The Darwin Conspiracy

by John Darnton

  “Yes. And I think she makes a convincing case about her father. He was acting strange. Of course we have no idea what she suspected him of doing.”

  Hugh could not help but notice that she had said “we.” “So what have you been doing here, at the library?”

  “Research—like you. Finding out as much as I could about Lizzie.”

  “Meanwhile, you’ve got those papers waiting for you at the solicitors, right? Or did you get them?”

  “Not yet. I’ve been to the office in London but I had to supply all kinds of credentials to prove I am who I say I am. It’s taking forever. These British lawyers are real nitpickers. They tell me I can get it soon. You want to see them?”

  “Of course.”

  “So . . . what does this mean?”

  “What?”

  “About us. Are we working together? Are we partners?”

  “How about it? You want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then we’re partners.”

  Events were transpiring so quickly that Hugh’s feelings barely caught up. He discovered he was relieved that the competition was over, the screen down. It would be good to have someone to share in the adventure—and who better than Beth, Darwin’s blood relative? He also acknowledged that the documents from the estate were bound to unlock some of Darwin’s secrets.

  “I had a thought,” Beth said suddenly. “Did you notice Lizzie’s journal had the number one on it? It was circled.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you put a one unless there was a two?”

  “You mean there’s another journal out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if it’s not in the publishing house, chances are it’s lying around in that vast collection at the library.”

  “Yes.”

  He put his arm around her. “You’re brilliant.”

  She picked up the birth certificate with a mischievous smile. “I come by it naturally.”

  That night, in deference to Alice in the room next door, they made love quietly, but in some ways the restraint only heightened the passion.

  The next morning, inside the Manuscripts Room, Roland was yawning as if he were still recovering from a rough night out. They approached him together.

  “I see you’ve joined forces,” he said. “I figured it was just a matter of time.”

  “We need your help,” said Hugh. “Let’s go get a cup of tea.”

  In the cafeteria they began by asking questions about the Darwin collection as a whole, and, as usual, Roland was a fount of information.

  “His wife, Emma, died late in the nineteenth century. Their son, Francis, was interested in the family heritage and he amassed quite a few papers. Ida Farrer, who married Horace, the youngest and feeblest of Darwin’s sons, kept family letters. In 1942, the treasure trove was bequeathed to the library.”

  Hugh looked him square in the eyes.

  “Roland, could you do me a favor?”

  “Boy, I’ve been doing you nothing but favors since the day we met.”

  “Could I see the papers? Could I go back in the stacks and look at them?”

  “You mean look at them as in look at them, or look at them as in look through them?”

  “The second.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Hmm. Highly illegal, you know. It’s a restricted area. I’d probably lose my job. And there’s a second curator on duty who might see you.”

  “Not if Beth distracted him.”

  She smiled at Roland.

  “My, my,” he said. “You two do like breaking the rules, don’t you?”

  Ten minutes later, when the Manuscripts Room was virtually deserted, Beth went over to the other curator with a request. While they remained hunched over a research book, Roland led Hugh behind the counter to a blue door, swiped a card, and they were inside. It was quiet except for the hum of air conditioners. A large metal case faced them, holding several small stacks of manuscripts with slips hanging down from the pages, reserved by readers for continual use. They turned right and walked past row upon row of metal shelves until deep in the bowels of the building they came to Case 20, the area reserved for Western manuscripts. They followed the rows until they came to number 137.

  “Here you are,” said Roland. “If you have to touch anything, put it back exactly as it was. You have precisely one hour—that’s when the superintendent returns. And for God’s sake, if you hear the other curator, hide!”

  Hugh looked down the aisles: each had ten bays, five shelves to a bay, extending for about 130 feet. Three of the aisles were for Darwin material, most of it kept in brown and blue boxes. Some of it was labeled: “From family,” “From Down House,” “From botany.”

  He started with “family,” opening one box, then another, moving quickly down the aisle. Most of the material was in small dark brown envelopes, bundles of letters, which he ignored. After twenty minutes, he came to a large box marked “Accounts.” He opened it and found stacks of ledgers and bills and account books, some written in Darwin’s hand. Toward the bottom, lying upside down, he came upon what he was looking for—a small account book with the numeral “2” on the cover, circled. He opened it, flipped to the back. There it was: Lizzie’s handwriting!

  He found a small label stuck on the binding with a reference number: DA/acct3566. He wrote it down, replaced the account book in the box, and the box on the shelf. Then he calmly walked back to the blue door, opened it slightly, peered out to see if the coast was clear, and returned to the reading room. No one saw him.

  He filled out a request form and handed it to Roland.

  “Middle aisle, three quarters of the way down, on the right,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER 17

  10 June 1871

  How strange to resume my journal after all this time, nearly six years since I gave it up (and what unhappy, disillusioning years they have been!). Indeed I would not do so, especially after forswearing it, were it not for the whirl-wind of emotions bearing down upon me. I am prey to joy and agony at one and the same time. Sometimes I feel as if my heart is so full and overflowing that it will burst and I shall fall stricken on the floor for all to see and to wonder: what could have befallen the poor maiden that she expired thus in the bloom of her years? I feel an overwhelming desire to confess, to unburden myself, to pour out my innermost thoughts and desires. But alas, there is no-one, absolutely no-one, to serve as my confessor, no-one into whose ear I might discharge my burning secret.

  I am in love. Heavens, am I in love. I think of no-one but him. I long to be with no-one but him. I dream of him. Wherever I go, I see his nimble form, his handsome visage, his gentle brown eyes. I hear his soft voice and feel his look upon me, which makes me blush to the roots of my hair. I would spend my life with him. And he has no idea that I am consumed by my adoration of him.

  There!—I have admitted it. I have put my secret to paper. That at least is something, but I cannot say that it has brought me great relief. Even in this writing, I must exercise caution and not disclose the name of my beloved or in any way reveal his identity. We have been thrown together by circumstance, like the lovers in one of Mrs Gatskell’s novels. I long to put down his name or at the least his initials and to read them and re-read them, but I dare not, lest this fall into someone’s hands. I shall call him X. Sweet X. Dearest X. I do love you with all my heart and soul. How trite those words sound now that I look at them—oh, how woefully dumb is language compared to the heart’s longing.

  I must not ramble. To do so simply makes it all the harder to bear. There, I have confessed my secret and I must have done with it.

  But the burden feels no lighter.

  12 June 1871

  My life, by which I mean my external life, is to all appearances much as it was when last I closed my journal. I am now twenty-three years of age. The startling events in the Meteorological Office and FitzRoy’s grotesque death affected me deeply.
I could not discard the idea that I myself bore some responsibility for it, having upset him so during our interview. As a consequence, it took a severe toll on my health. I collapsed and fell into convulsions, which occurred off and on for weeks. I lost my appetite and became very pale and thin, so much so that I had no need of a corset (though I had no desire to venture outside and spent most of the time in my bedchamber).

  I also turned away from the Church, becoming an unbeliever. This troubled Mamma no end. She pressed me continually to attend services and prayed for me to pursue ‘the Lord’s light and grace’. She was brought to tears during our first argument on the matter when I refused confirmation; she asked me for my reasoning and I forgot myself and shouted that I believed neither in the Trinity nor in baptism nor, in fact, in God Himself. She was so shocked that she fell silent and then turned on her heel and took to her bed weeping. I expect she was thinking that now our household held two non-believers, the other being of course Papa.

  Little could I confide to her that my conversion to atheism was in part due to my feelings about Papa. For my suspicions that something horrible had occurred during the voyage of the Beagle— perhaps during that nuit de feu —had hardened into the conviction that he himself was guilty of some wrong-doing. The feeling became all the more painful since it placed his character so at odds with the world’s view of him. My suspicions strengthened when I saw Papa’s reaction to FitzRoy’s death; far from being saddened, he acted as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Shortly after the funeral, I saw Mr Huxley clap him upon the back and overheard him saying, ‘Well, that puts an end to the whole sorry business; the weather-man shall get no more stipend from me.’ I thought it a most cruel remark.

  For a period I ceased talking altogether. Out of concern for my behaviour and what Dr Chapman called my ‘mental lassitude’, I was trundled off to Europe in hopes that a change of habitat might inspire a recovery. For by that time I had indeed fallen grievously ill, though naturally, as I have said, I could tell no-one the true cause of my malady—that I had begun to suspect that Papa is not the man he pretends to be. I visited Germany and then took up residence at Baden-Baden, where the fresh mountain air and curative springs gradually restored my peace of mind. I remained there for almost three months and returned to Down House only after George was dispatched to fetch me. My homecoming was cause for some celebration, at least outwardly (Parslow was most moved, almost to tears), and I pretended to par-take of the festive air. Abroad I had come to a resolution and I informed my family of it: to make a clean start of things I wanted to relinquish the name Lizzie and to be called Bessie instead. They were puzzled and it took them some time to accommodate my wish. The servants were the first to learn to address me by my new name and then Mamma and my brothers. Etty and Papa took the longest.

  15 June 1871

  Papa’s health has not improved. He has been following John Chapman’s remedy of applying ice to the spine; he straps cold-water bags to his lower back several times a day, setting his teeth to chattering. He is a sight to behold, moving around the house like a great lumbering bear or lying on his bed groaning. But for all of that it does little good.

  Papa’s illnesses cannot be laid to the opprobrium of society, for in recent years, far from being treated like a pariah, he has been placed upon a pedestal. His fame has continued to spread beyond all expectation. His theory on natural selection (which some are now calling evolution ) is gaining in acceptance. Most notably, the attacks from the Church seem to be lessening. A year ago, Oxford awarded him its highest honorary degree, and every day the postman brings stacks of letters from all corners of the globe. In short, he has attained great status as an innovative thinker, esteemed even by those who disagree with him. Perhaps because he has reached the venerable age of sixty-two or because he and his circle have mounted such an effective campaign to promote his theory, but he has practically become a national institution.

  In disseminating his views, he is deucedly clever; he never confronts an antagonist straight on but works on him indirectly, using allies to persuade while he himself strikes a disarming stance of reasonableness. He is good at proselytising and adept in his use of language. For example, he has a meta-phor he often uses to take the steam out of debate. When an adversary ridicules him for asserting that our forefathers were monkeys, he denies it steadfastly, saying that he contends merely that men and monkeys have a common ancestor. He then describes what he calls ‘the tree of life’. In the depiction, the simplest creatures are at the bottom and the most complicated animals are at the top; as species vary, they branch off from one another in such a way that those with the greatest difference are farthest apart. In this way the essence of his argument strikes home.

  Origin is soon to reach its sixth printing, much to the delight of John Murray. It has been translated into just about every European language, although Papa is upset with the French version, which he believes ties him too closely to Lamarck. For the past two years, he has been working on his ‘man book’. The Descent of Man, which finally appeared last month, makes the evolutionary link between men and animals explicit, which he did not dare to do before. Etty helped him, proofreading the manuscript and scrawling her suggestions in the margins; as always, her changes toned down the conclusions and eliminated improprieties. She acts and thinks like an old maid.

  I’ve read the manuscript, although I was not asked to do so. Papa’s theory on ‘sexual selection’ is arresting; it accounts for the persistence of traits that determine how people and animals choose their mates, and it explains the differences among races and why we here in the West are the most advanced. He states that men are intellectually superior to women. There is one aspect to it that bothers me: the thought that in the most civilised societies it is the men who choose the women, not the other way around. I find that upsetting—it treats women as passive receptacles without a will or mind of their own. I have heard too many women talking below stairs, as it were, to find this assertion convincing, and I have confirmed my view on the matter in conversations with Mary Ann Evans, who has become a friend of mine. If Papa could only read my heart, and see the amorous tempest brewing there whenever X walks into a room where I happen to be (not by chance), he would surely alter his view.

  25 June 1871

  X called this afternoon at 3:15, riding all the way out from London. As we were already engaged in receiving visitors (Mrs Livington, a dreadful bore to boot!), he left his card. It was on the hall table and my heart skipped a beat when I managed to steal a glance at it. To my great joy, he had turned down one corner, signifying that the visit was intended not just for Mamma but for us daughters as well. I was stricken to have missed him but glad at least that he did not display the bad manners of sitting Mrs Livington out.

  27 June 1871

  Oh, happy, blessed day! I spent most of this Sunday with X. He organised an excursion for the Working Men’s College to take fresh air in the countryside around the village of Kidlington and asked Etty and me to go along.

  We spent a most delightful morning, walking through the fields and foot-paths and took a merry lunch on the grounds of an inn there. Then on the train ride back, we struck up song after song— X has a rumbling baritone—that kept us all rollicking. One man was proficient at making bird-sounds by cupping his hands together and blowing through his thumbs, which amused us considerably.

  It is now one month since X entered my life, since Etty met him at the Wedgwoods’ and invited him to visit Down House. I have so much in common with him. We hold the same views of human nature and progressive politics. Like him, I support the Reform Act, since I believe that expansion of the electorate is the only way to further democracy and reduce inequities among the classes. I share his vision for a Utopian future and I could listen to him talk about it for hours. Although I am not acquainted with all the thinkers he espouses, such as Thomas Hughes and Vernon Lushington, I have read works by John Ruskin, whom X knows well. X is more radical in his political vie
ws than I am, but I am sure I could be elevated to his position with a little more education. At one point he expressed a certain sympathy for the current events in France; he admitted that the Paris Commune had raged out of control and ended sadly in its ‘week of blood’ but he said that some of the ideas of a workers’ revolt were not misplaced. I think he is absolutely brilliant.

  29 June 1871

  I cannot tell if X reciprocates my feelings. Sometimes I dare to think he likes me. He came to Down House for dinner yesterday evening and afterwards the family withdrew to the drawing-room where he played the grand piano and I turned the pages for him. As I did so, I fancied he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Later he smiled at me in a way that made me turn red and feel flushed. My heart was throbbing so, I feared it would give me away, that he could almost hear it once the music stopped. He played like a man possessed—I could see the muscles on his strong fingers stand out as they pressed the keys. Then he played the concertina and sang a madrigal while Etty accompanied him on the piano.

  When the music was done, he and Papa fell into a discussion about Papa’s theories on ‘sexual selection’. X said something that caused Papa to become excited—namely, that he had often thought that animals used song to court their mates. I could see Papa registering this thought for some possible use later on. X then said that he thought human beings did much the same thing and I fancied that as he said this he was looking in my direction.

  When he was about to depart, he brushed against me in the entrance-hall.

  I could not tell whether this was an accident or intentional, but I felt his hand touch the inside of my arm and a sensation shot through me like a charge. I am sure he noticed how flustered I became. My cheeks were burning scarlet. He said he would return soon as he kissed my hand and Etty’s. At that point I saw Mamma, standing behind him, break into a sly smile.

  Afterwards, Etty and I acted giddily. We talked about him and she said