The man who started it all off, thought FitzRoy. How fitting.
Henslow was very old now, a mass of snow-white hair wreathing his drooping face, his sad eyes focused somewhere on the middle distance. He fixed this notional spot with his basset-hound gaze and welcomed it to the association.
‘Regrettably, Mr Darwin himself is unable to be present this afternoon as he is undergoing urgent hydropathic treatment to his stomach. Please will you welcome our speaker today, Mr John W. Draper of the University of New York.’
Draper came forward, to more enthusiastic applause. A hushed silence ensued.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen. Philosophically speaking, I believe that the development of classical Greek civilization can be divided into five well-marked periods - the first being closed by the opening of Egypt to the lonians; the second, including the Ionian, Pythagorean, and Eleatic philosophies, was ended by the doubts of the Sophists; the third, embracing the Socratic and Platonic philosophies, was ended by the doubts of the Sceptics; the fourth, ushered in by the Macedonian expedition and adorned by the achievements of the Alexandrian school, degenerated into Neoplatonism ...’
Draper was still speaking to a hushed room, but it was a hush of disbelief. This was, conceivably, the dreariest public speaker that anyone present had ever heard. His nasal monotone rolled and flattened his words into an arid, featureless desert, with no prospect of relief on the horizon. It rapidly became clear that his thesis only drew peripherally upon Darwin’s ideas, in that he was postulating a vague notion of biological process as a contributory factor to the development of Western thought. This was not what the crowd had come to hear. Unfortunately, Draper seemed of the opinion that this was precisely what the crowd had come to hear: he wore a smile of insufferable self-satisfaction throughout. His talk lasted for just over an hour, but it felt like five. Finally he was done, and retired to his seat to the barest smattering of applause. The ladies fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs again: it was quite breathlessly hot in the packed room. Henslow called upon the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, to make his contribution to the debate. A low murmur of anticipation surged through the crowd: this was it. The preamble was over. Now the sparks would fly.
Wilberforce stepped forward, majestically clad in full episcopal robes and gaiters, whorls of disapproval etched into his face like a New Zealander’s tattoo. He clasped his hands together, wrung them and waited for silence. ‘Soapy Sam’, they called him, supposedly because he always wrung his hands as if washing them when sermonizing; but maybe there was more to it than that, for there was indeed something slippery about his ostentatious air of moral cleanliness. He had once been chaplain to the Royal Family, which position had left behind a residue of permanent unctuousness. But he was an experienced orator, was Soapy Sam, with a plummy, booming voice that was well used to reaching the back row of Christ Church Cathedral.
‘The good Lord is many things,’ he fulminated. ‘He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, three indivisible parts of the Holy Trinity. But if Mr Darwin’s book is to be believed, He is also the Supreme Pigeon-fancier.’
Soapy Sam’s face cracked into a grim smile. The audience laughed. This was more like it.
‘I am not a scientist, or a pigeon-fancier. But I do have some experience in the teachings of the Lord. That is my area of specialization, if you like. So, I was not unnaturally intrigued to find out whether this book’ - he produced from his robes a green, clothbound copy of Darwin’s work - ‘might give me cause to doubt any parts of that other book which I have studied throughout my entire life. I think you know the one I mean. It has not perhaps sold quite as many copies as has Mr Darwin’s during these past seven months but, then, it has been on sale for two thousand years, and no doubt it will still be on sale two thousand years hence, when Mr Darwin’s volume will have been quite forgotten.
‘So what, then, did I make of The Origin of Species? What conclusions did I draw? I am sure you are all agog to hear. Let me tell you, I was most impressed by the assiduousness of Mr Darwin’s scholarship. His writing is unusually attractive. It is a most readable book - indeed, its language is so perspicuous that it sparkles. And it contains a remarkable scientific discovery: the existence of a self-acting power in nature, continuously working in all creation, that Mr Darwin has entitled the Law of Natural Selection. He has identified the principal effect of the struggle of all creatures for life - that the strong will continually tend to extirpate the weak. And he has discovered that this process will encourage positive variation by weeding out the slow and the infirm, much as does a pigeon-fancier by design. I congratulate Mr Darwin upon his discovery!
‘Curiously, Mr Darwin does not regard this process as universally applicable. He is confused, for instance, as to why the young blackbird should be spotted, or the whelp of a lion striped.’ Wilberforce opened the book. ‘According to Mr Darwin, “No one would suppose that these spots and stripes are of any use to these animals, or are related to the conditions to which they are exposed.” Their very prevalence and lack of utility, Mr Darwin believes, are an indication of common descent! But, Mr Darwin, any observant field naturalist will tell you that the spotted features of a young blackbird are one of the greatest protections to the bird, imperfect in its flight, sitting unwarily in its bush through which the rays of sunshine dapple every bough to the colour of its own plumage! The Supreme Pigeon-fancier, Mr Darwin, moves in a mysterious way!’
The audience roared its approval. This was good. Although he did not approve of the bishop’s sneering style, FitzRoy had to admire his skill. The scientific content of his speech was Owen’s, of course. Time had not been kind to Owen: he sat at the side of the dais, his long legs folded beneath his chair, smiling his dreadful, red-faced, cadaverous smile, like a latter-day Richard III. Tiers of bags ran down from his eyes to his skeletal cheekbones, wispy white side-whiskers masked his ears, while his pursed mouth was all but concealed behind a large, hooked nose. He was the superintendent of Natural History at the British Museum now, and he knew his subject as well as anyone in the country; it was a pity, really, that he was such an unattractive public speaker that the bishop had to serve as his mouthpiece. Yet Wilberforce brought episcopal prestige to bear on the occasion, as well as oratorical skill. FitzRoy was more than content to see him as the standard-bearer of reason on this occasion.
‘Mr Darwin,’ the bishop was roaring, ‘sees his Law of Natural Selection as proof of the non-existence of God! On the contrary, it is in this very law that we see a merciful provision against the deterioration, in a world apt to deteriorate, of the works of the Creator’s hands! Natural selection prevents the deterioration of existing species - it does not effect new ones! Has any pigeon-breeder in the country, for all his efforts, created anything that is not a pigeon? Has any pigeon-breeder created anything that could even survive in the wild? If, as Mr Darwin claims, one animal group can transform itself into a totally separate animal group, then surely we should have discovered animals with shared characteristics, from the group of animals they are evolving from, and the group of animals towards which they are evolving. There should be fossils that link the major animal groups. If mammals evolved from reptiles, where is the beast that has the features of both a reptile and a mammal? Where are these missing links?’
A huge cheer went up from the audience. At the edge of the dais, Owen flexed his fingers together and smiled a ghastly smile.
‘According to Mr Darwin, the fossil record is “incomplete”. Oh, but this is no accident. No! The fossil record is “necessarily incomplete”! According to Mr Darwin, transitional forms, precisely because they are transitional, are less likely to leave a fossil record than stabilized species. Is that not clever? The theory itself brilliantly explains why there is no evidence whatsoever to support the theory! There is only one adjective suitable to describe such logic: unsatisfactory. Scientists have searched in vain’ - Wilberforce glanced triumphantly across at Owen - ‘for any shred
of evidence, any shred of proof, that any one individual species might have varied, be it ever so little, into a different genus. One tiny variation that might validate the conclusion that such variability is progressive and unlimited, so as, in the course of generations, to change the species, the genus, the order and, eventually, the class. That proof has not been found - and it never will be.’
The audience was going wild for Wilberforce. FitzRoy quietly clenched his fist. He was excited now, and ideas were coursing through his mind. He wished he could be up on stage himself, leading the onslaught.
‘Each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was and distinguished it from everything else. Such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable. The characters which distinguish species from species now were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. A rock-pigeon is what a rock-pigeon has always been!’ Wilberforce thumped the podium with his fist. A man is what a man has always been!’ He brandished the green book again. ’This hypothesis is so flimsy, so fanciful, that it might be the frenzied inspiration of an inhaler of mephitic gas! When tried by the principles of inductive science, it breaks down completely! The line between man and the lower animals is distinct. There is no tendency on the part of the lower animals to become the self-conscious, intelligent being that is man; nor in man to degenerate and lose the high characteristics of mind and intelligence. Man even possesses a unique lobe of the brain, the hippocampus minor, and cerebral hemispheres so large that they cover the cerebellum. These you will not find in any of the higher apes. But will you find them in Mr Darwin’s book? No! For Mr Darwin’s conclusions are mere hypothesis, nothing more, raised most unphilosophically to the dignity of a causal theory! Is it really, truly credible that a turnip strives to become a man?’
Another cheer rocked the hall. Wilberforce gestured for calm, his upper body slowly rotating until his stare focused, as if through a magnifying glass, upon a point in the exact centre of Huxley’s forehead. He was full of confidence now, perhaps too much so. Huxley glared back balefully, his deep, dark eyes swimming in his bulldog face. You are nothing, Wilberforce’s look seemed to say. You are other ranks, and no more. Know your place.
‘It appears that I must give way to Mr Huxley,’ said the bishop, his tones smooth and serpentine, ‘but before I do so, I should like to ask him one question. If you are willing, Mr Huxley, to trace your descent from an ape on your grandfather’s side, are you similarly willing to trace that descent on your grandmother’s side?’
There was uproar in the hall. Some of the students, and some of the more gin-soaked journalists, burst out laughing. There was genuine shock in many quarters: a commotion rippled out from the place under one of the windows where Lady Brewster had fainted. FitzRoy was appalled. The bishop had gone too far. In bringing Huxley’s grand-mother into the equation, he had insulted a lady. He had entirely handed the moral advantage to the opposition, with one carelessly offensive remark. He has forgotten to behave like a gentleman.
Up on the dais, Huxley’s pasty face, set in a furious pout, disentangled itself from the large black beard that nested beneath his chin. He had been patronized all his life, and this was just one more example. Why was it so much worse to be descended from a monkey than to have been fashioned from dust? He wanted to see the foot of science pressed firmly on the neck of religion, and he saw his chance. He turned to Hooker. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said, with mock-Biblical satisfaction; whereupon he rose, and made his way to the podium.
Anyone paying attention would have seen a stocky young man step forward, dressed in a plain, cheap waistcoat and a tailcoat that barely fitted him, both permanently crumpled from lives spent inside a suitcase. He was wedged uncomfortably into a high-collared shirt, his jet-black hair trimly parted and plastered down with macassar-oil, a pair of lorgnettes his only ‘learned’ affectation. But nobody was paying attention. Wilberforce’s faux pas had thrown the audience into confusion. Huxley was speaking now, but he was accustomed in the main to gatherings of twenty or thirty bemused colliers. His voice was too quiet to carry above the commotion, his phrasing too inexact, too mumbled.
‘Mr Darwin abhors speculation as nature abhors a vacuum. All the principles he lays down have been brought to the test of observation and experiment. The path he bids us follow is no airy track, fabricated of cobwebs, but a solid and broad bridge of facts, which will carry us safely over many a chasm in our knowledge. The right reverend bishop and his type, by contrast, look at creation as a savage looks at a ship, as a bewildering thing so far beyond their comprehension that they do not dare attempt a rational explanation. My lord’s address was so full of old and disproved contentions that it lacked any scientific credibility whatsoever - each of which, I assure you, I intend to address individually. Let us begin with the fossil record, which my lord is so keen to utilize to his advantage. Those, like the bishop, who believe in the absolute truth of the Old Testament would have us believe that the earth was created in 4004 BC. Yet the soil is bursting with fossils that have been geologically proved to be many millions of years old! How can this be? Has God written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind?’
Huxley tailed off. It was no use - he had lost his audience. The bishop’s ill-judged abdication of the most basic good manners had triggered an earthquake, and the aftershocks were still being felt. He had to get the crowd back. He raised his voice.
‘A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for a grandfather!’
A hundred animated discussions whirling round the room skittered to a sudden stop. He had them now.
‘If the question were put to me: would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather, or a man highly endowed by nature, and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs those facilities and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion — then I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape!’
A huge roar of approval, led by the boisterous knot of students at the back, shuddered through the room. Huxley was ahead now, without doubt.
‘Mr Darwin — ’ Huxley began, but his voice was drowned out, not by cries of antagonism but by cries of support.
‘Dar-win! Dar-win!’
The students were chanting Darwin’s name, as if to summon him up from behind his iron-age fortress of earthen banks. FitzRoy was surrounded by primitive, drunken braying, as ignorant as the yells of any crowd of natives on a Fuegian shore. His frustration boiled over. The rush of arguments in his head became a landslide, an avalanche, each irrefutable fact tumbling incoherently over the others. The inability of natural selection to account for the origin of life itself. The unsatisfactory reduction of the aesthetic, the emotional and the spiritual to mere epiphenomena. The falsity of Darwin’s fossil narrative, which had been constructed on foundations that were geologically poles apart. The failure of natural selection to explain the development of complex organs, such as the eye, and their co-ordination in bodily systems. The presence of advanced creatures in the earliest strata of fossils, and of the most primitive creatures alive today. He felt both excited and agitated, and aggrieved by this sudden inarticulacy. Before he knew what he was doing, he had grabbed a Bible from one of the priests in the audience, and was waving it above his head.
‘I implore you all to believe in God, rather than man!’ he heard a voice shouting, and realized that it was his own. A chorus of jeers drowned him out.
On the dais, Professor Henslow had recognized him, and was trying to accord his interruption some sort of official status.
‘Please! Ladies and gentlemen! Captain FitzRoy wishes to contribute to the debate! Pray silence for Captain FitzRoy!’
Nobody paid any heed.
FitzRoy tried to tell them that he had been there with Darwin, that he had observed the same things, that The Origin of Species was n
ot a logical arrangement of the facts that he had witnessed, but his throat was constricting in the most alarming way, and he found that he could not speak. He could only wave the borrowed Bible above his head. Bizarrely, he became aware that he could distinguish each individual voice that made up the surrounding clamour, could follow each and every line separately, as if they were the instruments of an orchestra. He looked at Hooker seated on the platform, handsome and fine-boned, his wire-rimmed pebble spectacles perched elegantly on the bridge of his long nose, an amused smile on his face, and he realized that he could make out the waxy quality of the man’s skin as if it were but an inch away, could see each of its tiny, downy hairs. His sight had become as crystal clear as his other senses, each of them intensified to a strength that only God Himself could possibly know. He could even feel the warmth of the little gas-jets on the walls. Electrical sensations ran up and down his limbs, and played across the surface of his skin. So intense were all these feelings, so wonderful and terrifying, that he thought perhaps he should try to fend some of them off, to find order amid the chaos; but they would not be deflected. They just kept coming, kept overwhelming him. And all the while, this man, this Captain FitzRoy, who was him and yet who seemed to stand apart from him, stood paralysed and pedestrian, holding aloft a borrowed Bible, making incoherent noises.
Somewhere deep within himself, beneath the whirling, unpredictable hurricane of sensations, a tiny spark of self-preservation remained. It told him to get out, to leave now, before something unimaginably awful happened. Captain FitzRoy heard this inner voice, as if from a great distance, and, remarkably, he listened to it. He put his head down and bulldozed his way to the exit, shouts and laughter reverberating in his ears. Driving himself ever onward, he did not stop until he reached the station, where, he noticed, he was still tightly clutching the borrowed Bible.