The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (17 page)

That was his public response, anyway. Wallace's private response was more revealing. On the same day as his letter to Hooker, October 6, he wrote to his mother, Mary Wallace, also back in Britain. He was bursting. He wanted to share with her his excitement at having just received personal communications from two of England's most respected naturalists. He told her something (not much) about the circumstances—an essay he'd sent to Mr. Darwin, which was seen and admired by Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, “who thought so highly of it that they immediately read it before the Linnean Society.” Actually,
they
hadn't read it but only caused it to be read; that detail got lost in the telling to Mrs. Wallace. Anyway, who cared. It
was
read. And imagine: Darwin, Hooker, Lyell. In case his mother didn't get the implications, Alfred added: “This assures me the acquaintance and assistance of these eminent men on my return home.” Look, Ma, he was saying proudly, I now have connections. And not only that
—chips
to play.

In his autobiography, almost fifty years later, long after Darwin and Lyell were gone, Wallace would tell this part of the story a little differently. With a discreet editing stroke, he deleted his own hardheaded youthful opportunism. Quoting (but misquoting) the letter to his mother, he let himself say: “This insures me the acquaintance of these eminent men on my return home.” By that time he had found and accepted his place, second place, in the pantheon of British evolutionary theorists. He hadn't had an easy life—no family money, no financial security, no institutional position, ever—but he was proud of his austere independence. That he had once coveted the “assistance,” not just the “acquaintance,” of powerful gentlemen was evidently discomfiting to recall.

31

In early May 1859, after just ten months of feverish work punctuated by short visits to the spa at Moor Park, Darwin finished a draft of his book. Chapter by chapter, it went to his private copyist to be made legible, and then to the printers in London. John Murray, whose publishing house had done Lyell's books and the successful second edition of Darwin's
Journal of Researches
, had agreed to publish it. Darwin began receiving proof sheets for correction at the end of the month and was appalled at how poorly his hasty prose read. The style was “incredibly bad, & most difficult to make clear & smooth.” He'd never claimed to be much of a writer.

He revised heavily on the proofs, an expensive step in terms of additional typesetting costs, for which he offered to pay from his own pocket. His proposed title was deadly dull:
An Abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties through Natural Selection
. That reflected his lingering embarrassment at the absence of scholarly citations and the abridged selection of evidence; without full credit to sources and a full panoply of supporting data, Darwin felt, the work shouldn't be considered—or labeled—anything
but
an abstract. Fortunately, Murray and Lyell persuaded him otherwise. Murray was in business for profit, after all, not to perform a money-losing public service, and
An Abstract of an Essay
on whatever, species origins or Chinese bordellos, just didn't sound robustly commercial. In late September, when Darwin and Fox traded letters full of middle-aged grumping, Darwin reported that his health had been bad again but at least the book work was nearly done. Only an index to add, and then some revisions. “So much for my abominable volume,” he wrote, “which has cost me so much labour that I almost hate it.”

On October 1, 1859, Darwin finished correcting the proofs. By his calculation the abominable volume had taken thirteen months and ten days of concerted writing effort, not counting time off for rest, travel, billiards, and vomiting. In mid-October he warned Hooker what to expect—that he'd gone to great lengths, positing species transmutation across the whole spectrum of living things because he could see “no possible means of drawing [a] line, & saying here you must stop.” This was a hint about his view of human origins. Although human evolution from other animals wasn't explicitly asserted in the book itself, it was provocatively suggested. Lyell had already read the proofs and seemed staggered by the implications, Darwin said, but had been helpful with criticisms and supportive overall. Lyell was a brick. Darwin hoped Hooker would give candid feedback in the same vein.

By now Darwin was getting some rest and hydropathy at another watery resort, Ilkley Wells, at the edge of a moor up in Yorkshire. The place offered billiard tables, like Moor Park, and a few notably good players who dazzled him with their skills at “the American game.” Some of them, he enthused to his son William, could make breaks of thirty or forty balls. The American game would have been one of several variants ancestral to what we call pool. And so, at this point, I suggest an imaginative pause to appreciate the tableau: Charles Darwin, having just completed the most consequential work of his life, seeking respite in the northern boondocks with a cue in his hand. He was known to smoke an occasional cigarette, for relaxation, in lieu of snuff, and maybe Ilkley Wells allowed that vice in the billiards room. Darwin takes a slow drag, holds it pensively, exhales. Squints through the smoke. Lays his smoldering cigarette fastidiously into an ashtray (certainly not on the edge of the table) and leans down. Crooks his index finger, sets his bridge. Six ball, gentlemen, he says; in the corner pocket. Tap…click…plop. “You cannot think how refreshing it is to idle away [a] whole day,” he told Hooker, “& hardly ever think in the least about my confounded Book, which half killed me.”

That confounded book was now called
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
The title wasn't elegant but at least John Murray had convinced him to drop the word “Abstract.” Optimistically, Murray ordered a first printing of 1,250 copies. The printer's bill for all those revisions on the proofs came to £72, a sizable chunk of cash, but Murray waived his right to deduct that from Darwin's royalties, correctly foreseeing that cordial relations with this author would be worth more in the long run. Although the writing process had been torturous to Darwin—an almost hysterical fit of work after so many years' delay—the blessings of forgetfulness came quickly and like a balm. He was still in Yorkshire when a first copy of the book reached him.

Holding it in his hands, he felt an irresistible flush of satisfaction, his private reward between the anguish of creation and the anguish that would come with the book's reception. He wrote immediately to Murray: “My dear Sir, I have received your kind note & the copy: I am
infinitely
pleased & proud at the appearance of my child.” Abominable or not, it was his offspring, and the pride of parenthood covers a multitude of misgivings. But Darwin had grounds for his satisfaction. Without yet knowing it for certain, without claiming it, without having enjoyed it, he had dashed off a magnificently potent book that would change the world.

On November 22, several days before its official publication date, Murray offered it to booksellers. Based on what little they had heard about the contents, and on Darwin's reputation, they snatched the book up, ordering 1,500 copies against the 1,111 copies (first printing minus promotional giveaways) that were available. This is the precise reality behind a loose statement sometimes made—that the first edition sold out on the first day. It more than sold out, yes, at the wholesale level. Trickling into the hands of individual readers took longer. Still, the trade sale was a very strong start. Emma sent the news in a note to William, at Cambridge, adding: “Your father says he shall never think small beer of himself again & that candidly he does think it very well written.” Murray promptly asked Darwin to get busy on a new edition, so they could reprint with some value added. Darwin got busy, making small corrections and revisions on the one copy he had in his hands.

November 22, 1859, was a Tuesday. It's an interesting day to consider, representing a nexus point between all the private turmoil that went into creating Darwin's book and all the public turmoil that has followed from it. As of that date, based on Murray's advance orders,
On the Origin of Species
was a commercial success, though few people had read it. Among those who had, reactions were mixed. A pre-publication review in one prominent journal, the
Athenaeum
, was caustically negative in a way that probably helped stimulate interest: “If a monkey has become a man—what may not a man become?” Never mind that nowhere in this work did Darwin say that monkeys had changed into men. He barely alluded to the subject of human origins. Oversimplification and scandal-mongering had begun even before the book hit the stores.

32

It's safe to say that
The Origin of Species
(as it became known after Darwin himself dropped the
On
from a later edition) is one of the most influential books ever written. What printed works surpass it in reach and impact? Maybe the Bible, the Qur'an, the
Mahabharata
, and a few other scriptural texts that have inspired millions of people to piety and bloodshed. What stands in the same category? Maybe
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
by Copernicus, maybe Newton's
Principia
, and maybe, if you count journal articles, the two papers of 1905 and 1916 in which Einstein described special and general relativity. Unlike those other great works of science, though,
The Origin
is a book written in plain everyday language and meant by its author to speak to any attentive reader. Some of its grammatical constructions are a bit sinuous in the Victorian style; much of its writing is clear and crisp. Darwin was inconsistent as a literary stylist, sometimes bad, sometimes good, but even when bad he wasn't esoteric. Occasionally he just tried to put too much into a single sentence, a run-on construction with syllogistic premises, qualifications, facts, stipulations, and conclusions all linked together by semicolons and dashes like a giant protein molecule folding back on itself. Once in a while he wrote something beautiful and brilliant. Mostly he was an amiable explainer and narrator presenting one of the more astonishing tales ever told.

Although
The Origin
is the founding text of evolutionary biology, you can get a Ph.D. in that field at many American universities, and probably at British ones too, without having read it. Such neglect of a seminal document is oddly shortsighted, given that evolutionary biology itself is a historical science, concerned with examining and understanding the past as well as the present. The study of evolution proceeds from observed facts and found data more than from controlled experimentation. It still relies on Darwin's ideas and Darwin's terminology—most notably, on the idea and term “natural selection”—but its professional courses of training generally don't require students to read Darwin. That's too bad, because reading Darwin can be fun, even thrilling, as well as instructive.

It isn't always. In the course of his working life as a naturalist (an “amateur” naturalist, in the sense that he never held a job of any sort, let alone a scientific appointment) and a freelance writer (who liked making money from his books, though he didn't need to), Darwin wrote his share of somniferous duds. The harder and longer he labored, it seems, the more likely he was to produce a big, boring tome, chockful of carefully gathered facts, judiciously framed questions, and arcane conclusions, all presented with relentless lack of economy or flow.
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication
, published in 1868, is no page-turner. Nor can I much recommend
The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species
, which came out in 1877. Some of his shorter books (they're not
very
short), such as
Insectivorous Plants
and
The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects
, contain nice samples of one of Darwin's most appealing literary modes—his close, gentle examination of quirky creatures embodying large biological themes. But are those books urgent and compelling? Are they lively, readable works overall? No. His very last book,
The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits
, is a pleasant little surprise, largely because it's so unpretentious and eccentric. His barnacle volumes can't be counted against him, since those were always intended for the reference of specialists. The
Journal of Researches
(or, under its modern title,
The Voyage of the Beagle
) is the most accessible of his books, a colorful outpouring of narrative and description in the voice of a curious, unassuming young man; but it doesn't carry his strengths as a mature, conceptualizing scientist. His autobiography was written as a private memoir, for the family, and never published during his lifetime.
The Descent of Man
is really two books smooshed into one, as its full title admits:
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
. The smooshing is far from seamless; there's a big, lumpy transition after the first seven chapters, right where
Descent
gives way to
Sex
. Humanity's descent from an animal lineage was one of Darwin's boldest ideas, true, but that book on the subject isn't one of his best efforts. Published in 1871, intended as a complement to
The Origin of Species
, it doesn't have the same sharp focus, inexorable momentum, and magisterial power. It sold well at the time, thanks to the notoriety of his ideas, but it doesn't reward attention nowadays as much as
The Origin
does.

Haste and anxiety seem to have been good for Darwin, at least as a writer, at least in the one crucial case. Alfred Wallace, by shocking him with the threat of preemption, forcing his hand, inadvertently did him a big favor. The quick-and-dirty “abstract” proved to be readable, popular, persuasive, and efficacious in a way that the big book on natural selection wouldn't have been. That big book remained unfinished by Darwin, and unpublished during his lifetime, partly because he had lost interest in its grand schema of encyclopedic exposition and partly because
The Origin
had rendered it unnecessary. He did salvage the first two chapters, converting them into his book on domestic variation. The rest of the long manuscript, comprising eight and a half chapters, didn't see daylight until 1973, when a scholar named R. C. Stauffer edited it for publication under the title
Charles Darwin's Natural Selection
. Although Stauffer's edition is useful as textual background, its main value lies in making
The Origin
look good by contrast. It shows how lucky Darwin was—and readers too—that Alfred Wallace barged in when he did.