Galapagos Regained (7 page)

*   *   *

In time Chloe noted that an irony flourished within the noisy estate she now called home. The Charles Darwin who took such an inordinate interest in earthworms was condemned by certain infirmities to assume the posture of his beloved
annelids
. Although this horizontality doubtless served well for producing children, it surely frustrated his scientific endeavors (the botany projects he pursued in the potting sheds, the pigeon-breeding experiments he conducted in the backyard cote, the barnacle dissections he performed in his study). On his worst days he was up and about for only two or three hours, after which, beset by a wracking headache and a high fever, he took to his couch, not far from the basin that, owing to his spells of vomiting, he was obliged to keep at hand, occluded by a Chinese screen.

Not surprisingly, he rarely left the villa. Only once that autumn did he go to London, where he bought a cameo brooch for Mrs. Darwin and attended a meeting of the Geological Society. He much preferred that his colleagues come to him—and come they did. Amongst the illustrious visitors to Down House were the virile young botanist Mr. Joseph Hooker, recently returned from an expedition to the Antarctic, the affable Mr. John Gould, England's greatest ornithologist, and the crusty Professor Charles Lyell, celebrated throughout Her Majesty's realm for his
Principles of Geology
(a book that, as Mr. Darwin remarked to Chloe, “will be favorably impressing its readers even after the mountains for which it so eloquently accounts have turned to dust”). Occasionally the scientific triumvirate of Hooker, Gould, and Lyell spent the night, but usually they made a day trip of it, staying only long enough to partake of an afternoon meal. Because these luncheons normally occurred in the vivarium, Chloe oft-times found herself eavesdropping on the sages' conversation (understanding but a fraction of what she heard), meanwhile pursuing her zookeeping tasks and supervising the children as they rode about the dome astride the tortoises like sheiks on camels.

Gradually it dawned on her that the master of Down House was no less renowned than Professor Lyell, thanks largely to his book chronicling his journey around the world. When Chloe asked Mr. Darwin if she might peruse
The Voyage of the Beagle
, he lent her a copy of the third edition. Every night, upon retiring to her little room, she read another chapter. Having scant interest in coral reefs, barrier beaches, silicified trees, sea slugs, cuttlefish, or fossil quadrupeds, she skipped the sections treating of these subjects, savoring instead the scenes in which Mr. Darwin held center stage. In his youth he'd been quite the adventurer, galloping with gauchos across the Pampas, hacking his way through a Patagonian jungle seething with hostile Indians, and traversing the Andes on a mule. He'd survived a volcano in Chile, an earthquake in Concepción, and the mountainous seas off Cape Horn, which had nearly capsized his ship.

But the most striking passages in
The Voyage of the Beagle
were the author's fiery denunciations of chattel slavery, an institution Chloe herself had come to detest whilst appearing as the Southern belle Pansy Winslow in
Lanterns on the Levee
. “On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil,” Mr. Darwin wrote in the final chapter. “I thank God I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings when, passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured.” And then, a paragraph later, “These deeds are done by men who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that His will be done on Earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”

The sacred imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount versus the sordid institution of the Christian slave trade: so it appeared that Chloe's employer, like she herself, was attuned to irony—a coincidence she planned to exploit to her father's advantage. Here we are, sir, the most civilized nation on Earth, sending innocent folk to abominable workhouses, as if they'd deliberately arranged to be poor. One might as well imprison a malaria victim for having the audacity to run a fever. Do you not agree?

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, whilst 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 titled
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 coastlines, 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.