Savage (38 page)

In the middle of the auditorium a man stood waving a Bible, imploring those present to believe the word of God. He was shouted down by those around him. The man was Robert FitzRoy.

*   *   *

The ghastly spectacle of the
Beagle
's former captain being heckled and hooted on the floor of an Oxford debating chamber discloses an unfortunate tale, for as Darwin's star rose so FitzRoy's had faded. Once destined for greatness, the brightest student of his year, his career had peaked with the circumnavigation of the globe. In the years since the voyage he had veered from disappointment to controversy, frustration and tragedy.

Five years at sea, with his liberal upbringing, had shaken Darwin's Christian faith to the roots, but FitzRoy's high Tory, Anglo-Catholic conservatism had led him to see the experience as an affirmation of the literal truth of the Bible. Over the years his inflexibility and intolerance had hardened, as did the frequency of his bouts of melancholia, the ‘blue evils', as he called them. In 1841 he was invited to stand for Parliament in a vacant seat in County Durham, but the election saw a dirty campaign during which he fell out with a fellow Tory candidate, whom he challenged to a duel. The scandal hit the press, the duel was botched, but the two men brawled away their dignity outside the United Services Club in the Mall.

FitzRoy was elected nevertheless, but remained an MP for only two years before he accepted the governorship of New Zealand. Here, he found himself between Scylla and Charybdis and, more importantly, popular with no one. There was trouble in the new colony over the issue of land for settlers and the rights of the native Maoris. FitzRoy's sympathies lay with the hard-pressed Maori peoples, but they were not looking for sympathy, they wanted solutions. The settlers were even more unhappy with their colonial chief, troubles broke out, minor rebellions erupted and, in 1845, he was removed from office. In the town of Nelson the departing governor's effigy was carried around the streets and burned by a triumphal mob.

In 1850 FitzRoy was elected a fellow of the Royal Society and in 1853, a year after his first wife Mary died, he was appointed meteorological statist at the Board of Trade. He invented a new barometer, which he issued with instructions to fishing ports all around the country, and went on to establish twenty-four weather stations from which information could be gathered and analysed. Using all the resources to hand, he systematised the collection of data on winds, pressures, temperatures and humidities, which he recorded on charts. FitzRoy became the father of weather forecasting and brought about a revolution in meteorology. There was much for him to be proud of, and a great debt is owed to him by modern meteorologists. But for him it was not enough. His moods were darkening. In 1857 he applied for the job of chief naval officer in the Board of Trade's maritime department, but found himself losing out to his former lieutenant on the
Beagle,
Bartholomew Sulivan. The publication of
Origin
two years later mortified him. Its atheistic theory of natural selection was abhorrent to him; that it had been written by his former cabin mate on the
Beagle,
a man he had chosen to take on board and for whom he was therefore responsible, horrified him. Amid the controversy over
Origin,
news arrived of the massacre at Wulaia and the possible culpability of his favourite Fuegian, Jemmy Button. It was hardly surprising that a debilitated FitzRoy succumbed to a growing despondency.

By 1865 his work on the weather was met with wounding shafts of criticism. FitzRoy was accused of being unscientific, and forecasting was damned as foolishness. Ill-health began to take its toll – FitzRoy's second wife wrote to a relative in April 1865 that he had been out of sorts for a good while and the ‘doctors unite in prescribing total rest, and entire absence from his office for a time. Leave has been given him, but his active mind and oversensitive conscience prevent him from profiting from this leave…'

On 30 April 1865 FitzRoy awoke at six in the morning and lay still beside his wife. At seven thirty the maid called them for breakfast. They lay there for another fifteen minutes before FitzRoy pulled back the blankets and walked to his dressing room. On his way he went to see his daughter Laura and kissed her cheek. In his dressing room he closed the door without locking it, took out a razor, held it up and then, in a deliberate arc, slit his throat. A little more than a year after Jemmy Button had died in a foreign-borne epidemic on a beach in Tierra del Fuego, Robert FitzRoy lay crumpled and lifeless on the floor.

*   *   *

Darwin was greatly saddened by the untimely demise of his old mentor. During the voyage, the two men had had their ups and downs, and even the occasional serious confrontation, but Darwin had recognised and respected FitzRoy's many admirable qualities and strengths. The time they had shared among the Fuegians had clearly influenced Darwin, which was evident from the opening paragraph of the
Origin:

When on board HMS
Beagle,
as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of the species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.

This was further confirmed in a letter of 1862 to the author Charles Kingsley, who had written to offer his support for the theory of natural selection. He also informed Darwin of a weekend he had spent with the Bishop of Oxford and the Duke of Argyll, during which
Origin
had been the main topic of conversation. Darwin's reply makes it clear that the unearthing of a common thread between himself and the Fuegians had been a far from easy discovery:

That is a grand and almost awful question on the genealogy of man to which you allude. It is not so awful and difficult to me, as it seems to be most, partly from familiarity and partly, I think, from having seen a good many Barbarians – I declare the thought, when I first saw in Tierra del Fuego a naked, painted, shivering hideous savage, that my ancestors must have been somewhat similar beings, was at that time as revolting to me, nay more revolting than my present belief that an incomparably more remote ancestor was a hairy beast. Monkeys have downright good hearts, at least sometimes, as I could show, if I had space. I have long attended to this subject, and have materials for a curious essay on Human expression, and a little on the relation in mind of a man to the lower animals. How I should be abused if I were to publish such an essay …

Revolting as it had been to him, Darwin had made the link between barbarity and civilisation; he had set personal feelings aside and followed the logic of his theory. Soon after the publication of the
Origin
he realised that, like it or not, he would have to place man in the picture and explain the lineage, the process and the context of humanity. The resulting work –
The Descent of Man
– drew widely on the memories and notes he had stored away about his time with Jemmy, York and Fuegia, and the experiences in Tierra del Fuego among their people. Published in 1871, the
Descent
's central tenet held that ‘man is descended from some less highly organised form' and was essentially the ‘monkey theory' writ large. In setting out his argument Darwin recalled many of the peoples he had met and conversed with as the
Beagle
had circumnavigated the globe. However, it was clear that the contrast between civilised England and the primitive Fuegians had had the greatest impact on him, not least because they were the first raw savages he encountered but also because on the ship he had become acquainted with Jemmy, York and Fuegia.

The Fuegians rank amongst the lowest barbarians; but I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three natives on board HMS
Beagle,
who had lived some years in England, and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties. If no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be shewn that there is no fundamental difference of this kind.

The Descent of Man
is dotted with references to the Fuegian Indians: how different subsistence patterns in eastern and western Tierra del Fuego influenced the stature of the various Fuegian peoples; the way they had perfected their stone and spear-throwing; their ability to live in harsh conditions without clothes. Darwin described Fuegian courtship rituals, how this people appeared to have no belief in God, but were superstitious, and that Jemmy Button had, with ‘justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no devil in his land'. Observing the Fuegians had brought home to Darwin that for civilisation to flourish it needed an understanding and an accumulation of property, settled homes and a tribal chief. In the conclusion to the book, Darwin refined the thoughts he had expressed to Kingsley nine years earlier:

there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind – such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land will not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs – as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Darwin had begun preparing for
The Descent of Man
as early as 1860 when he had sent a list of questions on Fuegian habits and expression to Thomas Bridges on Keppel Island. These had included such queries as

Do the Fuegians or Patagonians, or both, nod their heads vertically to express assent, and shake their heads horizontally to express dissent?

Do they blush? and at what sort of things? Is it chiefly or most commonly in relation to personal appearance, or in relation to women?

Do they express astonishment by widely open eyes, uplifted eyebrows and open mouth?

Do they evince anger or fear by same expression of countenance and actions as we do?

Bridges had responded with answers to most of the questions, but in 1867, when Darwin began to order his notes in preparation for drafting
The Descent of Man,
he found that he needed more information and wrote to his old colleague and friend Bartholomew Sulivan, who was still playing a leading role in the missionary society.

Your letter has interested me exceedingly all about S. America and the Fuegians. I never thought the latter cd have been civilized, but it appears that I shall be proved wrong.

I wish poor FitzRoy was alive to hear the result of his first attempt for the civilization of the Fuegians. Do you know Mr Stirling well enough to ask him to grant me a great favour? Namely to observe during a few months the expression of countenance under different conditions of any Fuegians, but especially of those who have not lived much in contact with Europeans, and to take the trouble to write me a letter on the subject.

It is clear that Darwin had retained an interest in the behaviour of the Fuegians, but his work on
The Descent of Man,
along with his friendship with Sulivan, rekindled a curiosity in their affairs that remained with him for the rest of his life. In 1867 he donated £5 to the general funds of the South American Missionary Society. There seems to have been no conflict in his mind about his being the advocate in chief of what many viewed as an atheistic doctrine and his association with the missionaries. Three years later, on 30 January 1870, he wrote to Sulivan: ‘The success of the Tierra del Fuego Mission is most wonderful, and charms me, as I had always prophesied utter failure. It is a grand success. I shall feel proud if your Committee think fit to elect me an honorary member of your society.'

When Darwin began work on
The Descent of Man
he had intended to write a chapter on the ways different animals and races express emotion, but as the project grew he realised that there was need for a separate book.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
was published in 1872 and incorporated the answers he had received from Bridges and Stirling. It did not stop him, however, firing off more inquiries. In 1873 he wrote to Stirling, through Sulivan, asking whether he felt that the process of civilising the natives harmed their health. His concern may have been prompted by long-standing qualms Darwin had about such work with the Fuegians. It may have been prompted by the deaths of Threeboys and Uroopa, or it may have been because in 1872 another former colleague from the
Beagle,
Arthur Mellersh, who had been mate on the second voyage, wrote to him: ‘Sulivan tells me there is a mission established in Tierra del Fuego, I hope it will succeed in preventing the poor people from being “improved” off the face of the earth.'

Stirling's answer to Darwin, again through Sulivan, was reassuring, though hardly convincing. Threeboys had died of Bright's disease, which was unknown among the Fuegians but which might have been caused by deficiencies in the food on the long voyages to Britain and back. Jemmy and Fuegia had not suffered any ill-health as a consequence of their three years in civilised company and York had been murdered. ‘The Bishop tells me that he does not think the Fuegians suffer in health through increased civilization. That if at all it was at first when their mode of life was changed; but they soon got accustomed to it, and seemed to enjoy as good health as others…'