IGMS Issue 15 (9 page)

BOOK: IGMS Issue 15
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The first edition of the
Origin of Species
, as it is now more commonly called, was published in November 1859. Darwin finished correcting the proofs of the book on 1 October, and on the following day he set out for the Yorkshire town of Ilkley, where he spent two months undertaking the "water cure" that was so popular during the Victorian era.

It appears to have done him little good, for in his extant correspondence we find him writing, "I have had a series of calamities: first a fall culminating in a sprained ankle, and then a badly swollen leg and face, followed by itching rash and a frightful succession of boils -- a dozen at once. I cannot now walk a step, owing to a hideous boil on my knee. We have been here six weeks, and I feel worse than when I came."

The newly discovered letter dates from soon after Darwin's arrival in Ilkley, prior to the aforementioned sequence of calamities -- which might almost be viewed as a Biblical judgement upon him: after his Fall, a Plague of Boils. The addressee, William Darwin Fox, was Darwin's second cousin and a lifelong friend; they studied theology together at Christ's College, Cambridge, and in 1859 Fox was Rector of Delamere, in Cheshire. Darwin himself originally intended to become a clergyman.

In the transcription below, the letter's spelling and punctuation have been regularised for reading convenience. Some text has been inferred where Darwin employs abbreviations, or where his handwriting approaches illegibility.

As to the provenance and authenticity of the letter, I am personally acquainted with the letter's owner, who wishes to remain anonymous. I trust her absolutely as a scholar and a lady; therefore I take the veracity of the letter on faith. However, I am informed that scientists are currently analysing the manuscript, and their conclusions will be announced soon. In the event of any doubts arising, readers may judge for themselves what to believe.

Ilkley Wells House, Otley Yorkshire

13 October 1859

My dear Fox,

I arrived at the Hydropathic Establishment last week, and your note has just reached me. I grieve to hear, or rather infer, that your condition has not improved. I hope you will come here if your duties permit. Dr. Smith, although a Homoeopathist, is otherwise sensible and very methodical in bad illness, even if he has the air of caring much for the Fee and little for the patient. There is a capitally efficient steward, and the House seems well managed.

It is a curious life here: we sit down 50 or 60 to our meals, and in the evening there is either singing or acting (which they do formidably), or cards et cetera. I get on very comfortably and idly -- the newspaper, a little novel-reading, the Baths and loitering kills the day in a very wholesome manner. Did you ever hear of the American game of Billiards? There are some splendid players here who often make breaks of 30 and 40. I shall miss the Billiard Table when I leave here.

I had wanted to forget my weariful book on Species for a while, but not long after I arrived, something happened which quite put my thoughts in a fluster.

Here at the Establishment we meet many people, fellow sufferers all, and I had been introduced to a Mrs. Danzig who stoically endures fearful attacks of dropsy. Her niece lives in one of the farms along the edge of the Moor, and last Friday the girl -- Annette -- arrived here and rather insisted on speaking with me. Her manner was shrill, and one hesitates to interrupt one's Billiards when feeling relaxed after purging, but I at last consented when I perceived she would not relent.

"Mr. Darwin, my aunt tells me that you are a most eminent naturalist. You have travelled all around the world and seen every creature that God has made."

She spoke the latter phrase -- "God has made" -- in the manner of a commonplace expression, rather than in the reverential tone that you, my old Fox, might use in a sermon. I am compelled to notice the particular ways in which people speak of Religion, as it so often affects how they comprehend my Theory. (Indeed, I find that my Theory affects how I comprehend Religion, as I shall relate.) The girl's comportment suggested that in reaching perhaps nineteen years of age, she had received only rudimentary education -- as is, alas, all too common among her class.

"I have indeed travelled far, Miss Annette," I said, "but I would not claim to have seen every creature that lives on the Earth, nor indeed in England."

"But you have books, don't you? You would know whether a creature was something extraordinary?"

I said, "I'm acquainted with the broad kinds of plants and animals that natural science has so far discovered. Do I understand that you have seen a rare creature?"

"I've not only seen it, I've captured it!"

Country folk are familiar with the wildlife of fields and woods. Since the girl lived on a farm, I puzzled to think what she might have captured that she would not recognise. Perhaps it had escaped from some private menagerie.

"What does it look like?" I asked.

"It looks like . . ." She paused inordinately, then just as I was about to speak, she blurted out, "I do not say it
is
, sir -- I only say what it looks like. But it looks like a fairy!"

I returned an equally long pause. I had not expected such an answer. At last I said, "In what way does it look like a fairy?"

"It has wings!" she exclaimed.

"Are you sure it isn't some sort of bird? Perhaps you are unaware that parrots can be trained to talk."

She shook her head, and muttered something that might almost have been an oath. "I can recognise a magpie from a mouse. It's not a bird at all. Be it ever so small, it has the face of man, except with a greenish cast."

On this, I naturally suspected some poor human wretch, perhaps with chlorosis and a hunched deformity that could be mistaken for wings.

"You would be better calling for a doctor."

The girl gave me such a look as I have not received for many a year. It took me back to our time at Cambridge -- my dear Fox, do you remember those days we chased after beetles! -- when the tutors frowned with desiccated contempt at our more otiose utterings. Yet here I was at 50, as old as a senior Don, being patronised by a girl the age of a student, looking at me as if I'd ludicrously confused the Homoousion and Homoiousion creeds.

"I live on a farm," she said. "I wouldn't call a doctor to the lambs or the swine, and I wouldn't call him to this. Neither would I call a veterinarian! I tell you, sir, the creature is unprecedented."

Clearly, nothing would do but that I examine it. "Can you bring it here, or must I travel?"

"It's in our barn, if you could come and look. 'Tisn't far -- just a couple of miles."

Ah, the thoughtlessness of youth! Speaking to someone old and grey and ill, she said that "a couple of miles" wasn't very far. Nevertheless, I thought I might manage it. I'd yet seen little of the Yorkshire countryside, and a short excursion might be pleasant and indeed restorative. Too, of course, I was curious to see the creature of which she spoke. We arranged that on the following day, Sunday morning, I would visit her farm and see whatever lay within.

That evening, I spoke to some of the staff at the House and asked about any local stories of fairies. I learned of a purported sighting at another hydropathic establishment: the White Wells spa, higher on the Moor. In 1820, before the bath houses were roofed over, the attendant (one William Butterfield) arrived early to open up the doors, but the key merely turned round and round in the lock. After forcing the door open, he found to his astonishment a group of fairies frolicking by the water. They were tiny figures, all dressed in green. When he surprised them, they disappeared over the wall and into the heather.

Natural science deals in specimens rather than anecdotes. I want a creature that you can give to a taxidermist and have stuffed. Yet the girl had promised to show me such a one, and if it did exist, then the earlier stories would imply that fairies had lived on the Moor for some time. Indeed, since such tales stretch as far back as human history -- as far back as revealed Religion -- then the fairy race must have lived for as long as Man.

But what
kind
of creature is a fairy? That night, after I retired to my room and blew out the candle, I shifted restlessly in my bed, unable to sleep for pondering the question.

My theory of natural selection requires that life proceeds by common descent. All creatures are related, however distantly. So any particular creature must possess living relatives, of some kind; and ancestral forms should be preserved as fossils. Any beast, however unprecedented to man's eyes, must fit somewhere within the Linnaean taxonomy.

If fairies exist as material creatures, what genus do they occupy? Where are their fossils? (The fossiliferous strata contain an imperfect sample of past organisms, yet surely we could hope for
one
example to be retained from the entire fairy lineage.) If the traditional description be correct -- like a small man with wings -- it is clear that fairies cannot fit anywhere within the existing genera of Mammalia. We could only accommodate them within Animalia by supposing an entirely separate line of descent, one which has left no close relatives, no intermediate forms, and no fossils. The evidence does not support it.

It would be simpler, therefore, to suppose that fairies were a separate creation. After all, why should we require all creatures to be related?

We indeed require it, for if we allow that
any
creature may be a separate creation, then we must allow the possibility to
all
creatures. How could I argue that a wolf must have descended from canid predecessors, if I cannot argue likewise for a fairy? Any opponent could simply say, "The wolf was independently created in its current form, just like a fairy." I would have no refutation for such a critique. Even those who accepted the Wolf might balk at the descent of Man from simpler progenitors, if given the excuse of the Fairy.

My hypothesis must explain all creatures, or it explains none. Everything, or nothing. The thought burned in my mind:
If this fairy truly exists, it will destroy my whole Theory.
I could sleep only briefly, and kept waking in turmoil. In my dreams, I walked restlessly in a huge library, with a green figure fluttering bat-like above me; and wherever it brushed the shelves, the books crumbled to dust.

If the creature should prove authentic, I would have to write to Murray and ask him to halt publication of
Origin
. All my work wasted, the labour of twenty years overthrown by a single specimen from a Yorkshire farmyard.

You may smile at my fears that a fairy could exist. Yet seeing such a specimen might be my punishment for the sin of pride. If I profess to know the Origin of Species, might not God rebuke my presumption by sending a creature that my Theory cannot explain?

I tried to comfort myself by reflecting that the creature would most probably be something commonplace, or at least explicable. I grew happier for a few moments, until I realised that I had fallen into a far worse cast of mind.

No true philosopher fears the evidence. Does any naturalist ever wish
not
to discover a rare specimen?

If I could authenticate a Fairy, that would be an achievement as great as the discovery of innumerable species in the Antipodes. The perplexity of folklore would be resolved. Our knowledge of Nature would still advance, albeit in another direction -- away from my cherished Theory.

And if the Fairies were established to be a separate race, then this would show the direct handiwork of the Lord. Our most eminent divines would speculate upon their spiritual status: they might even be considered as an Unfallen race, living in harmonious relations with nature, in contrast to Man. "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree . . . cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread . . ." Yet we see that Fairies do not plough nor reap; they are reported to dance far more than they labour.

The direct handiwork of the Lord, I wrote. No doubt many people -- including you, old Fox -- would find nothing surprising or untoward in that. It is a greater challenge for me. Over many years, and particularly as I became convinced that Man descended not from a recent Garden but from a much older lineage, I have grown to doubt the
visible
handiwork of God. And from there, it is but a short step to (as I hardly dare write) doubting God. I have not yet taken that step, but it is constantly in mind: a precipice upon which I stand, looking out into a vast void . . .

In writing this, I rely on your strictest confidence. I would never express such sentiments in public. Any merit in one's theories is easily overlooked if opponents can attack
ad hominem
on the grounds of unorthodox belief. I am hardly alone in such discretion. For instance, Lyell is firmly convinced that in his
Principles of Geology
, he has weakened faith in the Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise.

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