Beneath Ceaseless Skies #164

by James Morrow

  She wondered what sum Mr. Darwin might be persuaded to donate to Papa’s deliverance. Certainly not the whole two thousand pounds. (A man will spend that much in acquiring a house but not on assuaging his indignation.) Perhaps she could convince him to part with two hundred. It is beyond your powers to liberate the Brazilian slaves, she would argue, and the American slaves as well, but you can help to save one blameless wretch from death by toil. Contribute to my fund, sir, and God will reward you with your first good night’s sleep in years.

  * * *

  On the twentieth day in April, 1849, Mr. Darwin sponsored at Down House a luncheon of particular import, for this would be his last opportunity to see Mr. Hooker prior to the swashbuckling botanist’s departure on yet another plant collecting adventure. Chloe spent the morning mucking out the zoological dome, while Daydy passed the same interval preparing roasted joints of lamb, plus puréed turnips, stewed spinach, and broiled mushrooms.

  Upon their arrival, Mr. Darwin conducted the scientific triumvirate towards the vivarium. Parslow the butler followed with a salver holding ginger biscuits and three bottles of sherry wine. Entering the contrived jungle, Mr. Gould and Professor Lyell acknowledged the children with friendly waves—Master Willy was riding Johnson the tortoise, and Miss Annie had just mounted Isolde—whilst Mr. Hooker, as prepossessing as ever behind his spectacles, favored Chloe with an amiable wink.

  Shortly after the guests assumed their places at the linen-draped table, Mr. Gould and Mr. Hooker began conversing about a noxious phenomenon on which the Evening Standard had been reporting for the past four months. It concerned the Percy Bysshe Shelley Society: a band of young, wealthy, sybaritic Oxford graduates who’d recently acquired for their debauches a private manse in the heart of town. Under the guidance of Lord Rupert Woolfenden, the twenty Byssheans were staging at Alastor Hall a competition whereby they would award an immense cash prize of £10,000 to the first scholar, scientist, or theologian who could prove, or disprove, the existence of God.

  “What a scandalous project,” said the dour Professor Lyell, who’d evidently not heard of the prize despite its being, in Mr. Hooker’s words, “the talk of all London.”

  “I quite agree,” said the roly-poly Mr. Gould, pouring a glass of oloroso. “Though the problem is not without a certain, shall we say, philosophical interest?”

  “From my own perusal of the late Mr. Shelley, I infer that he possessed a first-rate mind.” Mr. Hooker availed himself of the amontillado. “True, it was reckless of him to write ‘On the Necessity of Atheism,’ though I feel that, in sending Shelley down for it, the University College officials displayed a decided want of imagination.”

  Chloe’s first instinct was to hustle Willy and Annie out of the zoo, lest they learn prematurely there was such a thing as atheism, but she elected to stay, partly because the children seemed oblivious to the scientists’ chatter, but mostly because the phrase “ten thousand pounds” held an intrinsic allure. After settling down beside the iguana pond, she distributed her attention amongst five activities: minding her charges, sipping tea, eating hard-boiled eggs, pretending to read a pamphlet entitled The Fruit Farmer’s Guide to Mole Management, and listening furtively to the gentlemen’s conversation.

  “You know what this damnable prize amounts to?” said Lyell, filling his glass with manzanilla. “It’s a ten-thousand-pound bounty on the head of God.”

  “Judas got but thirty pieces of silver,” said Hooker in a tone Chloe thought oddly jocular given the seriousness of the subject.

  “One might assume that on first principles these Oxford rakehells would skew the competition towards the atheist view,” said Gould, “and yet by the Standard’s account they happily entertain arguments on the Almighty’s behalf.”

  “But how do they sort the robust proofs of God from the feeble?” asked Lyell.

  “The same way they sort the substantive refutations from the trivial,” said Gould, sipping his wine. “Each contestant makes his case before a panel comprising three Anglican and three freethinking judges. The whole sorry circus convenes every fortnight, with a preselected theist and a corresponding unbeliever traveling to Oxford and presenting their arguments.” The ornithologist clamped a friendly hand on Mr. Darwin’s knee. “Charles, you’ve been strangely silent concerning the Great God Contest. Are you not outraged that these flâneurs would turn theology into a game?”

  “Nowadays I make a point of abstaining from outrage,” Mr. Darwin replied. “It’s bad for the digestion. That said, I feel bound to reveal that, were I to conduct the judges about my little zoo, I might very well collect the prize, provided they understood my commentary.”

  “I’ll wager I could understand it,” said Hooker, savoring his sherry. “Pray tell, sir, what manner of God proof lurks within your menagerie?”

  “Charles has in mind the Argument from Design,” said Lyell. “William Paley’s Natural Theology and all that. No watch without a watchmaker.”

  “You misunderstand me, gentlemen,” said Mr. Darwin, biting into a ginger biscuit. “I would win the contest by negating the Deity.”

  Somehow Chloe prevented a mouthful of tea from reversing direction and spouting out her nose.

  “Piffle,” said Lyell.

  “Needless to say, I have no intention of entering the competition,” Mr. Darwin declared. “For one thing, my wife would never hear of it.”

  “And for another, you’d be violating your own religious convictions,” said Lyell.

  “Up to a point,” said Mr. Darwin with a raffish smile.

  “Charles, you hold us on tenterhooks,” said Gould. “Please explain yourself.”

  “I cannot explain myself—only God, wherever He may be, can do that—but I shall attempt to explain my theory.” Mr. Darwin brushed biscuit crumbs from his lower lip. “Look about you, gentlemen, and you’ll see the Encantadas replicated on a small scale. A question springs to mind. Why did God treat each Galápagos island as if it were—almost, but not quite—a biologically sovereign realm? Why did He install slim-beaked warbler finches on Albemarle Isle but large-beaked ground finches on Chatham? Why do the tortoises on the northern islands have shells suggesting igloos, whilst the specimens on the southern islands have shells resembling saddles, and the centrally located creatures wear simple sloping shells? What’s more, when we travel to other equatorial archipelagos, why do we meet no reptiles or birds that mirror the Galápagos types?”

  “Scintillating questions,” said Gould.

  “As an analogy,” said Hooker, “I’ve often wondered why the Kerguelan cabbage, quite the most ridiculous of vegetables, flourishes in the Indian Ocean but nowhere else.”

  “Simply because God initially laid down a template for every species, that doesn’t preclude the emergence of variations, even ridiculous variations,” said Lyell. “When I consider how the Almighty built a benign plasticity into the scheme of things, my faith is renewed, not shaken.”

  “Spend a moment contemplating three marine iguanas from different Galápagos islands,” Mr. Darwin persisted, “and a conundrum presents itself. So utterly distinctive, these creatures, and yet so fundamentally similar. Miss Bathurst, will you please show us some living illustrations of this mystery?”

  Startled to be drawn into the conversation, Chloe dropped the hard-boiled egg she was about to peel. “Certainly, sir,” she said as the egg wobbled away. Gaining her feet, she stretched her arms over the iguana pond like a heathen priestess blessing its waters. “That red aquatic lizard is Jezebel from Hood’s Isle. Note also black Melchior from Tower. Our big multicolored fellow is Shadrack from Narborough.”

  “Three separate addresses, three kinds of coloration, utterly distinctive, fundamentally similar,” said Mr. Darwin. “And then one day, following the orbit of my sandwalk, I fell upon an answer. Like every other lizard known to science, the first iguanas to live in Galápagos were strictly terrestrial—but over the ages some colonies found it expedient to inhabit the archipelago’s coastl
ines, drawing sustenance from the sea. This natural transmutation process continued even after these iguanas became full-blown aquatic creatures, hence our red, black, and multicolored species. A similar story might be told of the three varieties of Galápagos giant tortoise. For example, Miss Bathurst?”

  Though once again caught off guard, she rose to the occasion, indicating the nearest tortoise with her index finger. “Domeshelled Boswell from James Isle”—she pivoted and pointed—”saddle-backed Tristan from Charles Isle”—again she pointed—”slope-backed Perseus from Indefatigable.”

  “Boswell, Tristan, and Perseus: all reasonably good swimmers and thus arguably sharing an ancestor that, once upon a time, inhabited South America,” said Mr. Darwin. “By riding the Humboldt Current westward from the mainland, one or two small but seaworthy tortoises could have reached the Encantadas, where in time their descendants became huge, for if no other animal regards you as prey, it matters not how conspicuous you appear. I would further hypothesize that our bright yellow, flat-spined terrestrial iguanas, found on a majority of islands, share a South American heritage with our sallow gray, high-spined iguanas, exclusive to Barrington.”

  “So your terrestrial iguanas can also swim?” asked Hooker.

  “Not very well, but that doesn’t tell against my theory. The ancestors of our land lizards could have traveled from the continent to Galápagos on uprooted trees or floating mats of vegetation.” Mr. Darwin moved his flattened hand up and down as would a raft adrift on ocean waves, then fluttered the fingers of the opposite hand in a pantomime of flight. “Now what of our birds? The anatomical evidence suggests that all four Galápagos mockingbird species sprang from a long-tailed type that flew over from Ecuador or Peru. In the case of our vermillion flycatchers, I believe that during my round-the-world journey I spotted the parent kind on the South American mainland, broader of wing than its Encantadas posterity and gifted with a heartier song. As for my finches, they’re probably all descended from a continental species called the blue-black grassquit.”

  “I could provide the judges with stuffed specimens of that very creature,” said Gould, draining his glass. “Not that I would ever make a bid for the Shelley Prize,” he added, so vehemently that Chloe thought perhaps he meant the opposite.

  “I’m hearing Buffon’s idea of allied species sharing a pedigree,” said Lyell. “I’m hearing Lamarck’s notion of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics. But neither hypothesis constitutes a disproof of the God of Abraham.”

  “Not only do our two species of terrestrial iguana boast an ancestor in common with our aquatic iguanas,” Mr. Darwin continued in a tone of constrained exasperation, “but were you to travel back far enough in time, you would encounter an extinct creature that prefigured every variety of iguana to be found anywhere in the world. These primal lizards shared the Earth with primal turtles, primal snakes, and primal Crocodylia, all of them in turn sprung from a species of cold-blooded, egg-laying, scaly-skinned animal.”

  Mr. Gould switched allegiances, oloroso to manzanilla. “An archetypal reptile? How intriguing.”

  “Not archetypal, John, nothing so poetic and Platonic as all that,” said Mr. Darwin. “For it happens that our originary reptile in turn traces to a mutable stock of proto-reptiles.”

  “So where does it all end?” asked Hooker.

  “You mean, ‘Where does it all begin?’ By my lights the natural history of our planet is like a fantastically complex shrub or tree. Follow the twigs, and you’ll come to the branches, that is, to the first types of mammal, reptile, amphibian, and fish. But why stop there? Why not scurry along the branches until we reach the trunk, where we’ll meet the most primitive lineages yet, ancestral insects, crustaceans, mollusks, amoebas, and algae. The journey continues, ever downward, until finally, at the base of the trunk, we come upon a single, seminal form. Need I point out that we’ve long since parted company with Genesis chapter one? And there’s the rub, gentlemen. If God played no role in the cavalcade of life on Earth, from protozoans to primates, it behooves us to wonder why He goes to all the bother of existing.”

  “Good heavens, Charles, you really do have a shot at the Shelley Prize,” said Hooker. “If I were an Alastor Hall rakehell, I’d be impressed.”

  “My desire to impress those poseurs is nil. Ah, but here comes Parslow. Let us forget my eccentric speculations and enjoy Daydy’s culinary arts.”

  The butler entered the vivarium pushing a tea cart laden with the feast. Speaking not a word, he deposited generous portions of lamb and vegetables on each guest’s plate.

  “Come, come, Charles, is your Tree of Life really so outlandish an idea?” said Hooker. “Did not your illustrious grandfather Erasmus posit that all warm-blooded creatures arose from a single filament?”

  “That estimable savant could describe no mechanism of transmutation,” Mr. Darwin asserted, then added, clucking his tongue, “but I can.”

  “So can the Church of England,” said Lyell.

  “Tell us about your mechanism,” said Hooker.

  “I’d rather not. It’s like confessing a murder.”

  “You’re amongst friends,” said Gould. “We’ll help you bury the body.”

  “First lunch, then deicide,” said Mr. Darwin.

  By Chloe’s reckoning it took the sages a mere thirty minutes to consume a meal that the staff had spent four hours preparing. While the gentlemen ate, the children dutifully amused themselves, Willy ensnaring a cactus plant with the bola his father had brought back from Patagonia, Annie enacting a conversation between her Red Riding Hood doll and its lupine nemesis. (Mr. Darwin had indeed whittled a wolf for his eldest daughter, cloaking it in the dry and scraped pelt of a Derbyshire hare.) No sooner had the sages cleaned their plates than Parslow appeared, carrying a tray of puddings and a bottle of port.

  “I’m eager to hear about your momentous crime,” Hooker told the master of Down House, whereupon the butler blanched and hastily withdrew.

  “I’ll begin by making a naïve observation,” said Mr. Darwin. “Within any sexually reproducing population, the offspring vary, yes? My Annie, my Henrietta, and my Betty are not duplicates of Mrs. Darwin, nor do they mirror one another. In this phenomenon lies the success of those who seek to improve domestic livestock. Chance provides the breeder with unsolicited novelties that he proceeds to exploit, selecting who shall mate with whom—and thus perpetuating desirable characteristics. And so we get horses faster and stronger than their ancestors, sheep with thicker fleece, and cows of greater fecundity. I contend that, just as a man might produce a superior pig by design, so might Nature craft a better boar by accident.”

  “But how, Charles—how?” asked Gould, eating a forkful of apple tart.

  “Our planet is forever in flux. Even as we speak, the Earth’s face is changing through natural processes of erosion, sedimentation, and vulcanism. If that canny geologist Lyell were here, he would corroborate me.”

  “Pass the cherry tart,” said Lyell with a pained smile.

  “From an individual animal’s perspective, every alteration in its environment must be greeted with grave suspicion,” said Mr. Darwin. “Oft-times the creature finds itself standing by helplessly as temperatures plunge, food supplies diminish, plagues appear, and enemies flourish. But occasionally Nature favors an endangered population, gifting a few offspring with characteristics not only fortuitous but fortunate—a luxuriant pelt, equal to the harshest winter; a mighty jaw, stronger than the toughest nut; a hearty constitution, able to survive epidemics; elongated limbs, crucial for outpacing predators. Compared to their cousins, these lucky juveniles are more likely to survive into adulthood, find mates—”

  “And pass along the felicitous trait!” interrupted Hooker. “What a pretty hypothesis!”

  “Eventually the modification spreads through the population, giving rise to a new variety, type, race, or species,” said Mr. Darwin. “Whilst conducting the judges about my zoo, I would bid them notic
e the broad, flat tail of Shadrack the marine iguana, essential for propelling him towards his underwater kelp dinner. Did Shadrack’s parents have such an appendage? Most probably, which is why they lived long enough to make Shadrack. His distant round-tailed relations, however, lacked this advantage, and so they lost what the Reverend Thomas Malthus famously called ‘the struggle for existence.’ “

  “I must say, sir—your argument enjoys the merit of logic,” said Gould.

  “As did Satan’s presentation to our Savior,” said Lyell. “Forgive me, Charles. I didn’t mean to compare you to the Devil.”

  “Nor yourself to Christ, I trust,” said Mr. Darwin.

  The geologist scowled, licking cherry juice from his lips.

  “What other adaptations would you commend to the judges’ attention?” asked Gould.

  “The sturdy beaks of our ground-dwelling finches,” Mr. Darwin replied, “ideal for penetrating the fruits on which they feed. The slim beaks of our warbler finches, perfect for extracting insects from trees. The long bills of our Hood’s Isle mockingbirds, useful for cracking open nutritious booby eggs in their native habitat. The short bills of our Chatham mockingbirds, suited to consuming the palo santo seeds that sustained them back home. Finally, the arched shells of our saddleback tortoises, a modification that enabled them to reach the higher fruits on their beloved Charles Isle cactus plants.”

  “Have you committed your theory to paper?” asked Hooker.

  Mr. Darwin snapped his fingers in the same emphatic fashion that had heralded his decision to offer Chloe a situation at Down House. “Miss Bathurst, would you please go to my study and rummage about in the desk, left side, lower drawer? You’ll find a sketch of thirty-five pages titled ‘An Essay Concerning Descent with Modification.’ “

  “I’ll fetch it straightaway, sir,” said Chloe, setting down her tea.

  “No, I don’t want the sketch. Retrieve what lies beneath—a manuscript called Towards a Theory of Natural Selection. In your absence I shall mind the children.”