Author: Ophelia Benson

Despite the title, I have no intention of discussing the extensive literature on the origin and nature of Darwin’s chronic illness.[1] My concern here is to examine the contention that trepidation about the potential vehement opposition his evolutionary theory would evoke from his religious friends and acquaintances, and among the privileged classes in general, greatly exacerbated his symptoms. The widely-held view that there was such a link is a significant feature of Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s biography Darwin (1991), and in the course of challenging the very basis of this contention, I shall also examine the means by which these authors seek to persuade their readers to accept it.

On his return from the five-year Beagle voyage, Darwin was committed to an immense amount of writing directly related to his experiences, and was also keen to follow up his geological discoveries. He was not in any position to give much time to his ideas on evolution that were ignited in March 1837 (Sulloway 1982), but in July 1837 he started jotting down miscellaneous items in the first of his “Transmutation of Species” notebooks (Notebook B). Desmond and Moore immediately describe it as “clandestine” (1991, p. 229), though a more accurate description would be “private” since there was no reason at that stage for him to mention it to anyone. In September 1837 Darwin was showing early signs of the illness that was to become chronic a few years later, and Desmond and Moore immediately associate this with his evolutionary work: “deep into his clandestine work… his health was breaking” (1991, p. 233).

While not suggesting that Darwin’s severe bouts of sickness were attributable solely to worries related to his evolutionary writings, Desmond and Moore frequently associate these writings, and also purported concerns about contemporary political events, with such episodes. In a chapter that focuses almost entirely on the notes on the transformation of species that Darwin made in 1838, the authors write: “He continued mutating species, but each conceptual leap turned the screw on his stomach.” Supposedly “he was feeling jumpy about the hysteria his views would unleash among his clerical friends”; moreover, “This sort of flaming science was favoured by street agitators, the people trying to overthrow the undemocratic state.” (1991, p. 249) 

Later in 1838, we are told, “Worries about his heresies made him repeatedly ill” (p. 269). Despite the categorical way in which this assertion is made, there is not a single item in any of Darwin’s notebooks or letters to support it. Elsewhere the authors note that during that year “His geology book…was grinding on slowly…and the Zoology numbers ‘murder much of my time’. The notebooks were draining his energy and the Journal [of Researches of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle] still was not out” (p. 262). As was to become a permanent feature of his life, concentrated work on his writings exacerbated his illness, and this was evidently starting to occur in 1838.

Moving on to 1839, Desmond and Moore insinuate that political events were impinging on Darwin’s life and making him ill: “By summer the disorder on the streets was impossible to avoid… The radical workers…were taking matters into their own hands”, and so on (1991, p. 286). The authors immediately follow their recording of contemporary political activities with a paragraph beginning “Darwin was sick with worry”. But there is nothing in Darwin’s letters or notebooks of the time that indicates concern about concurrent political events.

In 1840, according to Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s “double life” of socialising with opponent of evolutionary theory such as Richard Owen “was the stuff of inner conflict, as his sickness confirmed” (p. 291). But Darwin’s personal Journal and letters show that his transmutation of species theory was unrelated to bouts of illness. His Journal entry for 24 December 1839 notes that he had to suspend his main work schedule because he “became unwell, & with the exception of two or three days remained so till the 24^th of February. In this interval read a little for Transmutⁿ theory, but otherwise lost these whole months.” In the early part of 1840 he again “became unwell & did not commence Coral volume till March 26th”. In a letter to his friend William Fox dated 7 June 1840 he reported that he had “scarcely put pen to paper for the last half year, & everything in the publishing line is going backward”. In the Journal entry for 14 November Darwin wrote: “During this summer when well enough did a good deal of species work.” In other words, contrary to the impression Desmond and Moore assiduously seek to create, it was concentrated work, not thoughts about his transmutation theory, that led to severe episodes of illness.

Social activities also exacerbated his symptoms. On the 28 March 1840 Darwin wrote to the Geological Society apologising for having been missed their last four meetings as “I have never once attended, without having suffered the next day”. Again, in a letter to Fox on 25 January 1841 he wrote: “I am forced to live, however, very quietly and am unable to see anybody & and cannot even talk long with my nearest relatives.”

To reiterate: close examination of Darwin’s letters and notebooks demonstrates that there is no correlation between Darwin’s severe bouts of illness and his working on evolutionary theory. If anything, the contrary was the case: when not well enough to work on his writing commitments, he sometimes turned to his notes on the transmutation of species. In the spring of 1841 he noted that he had completed a “paper on Boulders & Till of S. America”, then records: “idle & unwell – sorted papers on Species theory”. As he later wrote in the context of his work pertaining to his Beagle voyage in the period up to his leaving London in 1842: “Nor did I ever intermit collecting facts bearing on the origin of species; and I could sometimes do this when I could do nothing else from illness” (Darwin 1958, p. 99).

Desmond and Moore portray Darwin as a man who trembled at the very thought of the hostile reaction that publication of his evolutionary views would evoke. For instance, they highlight his writing that he had read Adam Sedgwick’s scathing review of the journalistic Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, published anonymously in 1844, “with ‘fear and trembling’” (1991, p. 322). The authors convey the impression that his fears related to the vehemence of Sedgwick’s scornful rejection of the book’s evolutionary content, but an examination of the letter in question shows this is not the case. Darwin tells his friend Charles Lyell that he thought the review “a grand piece of argument against the mutability of species, and I read it with fear and trembling, but was well pleased to find I had not overlooked any of the arguments” (letter, 8 October 1845). In other words, his fear on reading Sedgwick’s review was merely an expression of his concern that it might contain arguments he had failed to consider, though on reading it he was relieved to find that it did not.

Summing up, Desmond and Moore’s intimating that Darwin’s illness was greatly exacerbated specifically when he turned his mind to his evolutionary work is evidence-free. But worse, in Darwin’s Sacred Cause (2009) they manufacture evidence to support their contention:

He was also a sick man. For years he had been regularly, often wretchedly, ill. The closer to “man” and to publication, the worse he became. Five times while writing the Origin of Species he was forced to decamp to a rest home to take the water cure, his nerves wrecked. “No nigger with a lash over him could have worked harder”, he explained as he struggled with his prose. But the real cause “of the main part of the ills to which my flesh is heir”, he admitted, was the Origin’s inflammatory case for the evolution of life by a chancy natural selection, and the expected uproar over its bestial implications. He dreaded being “execrated as an atheist”. For a respectable gentleman, for whom reputation and honour were everything, it was barely endurable. Later, at his spa, sending out copies of the Origin, it was “like living in Hell”. [References supplied] (Desmond and Moore 2009, p. 313)

It is instructive to examine the truncated quotations in the above paragraph in context. The authors claim that Darwin admitted that the real cause of his illness was “the Origin’s inflammatory case for the evolution of life by a chancy natural selection, and the expected uproar over its bestial implications”. But here is what Darwin actually wrote in the letter in question:

I have been extra bad of late, with the old severe vomiting rather often & much distressing swimming of the head… My abstract [On the Origin of Species] is the cause, I believe of the main part of the ills to which my flesh is heir to; but I have only two more chapters & to correct all, & then I shall be a comparatively free man. (Letter to William Fox, 12 February 1859)  

There is nothing here to suggest that he had the supposed “inflammatory case” in mind, rather it was all the hard work he was putting into writing his book that was causing the severe exacerbation of his illness. This is also evident in his intimating that he expected an improvement in health once the work was completed, whereas any fears about the reaction to his work in the terms expressed by Desmond and Moore would hardly be reduced on publication of the book.

The next truncated quotation supposedly has Darwin saying that he “dreaded being ‘execrated as an atheist’.” Again, here is what he actually wrote:

I have been thinking that if I am much execrated as atheist &c, whether the admission of doctrine of natural Selection could injure your Works; but I hope & think not; for as far as I can remember the virulence of bigotry is expended on first offender, & those who adopt his views are only pitied, as deluded, by the wise & cheerful bigots. (Letter to Charles Lyell, 23 November 1859)

So he is not saying that he “dreaded being execrated as an atheist”, he is expressing his concern that Lyell might be found guilty by association by “the wise and cheerful bigots”. Contrary to what Desmond and Moore write, there is nothing here to suggest he was particularly perturbed by the thought that the “virulence of bigotry” will be directed at him.

Desmond and Moore’s final truncated quotation in the above paragraph, in which they directly associate Darwin’s sending out copies of Origin with his reporting it was “like living in Hell”, comes from a letter to Joseph Hooker (27 October or 3 November 1859). The full passage is as follows:

I have been very bad lately; having had an awful “crisis” one leg swelled like elephantiasis – eyes almost closed up – covered with a rash & fiery Boils: but they tell me it will surely do me much good. – it was like living in Hell.

Darwin’s description of his “living in hell” referred to the gruesome symptoms from which he was suffering, and there is nothing here to link these to the mailing of complimentary copies of Origin at that time as the authors would have their readers believe.

Desmond and Moore are clearly intent on impressing on the reader their demeaning portrait of Darwin as having a rather weak character, a man who “rushed towards his debut, with the stomach-churning fear of exposing mankind’s real origin from the beasts. It was the sort of fear that kept him quiet for two decades:[2] the sort that would put him in a sanatorium as the eve of exposure dawned” (2009, p. 289). As Sulloway observes (1996, p. 240), this portrayal of Darwin as someone tormented by his radical ideas to the point of sickness is part and parcel of Desmond and Moore’s social constructivist view of Darwin’s scientific career.[3] Their portrait, however, is a travesty that they make plausible only by resorting to dubious methods of exposition.

Footnotes

1. See R. Colp, Darwin‘s Illness (2008). For an important recent addition to the literature, see John A. Hayman, Darwin’s illness revisited. British Medical Journal, 13 December 2009.

2. For a rebuttal of the claim that fear kept Darwin “quiet for two decades”, see J. van Wyhe (2007). See also A. Esterson (2011a), Darwin’s “Delay”.

3. On the dubious methods Desmond and Moore employ to portray Darwin as a man supposedly “tormented” by fear of the consequences of making public his evolutionary theory, see A. Esterson (2011b), Desmond and Moore’s Darwin.

References

Colp, R. Jr. (2008). Darwin‘s Illness. University of Florida Press.

Darwin, C. R. (1958). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. Edited by Nora Barlow. London: Collins.

Darwin, C. R.  The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Edited by John van Wyhe.

Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1991). Darwin. London and New York: Michael Joseph

Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (2009). Darwin‘s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins. London: Allen Lane, Penguin Books.

Levine, G. (1994). “Darwin Revised, and Carefully Edited.” Configurations, 1994, 1: 191-202. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Grene, M. (1993). ‘Recent Biographies of Darwin: The Complexity of Context’ Perspectives on Science. vol. 1, no. 4: 659-675.

Sulloway, F. J. (1982). Darwin’s Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and Its Aftermath. Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1982): 325-396.

Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. London: Little, Brown and Company.

Wyhe, J. van (2007). Mind the Gap: Did Darwin Avoid Publishing His Theory for Many Years? Notes & Records of the Royal Society (2007), 61: 177-205.

February 2011

It is widely believed that Darwin delayed publication of his evolutionary theory for some fifteen years largely because he feared the wrath of his contemporaries.[1] The most influential exponents of this view are Adrian Desmond and James Moore, who have promoted it not only in their 1991 biography Darwin, but also in a number of articles and broadcasts. For instance, having reported that in 1842 Darwin had “fleshed-out a thirty-five-page sketch of his evolutionary theory”, they add that “he could have planned to publish” were it not for the fact that it was “heresy to the geologists and blasphemy to the parsons” (Desmond and Moore 1991, pp. 292, 294). A little later they write:

Of course Darwin could not publish… He was too worldly-wise not to sense the danger, the damning class implications. He had no illusions about how he would be treated… […] Ultimately he was frightened for his respectability. For a gentleman among the Oxbridge set, priming itself to guard man’s soul against the socialist levellers, publishing would have been tantamount to treachery – a betrayal of the old order. (1991, p. 296)

Again, following their recording that in the spring of 1844 “the sketch expanded into a full 189-page essay”, they continue:

He also knew, grinding away month after month, that he could not publish – he would be accused of social delinquency, or worse. Transmutation was still a weapon wielded by the militants, angrily eyeing the islands of gentrified opulence… […] No, publishing would be suicidal. Clergy-baiting was on the increase, and country parsons were among Darwin’s friends and family. He risked being accused of betraying his privileged class. (1991, pp. 316-17)

As George Levine writes, “Insofar the book has a thesis, it is that Darwin spent his life in terror of the consequences of publishing his theory” (Levine 1994, p. 200). The issue I want to address in this article is not only whether Desmond and Moore’s portrait of Darwin as someone “tormented” by the very thought of making public his evolutionary theory is justified by the unvarnished documentary evidence, but also the means by which they have sought to persuade their readers to their point of view.

Desmond and Moore’s Darwin provides an extraordinary amount of information, missing from previous biographies, about the socio-political background to the various stages in Darwin’s life. They have also laboriously sought out original sources (Darwin’s notebooks, letters and marginalia, as well as the contemporary literature) as have no other biographers. However, the central issue arising from their constant focusing on contemporary political events is whether it was actually the case that these played a significant role in relation to Darwin’s views on the transmutation of species.

They make their position clear from the outset: “We can trace the political roots of his key ideas, following his reading on population, the poor laws, and charity… We have to see him as part of an active Whig circle, in an age when the Whig government was building the workhouses and the poor were burning them down” (1991, p. xx). As Michael Ruse sees it, “They are writing with an end in view, namely, to show how Darwin was a cork bobbing on the surface of the society of his day, and how his theory was a product of the various ideologies of him and his family and his class” (Ruse 1993, p. 229). But, as we shall see, they achieve their aims by a highly selective use of evidence, and by insinuating connections between Darwin’s evolutionary writings and concurrent political events for which there is no documentary warrant. Marjorie Grene observes that in “follow[ing] the social constructivist route” to understanding the sources of Darwin’s scientific views, Desmond and Moore “are inventing a politicized Darwin, and cleverly they do it” (Grene 1993, p. 672).

Grene writes that the authors’ attempt to make the link between Darwin and contemporary political activities seems to her “sometimes just a bit fraudulent” (p. 671). She is particularly scathing about their use of quotations to intimate a political connection with Darwin’s life that doesn’t actually exist: “In short, one can only conclude that when it comes to their strictly political context Desmond and Moore are having us on” (p. 673). She cites “a few examples of two particularly striking techniques” used by Desmond and Moore. “One is to provide a nonannotated paragraph purporting to represent Darwin’s position”, when there is no documentary evidence that it actually does so. The second “device they use is to give carefully annotated political descriptions juxtaposed with accounts of Darwin’s anxieties, the sources for which, when inspected, have nothing to do with politics” (pp. 671-72). As she also notes, the authors’ “clustering method” of citing several references within a single endnote “helps to conceal what (for this reader at least) are small bits of cheating in support of a favored thesis” (p. 664).

In similar vein, Levine objects to “the book’s strategies of representation, of ‘factually’ cloaked argument, of lively rhetoric and fictionalizing techniques. The remade Darwin is gradually squeezed from implicit interpretations of data that have long been available, interpretations that are not argued for but presented as fact.” In short, there is “a lot of cheating going on this biography” (Levine 1994, pp. 194, 200).

The twin characteristics of the authors’ providing truncated quotations embedded in sentences and paragraphs shaped to implicitly convey their own interpretations, and the juxtaposing of extra-scientific occurrences with Darwin’s activities to insinuate a causal connection between them, are a pervasive feature of the book. They are part and parcel of “strategies of persuasion” which include “some quite devious writing” (Levine 1994, p. 197) by means of which they impute to Darwin fears in relation to concurrent radical political activities that supposedly influenced his behaviour, both scientific and private. They write of London in 1842 that it was “a cauldron”, “Malthusian hatreds were festering”, and “society was teetering”, followed immediately in the next paragraph by “The Darwins’ house-hunting acquired a new urgency”, clearly implying a connection between the two items. There follows more melodramatically presented material about civil unrest: “The [London] streets were frightening”, and a little later: “Working men and women milled about in the streets, shouting and cheering… The worst was expected.” This is immediately followed by a paragraph commencing with Emma Darwin “overseeing the packing”: “It was now the fourth week of the general strike… The Darwins were thankful to be getting out” (1991, pp. 296-298).

Levine writes that “it is hard to read this without feeling that the stress of those days was very important to Darwin, that he was deeply sensitive to the Chartist uprisings and to the government’s reaction, that he and Emma sat nervously in their home as the mobs screamed by”, creating the impression that “he wants desperately to get away from all this revolutionary hubbub”. But a perusal of his letters at the time shows no indication that these events intruded on his mind, only that with his growing family, his illness, and his continuing immersion in his ongoing writings it was imperative that he acquired more amenable premises away from London. As Levine observes, “As far as I can see, there isn’t a single reference in the published correspondence to those Chartist uprisings that play so important a role in Desmond and Moore’s narrative” (1994, pp. 198-99). Moreover, Sandra Herbert writes, contrary to the scenario portrayed by Desmond and Moore, “the Chartist movement in London was militant but not violent”, and after noting the absence of  any mention of concurrent political events in Darwin’s letters, she advises: “One should be cautious in accepting the biography as reflecting Darwin’s political opinions or his fears” (Herbert 1993, p. 116).

One paragraph devoted to Chartist activities in 1839 begins “By summer the disorder on the streets was impossible to avoid…”, and the next paragraph opens with “Darwin was sick with worry”. This is immediately followed by: “Yet he felt compelled to confess to the priests vilified by the mob – or at least to the orthodox Henslow – that he was ‘steadily collecting every sort of fact, which may throw light on the origin & variation of species’. It would have been music to the ears of street atheists, but not, of course, to Henslow” (1991, pp. 286). However, as Grene notes, there is no “confession” by Darwin, only his reporting to his friend that “he is collecting facts to do with the ‘origin & variation of species,’ followed by an account of how withdrawn the Darwins’ life is, with the days alike as ‘as two peas’” (Grene 1993, p. 672).

Desmond and Moore write in the same section: “Entertainment grew uncomfortable: ‘we are living a life of extreme quietness… We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither of us…’” (1991, p. 286). Grene observes about this passage: “From the context, one is given the impression that this withdrawal is a response to political crisis. In fact, however, the description of the Darwins’ routine occurs in the very same letter to his sister Caroline in which he remarks that ‘London is so cheerful’” (Grene 1993, p. 672).

The authors ask rhetorically, “And what was to stop out-and-out dissidents from appropriating his theory for real revolutionary ends?” (p. 285), though they do not provide any evidence that the notion of such consequences ever entered Darwin’s head. In fact Darwin later expressed his disdain towards such views: “What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection” (Darwin, F. 1887, vol. 3, p. 237). 

Joseph Carroll observes that “with whatever distortions and falsifications they find necessary,… [Desmond and Moore] have created an imaginative atmosphere in which it is possible to regard evolutionary biology as subordinate to the world of social and political activity” (Carroll 1995, p. 300). The means they frequently use to promote their viewpoint is perceptively characterised by Levine when he writes of “how devious is a narrative that acquires its ‘blood’ by eliding the ambiguities, by disguising the absence of direct and literal connections, by presenting as fact what is speculation, or more precisely, by avoiding calling it fact but making it feel like fact” (Levine 1994, pp. 199-200).

The opening words in Darwin set the tone for much of what follows: “It is 1839. England is tumbling towards anarchy, with countrywide unrest and riots. The gutter presses are fizzing, firebombs flying. The shout on the streets is for revolution” (1991, p. xvii). Ruse takes issue with this historical setting: “…let me point out that all of this stuff about Britain being in the throes of revolution is pretty old-fashioned Marxist history, and that in the last quarter-century a huge amount has been written casting doubt on the scenario (Cannadine, 1992)” (Ruse 1993, p. 229).[2] In Ruse’s view, Desmond and Moore’s “neo-Marxist analysis of Darwin [that] has him cowering in rural Kent, while England burned around him, wracked with guilt because he was betraying his class by contributing to the revolution” is “silly nonsense” (Ruse 1999, p. 319).

Sulloway writes on the same topic:

Limited by their Marxist conception of history, Desmond and Moore were forced into a series of Don Quixote-like reconstructions of Darwin’s scientific career. According to Marxist expectations, Darwin should have abhorred evolution. Given the undeniable fact that he endorsed it, Desmond and Moore conclude that Darwin must have been “tormented” by his radical ideas. (Sulloway 1996, p. 240)

Moore takes the “tormented” portrait of Darwin to extraordinary lengths. When the Darwin family moved to Down House in 1842 he attached a mirror to the inside of his study window to enable him to see the arrival of visitors. The Darwin biographer Janet Browne suggests that this was “in order to catch the first glimpse of the postman” (Browne 1999), but Moore finds a motive in accord with his own agenda in a 2009 BBC radio programme:

[Darwin] knew that this terrible burden he carried, of the belief in evolution, including humans in society in that evolutionary process, would open him to persecution, if he let people know that he was working on that project… [At Down House] he could control access to himself. That’s the most important point. He was far enough away from railway stations, scientific societies, actually outside this window behind you he had a mirror installed so that he could see people coming up the drive. That’s not paranoia, that’s prudence in a man who was carrying a kind of burden that Darwin had, evolution. (Moore 2009b)[3]

John van Wyhe disputes the very notion that Darwin regarded his preparatory work on the transformation of species as a “secret” (2007, pp. 182-84). As Desmond and Moore acknowledge, in the year that he wrote his brief sketch of his theory (1842) “he could not resist telling Lyell” his “secret” (1991, p. 292). Then in the following year he mentioned his views on the transmutation of species to the taxonomist George Waterhouse, and in 1844 told his recently-acquired friend Joseph Hooker and his old friend Leonard Jenyns, and entrusted his 1844 sketch to the local schoolmaster in the neighbouring village of Downe to make a fair copy (Letters, 26 and 31 July 1843; 11 January 1844; 12 October 1844; Desmond and Moore 1991, pp. 313, 316; Wyhe 2007, pp. 183, 184). Frank Sulloway writes that “Far from being a ‘closet evolutionist,’ as Desmond and Moore claim, Darwin told a dozen of his closest friends about his evolutionary ideas” before he made them public (Sulloway 1996, p. 246).

On Desmond and Moore’s portrayal of a politicised Darwin, Helena Cronin is at one with the historians quoted above:

Here, indeed, is a Darwin hitherto unknown. But did this Darwin exist? Again and again I checked the footnotes, eager to track down the newly-revealed soul in his own diaries and letters. But again and again my hopes were dashed; references to recent historians a-plenty but to the sage himself, none. (Cronin 1991)

In other words, what we have in Desmond and Moore’s biography is a Darwin carefully crafted to accord with a preconceived view of scientific history, one which needs to be viewed “with extreme caution” and “contested at almost every sentence” (Levine 1994, p. 194). That their Darwin won, among other awards, the 1997 British Society for the History of Science Dingle Prize “for the best book of the decade in communicating the history of science to a wide audience” is a measure of  how successful Desmond and Moore have been in promoting both their portrait of Darwin and their social constructivist view of the origins of his evolutionary theory. But close reading of the text, such as those by well informed and conscientious historians like Grene and Levine which reveal the authors’ dubious techniques of persuasion, indicates that the book does not merit the accolades it has received.

Notes

1. That there actually was a “delay” in the sense promoted by Desmond and Moore in their Darwin (1991) is strongly disputed by several Darwin scholars, most notably John van Wyhe (2007). See also A. Esterson (2011), Darwin’s “Delay”.

2. D. Cannadine, 1992, pp. 52-57; see also A. Briggs, 1960, pp. 236-343.

3. In the same BBC radio series on Darwin, Moore plumbed the depths of implausibility when invoking a Marxist-style explanation in relation to Darwin’s receiving the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in part because of his researches into barnacles:

Now that’s a very important thing to do in a seafaring nation. Any expert on barnacles is obviously promoting British trade. Ships go faster if you understand how these things behave, how to get them off your hulls. So it’s not surprising if in 1853 Darwin was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London, the great gold medal. (Moore 2009a)

Hooker’s report to Darwin on the Royal Society meeting provides a rather more likely scenario:

The R.S. have voted you the Royal Medal for Natural Science – All along of the Barnacles!!!… Portlock proposed you for the Coral Islands & Lepadidae. Bell followed seconding, on the Lepadideae alone, & then, followed such a shout of pæans for the Barnacles that you would have [sunk] to hear. (Letter, 4 November 1853)

References

Briggs, A. (1960). The Age of Improvement, 1783-1867. London: Longmans.

Browne, J. (1999). Men of Letters: Charles Darwin’s Correspondence with Victorian Naturalists. Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, 12 November 1999.

Cannadine, D. (1992). “Cutting Classes.” The New York Review of Books, 17 December 1992, pp. 52-57.

Carroll, J. (1995). Evolution and Literary Theory. Columbia and London: University of Michigan Press.

Cronin, H. (1991). “The origins of evolution.” The Times Educational Supplement, 29 November 1991, p. 25.

Darwin, C. R.  The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Edited by John van Wyhe.

Darwin, F. (ed.) (1887). The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter. Vol. 3. London: John Murray.

Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1991). Darwin. London and New York: Michael Joseph.

Grene, M. (1993). “Recent Biographies of Darwin: The Complexity of Context.” Perspectives on Science. Vol. 1, no. 4: 659-675.

Herbert, S. (1993). “Essay Reviews.” Isis, 84: 113-127.

Levine, G. (1994). “Darwin Revised, and Carefully Edited.” Configurations, 1994, 1: 191-202. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Moore, J. (2009a). Darwin – In Our Time – Programme 3. BBC Radio 4, 7 January 2009.

Moore, J. (2009b). Darwin – In Our Time – Programme 4. BBC Radio 4, 8 January 2009.

Ruse, M. (1993). “Will the Real Charles Darwin Please Stand Up?” The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 68, No. 2 (June 1993): 225-231.

Ruse, M. (1999). The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. London: Little, Brown and Company.

Wyhe, J. van (2007). Mind the Gap: Did Darwin Avoid Publishing His Theory for Many Years? Notes & Records of the Royal Society (2007), 61: 177-205.

February 2011

Most people interested in the literature on Darwin are aware that he alighted on his theory of natural selection a short time after returning from his five-year Beagle voyage in 1836 (Sulloway 1982). It is rather less well-known that during the first decade following his return he produced a large body of work not directly related to his evolutionary theory: Journal of Researches of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (1839 and revised in 1845); five volumes of Zoology of the Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle (1840‑1843), which he edited; three volumes of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle (1842‑1846); and numerous papers and reviews (Richards 1983, pp. 46-47).

Darwin started jotting down notes on the “transmutation of species” in 1837, and, following his encounter with Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population in September in that year, realised he now had “a theory by which to work” (Sulloway 2006, p. 118). Having completed the bulk of his immediate writing commitments and researches in geology, in 1842 he wrote a brief sketch of his evolutionary theory which he developed substantially and completed in 1844. As Rebecca Stott observes, at that stage this amounted to no more than “a hypothesis; an idea in embryo” (2003, p. 81). However, Darwin set this aside for another decade, giving rise to much speculation about the delay in publishing his evolutionary ideas. Joseph Carroll writes: 

Virtually every commentator on Darwin’s career broaches the question, ‘Why the delay?’ If Darwin had a book-length ms. prepared in 1844, why did he wait another fifteen years before publishing his book? One common answer to the question is that he delayed because he was afraid to publish – afraid to offend the public, afraid to endanger his social and professional position, afraid even to upset his wife. (Carroll 2003, p. 45) 

Carroll goes on to note that this view appears in its most extreme form in the highly influential biography Darwin (1991) by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, who also attribute severe bouts of Darwin’s chronic gastrointestinal disorder to anxieties about the potential public reception of his evolutionary theory. Carroll proceeds to dispute the now widely-held view, noting that

It fails to register the difference in the quality of argument between a lightly and not very coherently sketched outline, on the one side, and a dense, comprehensive, tightly woven fabric of argument on the other… Darwin [in 1844] did not yet know enough, and had not thought enough, to produce the definitive work his theory had the potential to produce. From 1844 to 1859, the efforts that went into Darwin’s studies on geology and natural history, and particularly his work on barnacles, enabled him to master entire fields of information in respect to which, in 1844, he was but a novice. In addition to his published work, over those years he collected an immense quantity of information – of facts accompanied by analytic reflection – that were slated for publication in the big species book… There was no “delay,” only a protracted preparation. (pp. 45-46)

Implicit in Carroll’s comments is that Darwin was well aware that if his theory was to have any hope of convincing a wide range of people it had to be buttressed by a huge array of corroborating factual information and woven into a cohesive overall argument. He could have added that few people realise the full extent that Darwin’s illness hampered his work. After a few hours on his writings in the morning, he customarily had to rest for the remainder of the day, and there were periods when he had to cease working altogether for weeks on end, occasionally undertaking “water cures” at health resorts. His diaries and letters show the deleterious effect this had on his work, e.g.:

I will give you statistics of time spent on my Coral volume, not including all the work on board the Beagle. I commenced it 3 years and 7 months ago, and have done scarcely anything besides. I have actually spent 20 months out of this period on it! and nearly all the remainder sickness and visiting!!! (Darwin to Emma Darwin, May 1842).

Again, during the years he worked on his major barnacles study he reported:

I have lost for the last 4 or 5 months at least 4⁄5 of my time, & I have resolved to go this early summer & spend two months at Malvern & see whether there is any truth in Gully & the water cure: regular Doctors cannot check my incessant vomiting at all.— It will cause a sad delay in my Barnacle work, but if once half-well I c^d do more in 6 months than I now do in two years. (Letter to Richard Owen, 24 February 1849.)                                                                                                                                 

But why venture on the barnacles studies in 1846 in the first place? The explanation can be found in his response to a comment by his friend Joseph Hooker, directed at another naturalist, which he took personally: “How painfully (to me) true is your remark that no one has hardly a right to examine the question of species who has not minutely described many” (Letter, 19 September 1845). Robert Richards writes:

In 1846 he began an eight‑year study of barnacles, resulting in four volumes completed in 1854. The barnacle project seduced Darwin. He initially planned merely to do a little study of one species and ended up investigating the whole group of Cirripedia. His work on barnacles has been singled out as both a necessary stage in preparation for the Origin of Species and a significant cause of its delay. (Richards 1983, pp. 46-47)

Desmond and Moore acknowledge:

So barnacles were not totally irrelevant to his evolutionary work. In fact, as he proceeded, he began to uncover the most extraordinary proofs of his notebook speculations. […] He called in specimens from far and wide…[…] To be definitive a monograph would have to embrace fossil barnacles as well…It was dogged, grinding work. The modern species had to be dissected, the fossils disarticulated or sectioned. He was inundated with so many species that the labour became exhausting and the smell of spirits nauseating. (Desmond and Moore 1991, pp. 341-343)

In addition to the immense amount of painstaking work required for a comprehensive study of barnacles, there were the lengthy periods lost to illness:

Finished packing up all my cirripedes. preparing Fossil Balanidae distributing copies of my work &c &c.— I have yet a few proofs for Fossil Balanidae for Pal: Soc: to complete, perhaps a week’s more work. Began Oct. 1 1846 On Oct. 1^st. it will be 8 years since I began! But then I have lost 1 or 2 years by illness. (Personal Journal, 9 September 1854)

The Darwin specialists John van Wyhe and Frank Sulloway also take the view that there was no “delay” in the sense promoted by Desmond and Moore. In an article devoted to this issue, van Wyhe writes:

By re-examining the historical evidence, without presuming that Darwin avoided publication, it can be shown that there is no reason to introduce such a hypothesis in the first place… A fresh analysis of Darwin’s manuscripts, letters, publications and the writings of those who knew him intimately shows the story to be quite different from one of a lifetime of  avoiding publication… In fact, Darwin hardly veered from his original plans for working out and publishing his species theory in due course. Finally, it will be shown that, contrary to common belief, Darwin did not keep his belief in evolution (or transmutation as it was then known) a secret before publication in 1858–59. (van Wyhe 2007, p. 178)

 Similarly, Sulloway writes:

Far from being a “closet evolutionist,” as Desmond and Moore claim, Darwin told a dozen of his closest friends about his evolutionary ideas. His twenty-year “delay” in announcing his theory of natural selection was not really a delay. Darwin used this time advantageously to bolster his arguments for evolution, and especially to resolve some of its weakest links. (Sulloway 1996, p. 246)

 Carroll expands on this:

The Notebooks reveal that Darwin had gained the essential insights of his work two decades before it was published, and the essays of 1842 and 1844 demonstrate that he was already at that time able to give a coherent exposition of the basic theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection. What then, if anything, did Darwin gain through waiting for fourteen years before writing the final version of his work? There were three main forms of gain: (i) vastly more detail both in apt illustration and in considered inference, (2) an extended compositional process that resulted in an extraordinary density, coherence, and clarity in the exposition; and (3) one new idea, or at least a latent idea rendered explicit and available for development. The process of composition consisted of alternating phases of expansion and condensation, of filling in details and then of abstracting and summarizing. The one new idea is described in Darwin’s Autobiography. He explains that there was one basic problem he had not adequately formulated in I844 – the problem of “divergence” or branching speciation, as opposed to linear descent. (Carroll 2003, p. 38)

I’ll give the last word to Alfred Russel Wallace, who, in a generous tribute to Darwin, recognised the vital importance of Darwin’s having published their theory in a meticulously comprehensive form rather than as an ingenious speculation:

As to the theory of “Natural Selection” itself, I shall always maintain it to be actually yours & your’s only. You had worked it out in details I had never thought of, years before I had a ray of light on the subject, & my paper would never have convinced anybody or been noticed as more than an ingenious speculation, whereas your book has revolutionized the study of Natural History, & carried away captive the best men of the present Age. (Letter to Darwin, 28 May 1864.)

References

 Carroll, J. (2003). Introduction. In C. R. Darwin, On the Origin of Species. First edition (1859), edited by J. Carroll. Broadview: Ontario, Canada: pp. 9-87.

Darwin, C. R.  The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Edited by John van Wyhe.

Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1991). Darwin. London and New York: Michael Joseph

Richards, R. J. (1983). “Why Darwin Delayed, or Interesting Problems and Models in the History of Science”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 19 January 1983: 45-53.

Stott, R. (2003). Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History’s Most Spectacular Breakthrough. London: Faber & Faber.

Sulloway, F. J. (1982). Darwin’s Conversion: The Beagle Voyage and Its Aftermath.  Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1982): 325-396.

Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. London: Little, Brown and Company.

Sulloway, F. J. (2006). Why Darwin Rejected Intelligent Design.  In J. Brockman (ed.), Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design  Movement, New York: Vintage Books: pp. 107-125.

Wyhe, J. van (2007). Mind the Gap: Did Darwin Avoid Publishing His Theory for Many Years?  Notes & Records of the Royal Society (2007), 61: 177-205.

February 2011