, Annie’s strength weakening with every bowel movement. By afternoon she had lost consciousness, her pulse failing, her body wasted and unable even to empty itself any more. That night Darwin, Brodie and Miss Thorley kept a candlelit vigil, while Etty, who did not really understand what was happening, slept in the next room. Dawn broke unseasonably warm, with stormclouds brewing in the hills, and before long a series of momentous thunderclaps split the sky in two. It was Brodie who first realized that Annie was dead — Darwin probably knew, but refused to believe it - and went into hysterics, screaming like a wild creature, her primeval, lung-bursting yowls pouring forth as if they would never end. Miss Thorley fainted, and Etty appeared in the doorway, weeping with fear at the noise, while lightning bolts hurled themselves pitilessly down from the heavens. Darwin would normally have been quite cross to see the servants lose control of themselves in this manner; but he could not say anything, for he had been struck dumb with horror, and he wanted to die, there and then, just like his daughter, so that the unbearable, unimaginable pain would go away.

  The Reverend George Packenham Despard picked up a hansom at the stand on Oxford Street and, after a wearisome queue for the Tyburn turnpike, took the Uxbridge Road heading westwards out of town. On his left, workmen had almost finished rebuilding the marble arch that had once stood opposite the King’s Palace. On his right, opposite Kensington Palace and the gravel-pits, the new suburb of Bayswater, with its gleaming wrought-iron cathedral at Paddington Station, was half-way to completion. The houses were decent enough, elegant stucco-fronted terraces for gentlemen and their families, but everyone in London knew the stigma attached to living north of the park. What stigma, then, should be attached to living north of the park and a further two miles to the west? Bowling at speed down Notting Hill, he found Norland Square amid brick-kilns beside the main road, just a hundred yards short of the old plague-grave at Shepherds Bush. This FitzRoy fellow could not be doing very well for himself. All the ground-floor rooms around the square had semi-circular bay windows, which struck Despard as a rather nouveau-riche touch. He tugged the bell-pull, and presented his card to the housemaid. No butler, he noted. Presently, he was admitted to the drawing room.

  Captain Robert FitzRoy proved to be a slender character with thinning hair, sombrely dressed and of middling height. His nose was sharp, his ears were too large and the bags beneath his eyes were grey with fatigue. But although he looked tired and drawn, Despard thought he could detect a certain wiry grace within.

  ‘My dear sir, you must forgive me,’ explained FitzRoy. ‘I am afraid that I had forgotten our appointment. My wife has not been well this last day or so. I proffer you my most sincere apologies.’

  ‘Not at all, sir. I am extremely sorry to hear of your wife’s malaise. May I be so impolite as to enquire the nature and progress of her ailment?’

  ‘It was a most sudden affliction. At first we thought she was taken bad in the breath. But Dr Locock fears that it may be the cholera - she is feverish and cannot keep down any liquids. Yet she is young and strong - she is not yet forty - so we are all hopeful.’

  ‘I shall pray for her myself.’

  Even though he was merely a former schoolmaster, Despard felt that the taking of holy orders surely lent his prayers extra impetus, extra vigour and moral ascendancy when it came to catching the ear of the Lord.

  ‘You oblige us both with your kindness.’

  ‘Cholera is become the plague of our times. It is curious, is it not, that ever since the cesspits were closed over, and sewers fed directly into the river, measures taken to curb the influence of dangerous miasmas in our midst, the disease seems to have taken an even firmer hold than before?’

  ‘Curious indeed.’

  FitzRoy kept his responses to a minimum. Really, Despard’s visit was quite dreadfully timed. He had asked the governess to take the children on a long day’s outing, so as to leave him alone to tend his beloved Mary; then the housemaid had come to fetch him away from her sickbed. But as the man had an appointment, and had come all this way, there was really nothing FitzRoy could do but to honour his obligations. There was no doubting that Despard’s Christian concern was genuine; but FitzRoy could discern something else there - an ill-concealed air of self-satisfaction regarding the progress of his own life and fortunes. Despard had a row of protruding upper teeth, which seemed to be attempting to smile delightedly, while the lower set did its best to hold them back.

  ‘You must forgive me, Mr Despard, but my time must be brief, of necessity. How may I help you?’

  ‘Of course, of course. You are aware, I take it, of the fate of Mr Allen Gardiner?’

  ‘I read in the newspapers that the bodies had been found. Mr Gardiner came to visit me when I was the Member of Parliament for Durham.’

  ‘It is a tragic tale, Captain FitzRoy, but one to stir the heart of any God-fearing man. If you will permit me ... ?’ With an air of sly showmanship, Despard produced a salt-stained, leatherbound notebook from within his coat.

  ‘The journal of Allen Gardiner,’ he breathed, reverentially opening the cover. ‘They set sail on the Ocean Queen, bound from Liverpool to San Francisco, which landed the seven men and their two schooners in Banner Roads, Tierra del Fuego. Almost immediately, by the Lord’s grace, they found near Picton Island a snug and beautiful cove, smooth as a mirror, with green wooded slopes and copses of trees about its margin. Tragically, the fates were to prove unkind. A storm blew up and destroyed their schooners, which they had not thought to anchor. It was subsequently discovered that they had unfortunately left all the gunpowder for their muskets in the Ocean Queen, so they could not hunt for food. All their belongings were stolen by natives during the night. They built a little hermitage in a nearby cave, using the wreckwood from the schooners, and lit a fire to warm themselves; but tragically the walls of the hermitage itself were caught by the flames and burned to the ground. All setbacks, I am sure you will agree, that nobody could have foreseen.’

  ‘Er ... quite.’ FitzRoy could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  ‘But here is the amazing part, Captain FitzRoy. The day after the fire they returned to the cave, to discover that a large rock had dislodged itself from the cavern roof and had crashed to the ground exactly where Mr Gardiner had intended to sleep. The fire was a miracle - a sign from the Lord! Of course, their regret was immediately
exchanged for a humbling sense of the compassion of the Almighty, in so warning them from such danger.’

  ‘I have no doubt of it,’ said FitzRoy, drily.

  ‘The next day they went fishing, but their net was torn to shreds by ice. Just listen to what Mr Gardiner wrote in his journal, and one cannot fail to be touched by his honest and simple piety: “Thus the Lord has seen fit to render another means abortive, and doubtless to make His power more apparent, and to show that all our help is to come immediately from Him.”’

  ‘What happened to them?’ asked FitzRoy, as if the answer were not self-evident.

  ‘They starved to death. But with all their hardships and privations, not one word of complaint appears to have been uttered. I am proud to say that they placed their full reliance on the mercies of Him whom they desired to serve. Listen to what Dr Williams had to say as he lay dying: “I am happy day and night ... asleep or awake, hour by hour, I am happy beyond the poor compass of language to tell.” And hear what Mr Gardiner himself wrote, upon his own deathbed: “The Lord in His providence has seen fit to bring us very low, but all is in infinite wisdom, mercy and love. The Lord is very pitiful and of tender compassion. When His set time is fully come, He will either remove us to His eternal Kingdom, or supply our languishing bodies with food convenient for us. Should it be His will that none of our mission should survive, would that He will raise up other labourers, who may convey the saving truths of the Gospel to the poor blind heathen around us.”’

  Despard shut the book. ‘They have gone away,’ he said simply, ‘to regions of everlasting bliss.’

  FitzRoy was stunned. He had known tough sealers, shipwrecked on the Fuegian coastline, survive for years on end by clubbing seals and penguins, catching fish, chewing tree-fungus or foraging for birds’ eggs. Gardiner and his men appeared to have welcomed death with a passive and fanatical ecstasy, as if they were perversely determined to die. The man had quite clearly been insane.