This Thing Of Darkness (25 page)

‘Your father may well have a point,’ conceded FitzRoy gravely, ‘but I’m sure he would be the first to stress the importance of practical knowledge as well.’ He opened a desk drawer, took out a copy of
The Young Sea Officer’s Sheet Anchor
by Darcy Lever, and passed it to the boy. ‘Now, Mr Musters. If you can learn the entire contents of this book, by rote, by the time the
Beagle
sails in October - and no slacking, for I shall test you on it - then I may just have a place for you as a volunteer. You will need to bring your own south-wester, two pairs of canvas trousers, two flannel shirts, a blanket, a straw mattress — ’

‘A donkey’s breakfast, sir.’

A donkey’s breakfast indeed. One pair of shoes - without nails - a panikin, a spoon and, most important of all, your own knife.’

‘A sailor without a knife is like a woman without a tongue, sir.’

‘You certainly know a fair amount about seamanship for one who has never sailed, Mr Musters,’ conceded FitzRoy, giving silent thanks that the boy’s father had not taught his son the full unexpurgated version of the quip. ‘Your salary will be ten shillings a month. I look forward to seeing you at Devonport in October, Mr Musters.’

‘The pleasure is all mine, sir.’

The interview over, FitzRoy stood up and formally shook the boy’s hand.

‘You will take care of him, won’t you?’ breathed Musters’s mother.

‘As if he were my own son, madam. There will be another volunteer aboard - my new clerk, Edward Hellyer, who is an altogether ... quieter boy, who writes a good hand, so Charles will not go short of company his own age. I am sure they will get on famously. Rest assured, madam, I will do everything in my power to ensure your son’s safe return.’

FitzRoy ushered Mrs Musters and Charles into the corridor, where he was surprised to find a large, bleary-eyed, unshorn youth in a chair, surrounded by vast piles of luggage, his huge, knitted brows buried deep in a copy of the
Edinburgh Review
. As the Musterses bade him farewell, the youth looked up.

‘Captain FitzRoy?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m so sorry I am late. I came as soon as I could. I caught the Wonder - the lightning coach from Shrewsbury. It makes the journey up to London overnight, non-stop. It’s remarkable - they sound a bugle, and the turnpike opens up, and you thunder straight through like a mail coach.’

‘Remarkable,’ assented FitzRoy. ‘But there is not the least occasion for any apology.’

The youth rose to his feet, revealing the crumpled wreckage of a gentleman’s woollen country suit, which contrasted sharply with FitzRoy’s own immaculate buckskin tights. The stranger was extremely tall — at least six feet in height, thickset and shambling, with long arms, a pleasant round face and friendly grey eyes. His bulbous unsightly nose was squashed against his face like that of a farmer recently defeated in a tavern brawl. All in all, it struck FitzRoy that there was something vaguely simian about the young man’s appearance.

‘Please excuse my apparel. I have come directly from the inn by hackney coach. I have not slept at all.’

‘I beg you won’t mention it,’ murmured FitzRoy.

‘I hope I am not too late. Did you receive a copy of my letter?’

‘It seems not,’ advanced FitzRoy, cautiously, now utterly bewildered as to the stranger’s identity.

‘Thank goodness for that. You must disregard it if you do. Everything has changed. I say, would you mind awfully helping me move my bags into your office?’

FitzRoy, who felt in no position to refuse such an urgent request, complied politely.

‘I believe I have brought everything I need. A hand-magnifier, a portable dissecting microscope, equipment for blow-pipe analysis, a contact goniometer for measuring the angles of crystals — that’s bound to be useful — ’

‘Bound to be,’ acknowledged FitzRoy.

‘- a magnet, beeswax, several jars with cork lids, preserving-papers for specimens, a clinometer, dinner drawers and shirt - do you dress for dinner? - thick worsted stockings, several shirts — I’ve had them all marked “Darwin” — a cotton nightcap — ’

The stranger broke off, for FitzRoy had begun to laugh.

‘I’m sorry, is my inventory at fault? I did my best to conceive of everything that might be needed, but what with the shortage of time ...’

‘My dear sir, you must forgive me. My manners are atrocious. But I do believe you have omitted to tell me your name. Although I must thank your shirts for furnishing me with a clue.’

‘By the Lord Harry, what a buffoon I am! I am Charles Darwin,’ explained the stranger, as if that settled the matter.

‘Charles Darwin,’ repeated FitzRoy blankly.

‘I am the naturalist invited on your voyage by Professor Henslow.’

‘Ah!’ FitzRoy exhaled, beginning to understand. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Darwin. Please forgive my inexcusable confusion. I did enquire of the hydrographer, Captain Beaufort, some weeks back, as to finding me a naturalist and companion for this voyage, but I had heard nothing by return. In the meantime I have also pursued other avenues. I fear I must own’ - here FitzRoy improvised hastily - ‘that the position is already taken, by a Mr Chester. Do you know Harry Chester?’

‘No,’ said Darwin bleakly, his face a picture of misery.

‘He is the son of Sir Robert Chester. He works in the Privy Council office.’ It was true that FitzRoy had offered the post to Harry Chester, who, fearing for his life, had turned him down flat inside five minutes. But now that he had lied about Chester’s acceptance, FitzRoy began to feel like a thorough scoundrel.

‘I suppose I had better leave, then.’ The young man addressed the remark unhappily to his own oversized knees.

‘No, wait. Please tell me about yourself. Who knows? Perhaps Mr Chester will change his mind. You are a botanist? A stratigrapher?’

‘I do a little in that way. I am a parson. A parson-to-be, at any rate. That is to say, I am a student. I am doing an ordinary arts degree, preparatory to a career in orders. But I am fascinated by all branches of natural philosophy. I always have been. Even when I was at Mr Case’s school, aged eight, I used to fish for newts in the quarry pool. And I collected pebbles - I wanted to know about each and every stone in front of the hall door. My nickname at Shrewsbury School was Gas. My brother Erasmus and I had our own laboratory. It was in an old scullery in the garden. We used to determine the composition of commonplace substances, coins and so forth, by producing calxes — you know, oxides. And we used to buy compounds and purify them into their constituent elements. We naively thought we might isolate a new element of our own. We had an argand lamp for heating the chemicals, an industrial thermometer from my uncle Jos, and a goniometer — the same one that’s in my bag.’ The young man’s enthusiasm, which had nostalgically begun to pick up speed, came to an abrupt halt at the thought of all the useless equipment gathered about his feet.

‘We used to heat everything over an open flame,’ Darwin went on, aimlessly filling the silence in the room. ‘More often than not the substances exploded.’

‘Is that how you came by the scar on your hand?’

‘Oh, no, that was done by my sister Caroline when I was but a few months old. I was on her lap, and she was cutting an orange for me, when a cow ran by the window, which made me jump, and the knife went into my hand. I remember it vividly.’

‘If it happened to you as a baby, then surely you have been told what happened since and have visualized the incident in your mind.’

‘Oh no, because I clearly remember which way the cow ran, and that would not have been told me subsequently.’

For the first time, FitzRoy sat up and took notice. Something in that one act of analysis told him that here was a mind worthy of further investigation, however unpromising the state of the individual that housed it.

‘How are you on stratigraphy, Mr Darwin? For I fear there is not much call for a chemist on a naval survey vessel.’

‘Oh, but we must now call it geology, Captain FitzRoy. I am fascinated about it. After hunting, it is my second love. I have recently returned from surveying the Llangollen area with Professor Sedgwick - the professor of geology at Cambridge University. He is a marvellous man, sir - a visionary, in my notion. He says that our knowledge of the structure of the earth is much like what an old hen would know of a hundred-acre field, were she scratching in one corner of it. But he says that were we to expand our knowledge sufficiently, we might arrive at the all-embracing hypothesis that would explain the earth’s history - the scientific truths that would finally reveal God’s intention.’

‘I must say, I find myself in complete agreement with your Professor Sedgwick. Not that I am much in the way of geology. Does he have anything to say about the flood?’

‘Absolutely. He believes that the investigations of geology can prove that the deluge left traces in diluvial detritus, spread out over all the strata of the world.’

‘Proof of the sacred record, in the strata of the rocks?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Tell me, have you read Buckland’s
Reliquiae Diluvianae?’
FitzRoy’s enthusiasm was all fired up now.

‘About Kirkdale Cave?’

‘The very same - hyena and tiger bones, elephant, rhino, hippo and mastodon remains, all in the same North Yorkshire cave. Proof that such beasts once lived and breathed here in Britain. Beasts that must have drowned in the great Biblical deluge.’

‘I have been to Whitby to see the incredible fossils exposed by the alum mining there. Have you read William Smith? Professor Sedgwick calls him the father of English geology. He was surveying the digging of canals when he realized that red marl was always to be found over coal deposits. As the strata were angled upwards to the east, one only had to find red marl at the surface, then look to the east to find coal. Such a simple observation, but brilliant nonetheless.’

‘Mr Darwin, I often feel there is an underlying simplicity to God’s plan that continues to elude us all.’

‘But our understanding of it changes every day. Those who pause even for a moment are liable to be swept away by the waters of progress.’

‘We are making intellectual progress indeed, but is there such a thing as stratigraphic — I mean, geological progress? I have been reading Lyell’s
Principles of Geology Volume One
. Lyell himself has asked me to send him a report from South America. He believes that geological changes are not progressive but random.’

‘How can that be? Surely all God’s works could be said to advance mankind and the world we live in. Hence the development of modern man from his primitive ancestors.’

‘Lyell believes that the idea of geological progress plays into the hands of the transmutationists. That to allow for progress in nature allows for the profane possibility that beasts might gradually have been transmuted into men.’

Ah. Always an awkward subject in my family, Captain FitzRoy.’

‘But of course!’ replied FitzRoy, thunderstruck at his own slowwittedness. ‘You must be related to Erasmus Darwin, the transmutationist poet.’

‘He was my grandfather. A remarkable man, too, in many ways. But rest assured - I have not the least doubt of the strict and literal truth of every word in the scriptures. Otherwise, how could I lead men to heaven in later life?’

‘I am glad to hear it, Mr Darwin. Very glad indeed. Here - I shall make you a present of Lyell.’

He handed his copy of Lyell’s book across to Darwin, who leafed through the first few pages. The volume, Darwin observed, had been inscribed by its author. ‘But, Captain FitzRoy, I cannot possibly accept this. It is personally dedicated.’

‘On the contrary, sir, it is my great privilege to make you a present of it. In due course I beg to make you known to the author himself.’

‘You are too kind, sir - too kind.’

‘But tell me, Mr Darwin, why a country parsonage for such an enquiring mind?’

‘Oh, I was all set to be a physician, sir, like my father. I studied medicine at Edinburgh University but I am afraid I did not come up to the scratch. I was too squeamish. I saw the amputation of a child’s leg as part of my studies. It was a very bad operation - the poor thing was screaming fit to burst and lost a sight of blood. So I quitted, and transferred to marine biology under Professor Grant. We collected invertebrates together in Leith harbour. And I read up for natural history under Jameson - zoology, botany, palaeontology, mineralogy and geology. When my father found out he was furious, and withdrew me from the university. Although I have since wondered whether he was not simply worried that I might fall into the clutches of Burke and Hare.’

FitzRoy chuckled.

Darwin went on, in full flow now: ‘Jameson was a quite dreadful speaker, but I think you will be in accord with the principles governing his philosophy, as I was. He believes that the very aim of science is to prove God’s natural law. To obtain a detailed view of the animal creation, which affords striking proofs and illustrations of the wisdom and power of its author. He believes that nature is governed by laws laid down by God, laws that are difficult to discern or capture in mathematical terms, but to understand which is the highest aim of all natural philosophy.’

‘But that is one of the very purposes of my voyage, Mr Darwin, to advance such knowledge as best we are able! But, tell me, what did you do when you left Edinburgh?’

‘My father entered me for Christ’s College, Cambridge, to train as a priest. But theology is a broad church, Captain FitzRoy! I studied Paley’s natural theology. Do you know of William Paley? He believed that the Creator has designed the universe as a watchmaker would fashion a watch. I must say, sir, I found his logic irresistible. The rest of the time I spent hunting, or collecting beetles with my cousin Fox. We discovered several new species in the fields outside Cambridge. They are all in Stephens’s
Illustrations of British Insects
. I tell you, sir, no poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing the magic words “Captured by C. Darwin Esquire”. On one day, I found three new species under the same piece of bark. I put one in each hand and popped the third into my mouth. Alas, it ejected some intensely acid fluid that burnt my tongue. So I was forced to spit out the beetle and all three were lost.’