The Red Notebook

In 1841, Charles Darwin, not yet five years home from his famous voyage aboard HMS Beagle, was a poorly man. His father was a highly respected doctor, so Darwin paid him a visit for a consultation. From his father’s house in Shrewsbury, he wrote to his friend Charles Lyell:

My health has improved a good deal, since I have been in the country, & I believe to a stranger’s eyes, I should look quite a strong man, but I find I am not up to any exertion, & I am constantly tiring myself by very trifling things.

So convinced was Darwin that the countryside was beneficial to his health that, the following year, he moved to Down House in the Kent countryside. He was to remain there for the rest of his life.

Darwin’s ill-health evidently left him with low expectations of his future ability to contribute to science. His letter to Lyell continues:

My Fathers [sic] scarcely seems to expect, that I shall become strong for some years—it has been a bitter mortification for me, to digest the conclusion, that the “race is for the strong”—& that I shall probably do little more, but must be content to admire the strides others make in Science— So it must be, but I shall just crawl on with my S. American work & be as easy as I can.—

Charles Darwin: surely the most modest and unassuming genius in the history of science.

One-hundred and forty-nine years ago today, if his own account of events is to be believed (which has been questioned by some), Charles Darwin received the biggest bombshell of his scientific career. Having delayed publishing his theory of evolution by means of natural selection for many years, he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was in Ternate on the Malayan Archipelago (modern day Indonesia), indicating that he was about to be scooped: in bed with a tropical fever, Wallace had independently come up with the theory of Natural Selection.

Wallace’s letter no longer survives (which is wonderful for conspiracy theorists), but we do still have the letter Darwin immediately wrote to his friend and confidante, Charles Lyell:

My dear Lyell

Some year or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I sh^d be forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briefly my views of “Natural Selection” depending on the Struggle for existence.— I never saw a more striking coincidence. if Wallace had my M.S.

The Guardian had a strangely written article about the archives of the Geological Society this week. For one month only, the society’s brand new online Lyell Collection is open to all and sundry, after which it will be locked away behind a paywall.

The collection contains the full text of the society’s journals and certain other papers going back to 1845. Of particular interest to us Darwin groupies are The Proceedings of the Annual General Meeting of 18th February, 1859 [PDF], which record the awarding of the society’s most prestigious prize, the Wollaston Medal, to Charles Darwin for his geological and barnacle work.

I know it costs money to run a website, and some of the material in the collection is still under copyright, but what a shame stuff like this isn’t available online permanently for free. All this stuff is already available for free in the better public libraries. What’s the worst thing that could happen if the collection was left permanently free online? More people might read it, find it easier to search, and actually cite articles from it (like I just did). I’d have thought a venerable scientific society would want to encourage that sort of thing.

Wake up, chaps, it’s the Twenty-First Century!

BBC Radio 4′s In Our Time last week was on the subject of Victorian Pessimism (a goddawful RealPlayer™ listen again facility is available on the site).

I must admit, I thought it was a pretty odd choice of subject, but the programme turned out to be extremely interesting. The consensus among the assembled experts was that the generally optimistic can do attitude of the early Victorians was gradually replaced by a far more pessimistic world view that was reflected in the poetry, literature and art of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. They made a convincing case.

And who was to blame for this new-found pessimism? That’s right, you’ve guessed it: the likes of Charles Darwin and his mate Sir Charles Lyell, for eroding people’s already crumbling faith in the scriptures, showing that mankind, rather than being at the centre of creation, really is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Definitely worth a listen, if you have a spare 40 minutes.

Bromley Times: Security review at historic house

An irreplaceable first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species will be kept under lock and key after its return to the scientist’s former home.

The national treasure was recovered by police in August, following its theft from Down House, Luxted Road, Downe, in 2004. However, it will not go back on display for at least six months while security at the English Heritage site is reviewed.

A spokesman said: “We will be changing the room around to increase security next year and we may exhibit it then.”

The book in question was presented by Charles Darwin to his great friend, Sir Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology was a constant source of inspiration to Darwin during the Beagle voyage. Although Lyell never fully accepted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection, he was a constant supporter of Darwin, and urged him to publish his theory. Lyell was one of the three great inspirational figures whose photographs hung on Darwin’s study wall at Down House.

The two great scientists are buried a couple of feet from each other in Westminster Abbey.

The man convicted of stealing Lyell’s first edition of Origin of Species, Amir Ladak, was caught thanks to fingerprints obtained from an attempted theft at Sotheby’s. Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, an early pioneer of fingerprint evidence, would have been delighted. Ladak’s sentence: 100 hours of community service and a £3,000.

I’d have thrown away the key.