The Darwin Conspiracy Origins of a Scientific Crime ROY DAVIES 2008 Contents Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Introduction xv The Story 1 Windfall 1 2 The man who stretched time 5 3 Formation of a naturalist 10 4 Emperor’s clothes 19 5 The chemist from Tooting 23 6 The sting 33 7 New kid with a net 39 8 A land bridge too far 51 9 New law from Sarawak 57 10 Silence gentlemen, please 64 11 Unwelcome discovery 66 12 Warning shots 70 13 Darwin without a compass 74 14 Wallace and divergence 78 15 A black box in Cambridge 85 16 Crossroads 88 17 Out of the blue 93 18 Changing course 98 19 Most unlucky man 100 20 The collector’s life 102 21 Land bridges connect 106 22 Enter a sceptic 113 23 An insurance policy 123 24 Evolution solved 129 25 Animal trails 135 26 Wallace’s first letter 139 27 A second letter 141 28 The third letter 145 29 Checkmate 149 30 End of a conspiracy 156 31 Aftermath 161 The Background Cast of characters 167 Glossary 170 Appendices and References Appendix 1: Darwin and Wallace: timeline of ideas, 1831–1862 173 Appendix 2: Southampton – Malay Archipelago Shipping Schedule 1857–1858 176 Appendix 3: Route map of mail steamers in the Dutch East Indies in the late 1850s 178 Appendix 4: On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type 179 Notes and sources Notes 189 Bibliography 195 Index 201 Preface DURING the 1980s, as Editor of the BBC history series Timewatch,I commissioned a documentary idea about Charles Darwin which had been brought to me by one of my producers. The film portrayed Darwin as a nervous man who concealed the secret of how species originate for more than twenty years, until he was forced to publish when he realised someone else might get there before him. The programme was called The Devil’s Chaplain. It was well made with high production values and reflected well on everyone involved. In 1996, having left the BBC, I was approached by an independent television producer who was convinced that I had told the wrong story: that there was a story not even hinted at in the Timewatch programme. Today, having researched the Darwin record for myself and having been utterly convinced by what I have learned, I believe that she was absolutely right and that the original programme (which went out under my name) left a great deal of new information about Darwin unmentioned. If I had known then what I know now, The Devil’s Chaplain would never have been made. What you are about to read is the story leading up to the discovery of the origin of species, which I would eagerly have transmitted in its place. Roy Davies London February 2008 Acknowledgments MY DEBT to Paul Hannon is not easily quantifiable – for his enthusiasm, generosity and his determination in the pursuit of evidence; also to Dilys Allam, then at the publishers Taylor & Francis, for her belief, commit- ment and energy at a crucial time; George Beccalonni for honest appraisal, constant interest and a shared belief in the importance and genius of Alfred Russel Wallace; Jim Moore for excellent advice offered despite obvious misgivings; Andrew Berry for recognising a gap in Darwin studies and for offering the encouragement and personal introduction which gave me the confidence to complete the work; Janet Browne for making time in a hectic relocation between London and Harvard to talk to me about ideas, Wallace and Edward Forbes; Harry Dean for his open- mindedness in changing from initial sceptic to enthusiast and for his continuing encouragement and advice throughout; Femme Gaastra whose knowledge and expertise has illuminated with absolute certainty the shipping schedules between the Malay Archipelago and England in the mid-nineteenth century; Matthew Davies and Eugene Weber whose comments and suggestions helped in so many ways; Elin Rhys of the Welsh television company Teledu Telesgop who with a mixture of encouragement, challenge and humour sustained the development of this book in the dark days when many were absorbed by the pitch but so few felt the need to make it visual; and finally my editor Rowan Davies who turned a difficult concept into an infinitely more accessible manuscript. I wish also to recognise the help given me by the late Colin Paterson of the Natural History Museum in London who was prepared to listen when I needed it most, who read the earliest outline without hesitation though we had never previously met, and who liberated Dov Ospovat’s book from the Museum’s bookshop as he passed it a few moments before our first meeting, and to John Langdon Brooks, who also died during the research stage of this book, who criticised and helped after reading my initial attempts at a summary of this story and who gently warned of the obstacles I was likely to face further down the road. Others have been continually generous with their time, help and advice especially Gina Douglas and her colleague Lynda Brooks at the xiv The Darwin Conspiracy library of the Linnean Society and members of staff of the Zoological Library of the Natural History Museum. I am also indebted to the Cambridge University Press for permission to publish extracts from The Correspondence of Charles Darwin and to the Syndics of Cambridge University Library for their own permission to use extracts from their archive and for their timely decision to make Darwin’s correspondence accessible online. The Linnean Society generously gave permission to publish extracts from the journals and notebooks of Alfred Russel Wallace as did the American Philosophical Society regarding Darwin’s letters to Sir Charles Lyell. Finally I would like to thank the many other publishers who allowed extracts from their authors’ books to be used as material evidence in the structuring of this story. Introduction IN THE mid-nineteenth century, Great Britain boasted two scientists who were to change forever the way mankind viewed the world. Despite their individual gifts, they were as unlike as any two men of ideas could possibly be. One was rich, privileged, highly educated and connected to important families in Victorian society; the other worked for a living, had no significant social connections and left school at the age of fourteen. The first, after years of hunting and shooting, became conventional and dutiful, and bore the weight of expectation willingly; the other, self- taught, was instinctive, radical, free-thinking, open and unbound by convention throughout his life. The older figure, following a long voyage of wonder in his young manhood, married, bred a large family, inherited substantial wealth and invested wisely, but afterwards rarely travelled far from his home in rural Kent in the southeast of England. The younger, who had no thoughts of marriage, roamed, often alone, the rainforests of the Amazon basin and modern Malaysia and Indonesia. One was brought up to believe in and respect the Christian Church (and even, at one time, to consider it as a career), while the other had no time for its dogma and paralysing power over the minds of men. Of one, Charles Darwin, you will most certainly have heard. Of the other, Alfred Russel Wallace, you may well have heard nothing. One hundred and fifty years ago, after exhausting feats of research, observation and analysis, both men were acknowledged by their peers to be considered joint discoverers of the theory of evolution. At that time, the stranglehold of religion on Victorian society was such that only brave or foolish people rejected its teaching and its authority. Along with everyone else, both men were expected to accept without question that everything in the world was the work of a knowing, ever-present, all-powerful God. The Church told people how to act, what to think, when to work and when to rest. The influence of the Church had not always been this great. In former times, philosophers, artists and wise men, from Ancient Greece to Renais- sance Europe, had pondered how the incredible variety of forms of life they saw around them might have been produced. Some came within xvi The Darwin Conspiracy touching distance of what we now know as the theory of evolution. However, although many argued for the fact of evolution, none could indicate exactly how it happened. The theory of natural selection has been defined as ‘a bias acting within a species which promotes the survival of some variants and not others thus making for a change within the species’.1 The statement is lucid and simple, but the solution to the essential question – how does that initial bias become so magnified that it can cause change? – eluded many of the greatest thinkers for more than two thousand years. Ideas of causal factors swung between the work of a Creator and nature’s inherent patterning. Empedocles, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine, Avicenna and Leonardo da Vinci had all offered their thoughts before Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), a Spanish Jesuit priest writing after the Moors had been banished from Spain, attempted to put an end to secular speculation and declared that every form of life was created by God, and remained unchanged until it became extinct. He also insisted that no living organism could mutate into another form. Suarez’s doctrine became the official policy for the Christian Church, and was a direct cause of the strict orthodoxy that was still in place at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the intervening centuries, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) all favoured natural causes for species change, before Carl Linnaeus (1707– 1778) insisted that species are created by God, and are forever fixed and unchanging.