Galapagos Regained

 

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FOR PETER G. HAYES,

who builds knowledge,

cultivates wisdom, and makes an art of friendship

 

If we accept the scholarly consensus, then the Percy Bysshe Shelley Prize, with its peculiar aim of proving, or disproving, the existence of a Supreme Being, was a fundamentally frivolous affair, barely worth a footnote in any but the most exhaustive history of Victorian Britain. The present author disagrees. For many years I have believed that the Great God Contest—and the consequent expedition that the intrepid Chloe Bathurst undertook to the Galápagos Islands—might be fruitfully reimagined as a novel, and here is the result.

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Prefatory Note

Map of the Galapagos Archipelago

Epigram

Prologue

THE PIGEON PRIEST OF COUNTY KENT

Book One

A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS

  
1.
Treating of Our Heroine's Stage Career, Including Accounts of Her Momentary Madness and Ignominious Dismissal

  
2.
Chloe Finds Employment on the Estate of Charles Darwin, to the Benefit of Certain Giant Tortoises, Exotic Iguanas, and Rare Birds

  
3.
We Meet the Reverend Malcolm Chadwick, a Man of Limber Frame and Nimble Mind, Before Whom Atheists Quake and Skeptics Grow Dyspeptic

  
4.
The Pigeon Priest Moves from His Parsonage to a Madhouse, Even as Our Heroine Arranges to Circumnavigate a Continent

  
5.
Chloe Explores St. Paul's Rocks, Home to Brown Boobies, Black Noddies, Belligerent Crabs, and Her Greatest Admirer

Book Two

THE WHITE RADIANCE OF ETERNITY

  
6.
Recounting a Journey up the Amazon River, Featuring Lush Panoramas, Voracious Piranhas, and a Sun that Rises Even As It Sets

  
7.
Addressing a Vexing Question: Is Malaria Best Viewed as a Punishment for Improvidence or a Portal to Infinity?

  
8.
Recruited into an Unlikely Army, Our Heroine Ponders the Doctrine of Just War and Savors the Virtues of Hallucinogenic Snuff

  
9.
Venomous Snakes Fall from the Sky, Fortress Walls Come Tumbling Down, and a New Plan Hatches in Chloe's Brain

10.
Touching upon an Ancient Theological Riddle: After Resting on the Seventh Day, Did God Appropriate Adam's Foreskin on the Eighth?

Book Three

A PREFERENCE FOR THE APE

11.
Arriving in the Encantadas, Chloe Discovers the Empire of Duntopia, Where Maximum Mediocrity Yields Minimum Disappointment

12.
Ralph and Solange Are Charged with the Capital Crime of Blasphemy, a Crisis that Rekindles Our Heroine's Passion for the Tree of Life

13.
The Tortoises of the Encantadas at Long Last Have Their Day in Court, as Do the Land Lizards, Marine Iguanas, Mockingbirds, and Finches

14.
Although Untutored in Geology and Lacking in Divinity, Our Heroine Presumes to Practice Vulcanogenesis

15.
A Book Is Born, a Bishop Is Bested, and a Scientist Receives Solace on His Deathbed

Author's Note

Also by James Morrow

About the Author

Copyright

 

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity.

—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

 

PROLOGUE

The Pigeon Priest of County Kent

That Sunday morning the Reverend Granville Heathway delivered “The Testament of the Trees,” the most ambitious sermon of his career. For nearly an hour he preached about the totality of Creation, from mushrooms to thrushes, lilies to alligators, wasps to lobsters, kangaroos to Christians, including the very parishioners who'd so graciously accorded him their attention. Granville's sermons were normally more modest in scope—“homey little homilies” his wife, Evelyn, affectionately called them—but after reading William Paley's remarkable tome,
Natural Theology,
he'd been moved to declaim its argument from the pulpit.

Of all the religious puzzles that periodically troubled Granville's flock, none vexed them more than the Almighty's seeming acquiescence to human and animal suffering, a paradox to which Mr. Paley had provided an astute solution. Superfluity was the way of the world. By producing an overabundance of progeny, every bonded pair of earthly creatures was making a payment in kind on the survival of its species. Inevitably this reproductive redundancy brought starvation, sickness, and misadventure to many an individual, but such pain was a logical necessity. God could not have designed the laws of Nature otherwise.

Whenever he allowed himself a respite from his clerical responsibilities, Granville pursued activities as unassuming as his average sermon. He cultivated his vegetable garden, reread Mrs. Radcliffe's novels, and played cribbage with his son, Bertram, surely the brightest lad in County Kent. But Granville's foremost passion was pigeon breeding. A decade earlier, upon his promotion to parson of St. Mary's Church, Down Parish, Granville had purchased three female rock doves and their mates, and before long he and his dear Evelyn were presiding over a large family of birds, all gifted with an uncanny instinct to return to their native cote.

In time it became Granville's custom, following Sunday services, to provide each departing churchgoer with a copy of the sermon and, if the parishioner so desired, a live pigeon in a wicker cage. The parishioner would go home, write out a brief question or remark keyed to the homily, affix the scrip to the bird's leg, and send it winging back to the parsonage. On Sunday morning, before mounting the pulpit, Granville would distribute detailed and individualized letters of reply. Thus did he maintain a private correspondence with his congregation's more inquisitive members, thoughtfully addressing their confusion about good and evil, salvation and sin, Heaven and Hell.

Upon finishing his
Natural Theology
sermon, Granville realized that, given the topic's complexity, the demand for caged pigeons would be high. What he hadn't anticipated was the behavior of his parishioner Emma Darwin, mistress of Down House and wife of a renowned naturalist and geologist. No sooner had Mrs. Darwin accepted from Bertram a pigeon called Ajax than she summoned her six-year-old son and his younger sister. The children carried their own wicker birdcage—Willy grasping one side, Annie the other—which they straightaway presented to Granville. The cooing, bobbing occupant was a rock dove with an elegant scarlet crest.

“Like yourself, my husband breeds homing pigeons,” Mrs. Darwin explained, resting a gloved hand against her most recent contribution to reproductive redundancy, a conspicuous pregnancy swathed in a flowered muslin gown.

“An activity he prefers to hearing my sermons,” noted Granville.

“As usual, Mr. Darwin went sauntering about the village instead of following me to church.”

Mrs. Darwin had made no secret of her preferred denomination: she would much rather belong to the Unitarian congregation in Bromley—but St. Mary's was, as she put it, “ever so much more convenient for a woman in a delicate condition.” Whenever Granville's parishioners turned towards the altar to recite the triune-inflected Nicene Creed, she and Willy and Annie faced the other way. And yet despite their theological differences a bond of friendship had formed between Granville and Mrs. Darwin. Many were the anguished conversations in which he and the distraught woman had engaged concerning her husband's nonconformist (some might say nonexistent) religious beliefs. She feared that, come the Kingdom, she and her beloved Charles would be marked for eternal separation—though she seemed to take solace in Granville's insistence that Christ's infinite love would triumph over Mr. Darwin's transient folly.

“Last night I fell upon a clever idea,” Mrs. Darwin continued. “Were you to write my husband a personal message, and were your words to reach him via the pigeon medium, he might take it seriously.”

“What should my message say?” asked Granville.

“Merely invite him to attend next Sunday's services.”

“Does this bird have a name?” asked Granville.

“Annie has christened her ‘Cherub.'”

“How appropriate that it was your Annie who named her, for tradition tells of a connection between birds and Saint Anne,” said Granville. “Whilst contemplating a lark feeding its young, Saint Anne suddenly desired children of her own. Eventually she bore a daughter, the very Mary destined to carry our Savior. I suspect there's a homily in there somewhere.”

“I don't believe my husband would be moved by that topic,” said Mrs. Darwin. “Were you to continue preaching on William Paley, however—”

“Then Paley it will be!”

Returning to the parsonage that afternoon, Granville lost no time finding a scrip and, aided by his quizzing-glass, filling it edge to edge with words calculated to pique Mr. Darwin's interest:
ACCOMPANY YOUR WIFE ON SUNDAY, AND I SHALL ADDRESS THE MYSTERY OF THIS BIRD'S CREATOR, WHO GAVE US THE WORLD AND ITS LAWS. YRS., REV'D. HEATHWAY
. He coiled up the paper—the smallest of scrolls, he mused, like a Torah for mice—then deposited it in Cherub's capsule and released her to find the Down House dovecote.

By Tuesday morning a majority of pigeons had made their way back to St. Mary's, the sole exception being Ajax. Much to Granville's satisfaction, many parishioners had profited from his
Natural Theology
sermon, their responses blending
cris de coeur
with shouts of affirmation.
I SEE NOW THAT LIFE IS A VALE OF BOTH TEARS AND MIRACLES
, noted Mrs. Rashbrook.
NATURE'S HARSH IMPERATIVES ARE AT ONCE BEWILDERING AND SUBLIME
, wrote Miss Hawkins.
I HAVE RESOLVED TO JOIN WITH THE PHILOSOPHERS IN DECLARING, “WHATEVER IS, IS GOOD
,” averred Professor Tandy.
EVERMORE SHALL I GRIEVE FOR MY SON, BUT NOW THE SADNESS IS LESS
, proclaimed Captain Maxwell.

Ajax arrived late on Thursday afternoon, gliding onto the parsonage grounds as the sun kissed the bracken. With quivering fingers Granville unstrapped the capsule and retrieved Mr. Darwin's reply:
THOUGH I ADMIRE THE AUTHOR OF ALL BIRDS AND BEASTS, I DO NOT BELIEVE HIM A CHURCHGOING SORT OF DEITY. YRS., CHAS. DARWIN
.