The Darwin Conspiracy (8 page)

He had called ahead for an appointment. The archivist said she’d be 
“delighted” to meet him—though her tone belied her words—and she 
remarked pointedly that she found his request “intriguingly spontaneous.” He ignored the sarcasm and said he’d be there “right away,” 
using the American expression, which forced her hand.

Walking there, he was pursued by memories of Cal. Years ago Cal had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he first fell in love with science. Hugh, just kicked out of Andover, was spending a year in Paris and he often jumped on the ferry for a quick visit to England. They’d set a time and place to meet—Piccadilly, the Tower, the pub forty paces from 10 Downing—and they’d surprise each other by arriving incognito, back turned, collar up. (Once Cal came disguised in a ridiculous mop wig.) They’d go carousing through London and then take the late train to Oxford and Hugh would crash on a couch in Cal’s room.

There was something liberating about being abroad—two New World vagabonds traipsing around Europe’s haunts, trading confidences (they could somehow talk more openly, more honestly so far from home). The four-year age difference melted away. Hugh remembered it as a time of confidence and endless possibilities. He did not dare compete for girls, convinced that Cal was irresistible, and he took solace in contrasts: his brother was the serious one and he was the wit, his brother the responsible one and he the rebel. He smoked Gauloises, letting the cigarettes dangle from his lip, spoke fluent French, wore a black turtleneck, and carried a paperback of
War and Peace
in his backpack.

And then Cal had met Bridget, who was backpacking with a friend.

“I want you to meet her. We’re coming over to Paris. A whole week— 
nothing to do but drink wine, hang around museums, and pretend I love
French poetry.” And what a week it had been! The obligatory baguette and
cheese on the Quai Voltaire. Marie Antoinette’s peasant cottage at Versailles.

Getting lost in the forest at Fontainebleau. Touring the catacombs, even the
sewers. For three days he escorted Bridget’s friend Ellen, but thankfully she
left. Then the three of them were inseparable. On the final day Cal left them
alone to get drunk at an Algerian bar but really, as he put it, “ ’cause it’s
time you two get to know each other.” No flirting—a novel sensation. He liked
her immediately, maybe loved her, because she loved Cal and Cal loved her.

How odd—feeling so comfortable, so at ease, so included. A big sister to go
along with the big brother. A trinity. There was nothing the three of them
couldn’t do.

Where had all that piss and vinegar gone? Had it really disappeared in a single summer afternoon?

The receptionist, inside a glass cubicle in the front hall, directed him past a winding banister to the waiting area, a tiny room under a glass cupola. He rose to greet the archivist, a young woman in tweeds.

“Hello,” she said brightly.

“Hello, I’m glad you . . .” He broke off—his words were being splintered, odd echoes bounced around the room. Above him was a hanging disk that refracted his voice. She smiled.

“That’s our little surprise,” she said.

She apologized, said the house was in the throes of moving, and as she led him up a winding staircase, they stepped around stacks of card-board boxes. They passed a bust of Byron, under an array of portraits in heavy dark colors with thick gold frames. Hugh read the names: Osbert Lancaster, Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman. There were half a dozen John Murrays.

“That was Darwin’s,” she said, casting her eyes at a portrait of John Murray III looking out from behind a writing desk with a confident gaze.

“He took over in 1843 and prodded the firm towards science, which was his prime interest. He published Darwin, Lyell, David Livingstone, and of course the famous travel handbooks. They were the first of their kind and very popular. They kept the wolf from the door.”

They passed through a rear drawing room decorated in thick gold wallpaper—from Japan, 1870, she said—and entered an office that was cluttered with boxes and files. She explained that the publishing house had been purchased by a larger company and was moving to a corporate headquarters.

“I see the wolf was patient,” said Hugh.

She didn’t smile. Hugh produced the letter from Simons, which she read twice.

“Well,” she pronounced finally. “All of our important Darwin papers are locked away in a secret archive, which will remain with us. We have a few boxes of unimportant material in a storeroom here, which you are welcome to peruse, but I doubt you will find anything of interest. It is commercial in nature, bills and accounts and such.”

Hugh recalled Darwin’s obsessive bookkeeping. One year when he was too ill to jot down the precious sums of money coming in and 
money spent he permitted his wife, Emma, to take over the ledgers; a 
£7 discrepancy cured him of that forever.

The archivist informed him that he was not allowed to search directly through the cartons of material. Instead, she led him to the main drawing room where, she explained, he would be observed as he pursued his research. The ornate chamber was lined with glass-encased books and on the higher reaches portraits covered every bit of wall space. He recognized the French windows he had seen from below.

She offered him a seat at a round felt-covered table set upon a Persian carpet. A box was brought to him and placed beside his chair. She cautioned him to use pencil only in taking notes and said an observer would soon be there to sit at the desk near the window. She lingered for a moment and seemed to have something on her mind. Perhaps, he thought, he was not grateful enough.

“I appreciate that you’ve allowed me to do this.”

“Oh, don’t mention it. That’s what we do. We take care of our authors even after death.” She paused a beat, then added: “You realize this room has remained unchanged for nearly two hundred years. And you are in good company. Southey, Crabbe, Moore, Washington Irving, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Madame de Staël. Over there”—she gestured to the center window—“Sir Walter Scott was introduced to Lord Byron in 1815. And over here”—she nodded toward a fireplace with a marble mantelpiece—“Lord Byron’s memoirs were burned after his death. It was thought best for all concerned. Especially Lady Byron.”

That was it: he had not been sufficiently impressed with the surroundings.

She left Hugh alone. He looked around the room, taking it all in, and then another woman entered and sat primly at a desk near the window, glancing over from time to time as he opened the box and went through the material.

The archivist was right: there seemed to be nothing much of interest.

There were business files and account books—bills of sale, royalty statements, translation agreements, account ledgers, and the like. Hugh’s interest began to flag.

For an hour, he sifted through the material. Then he picked up an account book and was confronted with long columns of numbers, neat and small in black ink—itemized expenses. He skipped ahead, holding
5 3

the book by the spine and flipping the pages with his thumb. Soon the columns disappeared, blank pages flew by and then—suddenly, to his amazement—they came alive with writing. A fine script moved quickly across the pages. It was as if a movie had burst onto a white screen.

He looked at the pages more closely. The writing was old; it was in a girlish hand but the penmanship was easy to read and elegant. It was an ocean of script. The
a
’s and
o
’s and
e
’s crested forward gracefully, like waves headed for shore, the
b
’s and
l
’s and
t
’s tall and slanting, like sails.

The first entry began with a date.

4 January 1865

Papa gave this book to me for the New Year to keep my accounts, a duty to be
faithfully discharged. I shall record my expenditures (which are pitifully meagre) in columns and subtract as I proceed until I attain the magical tally of
nought, at which time he will replenish my monthly sum. But this little book
shall serve an additional purpose, one that is secret. I shall use it as a journal, setting down my most personal thoughts and observations when I deem
them sufficiently interesting, and I shall pray it does not fall into the wrong
hands, for that might prove an embarrassment.

For I have many thoughts of a personal nature and no one to relate them
to—certainly not to sweet Mamma, who cannot bear to think ill of anyone, nor
to Etty, for though my sister is nearly four years older, she is not, to my thinking, four years wiser. I shall consign this personal journal to the rear of this
account book and thus disguise it. My expectation is that it will remain at the
bottom of my writing-desk unread by anyone other than myself. Deception,
says Papa, is Nature’s art and we can all learn from it.

Ever since Papa became famous, we have had a veritable flood of visitors
to Down House, many of whom come from distant parts. I quite enjoy the
company, and not simply because they tend to be people of noteworthy distinction, modern thinkers and various scientists whose nature makes them peculiar specimens in their own right, but also because they provide a distraction,
which I sorely need.

On the morning of a visit, everyone leaps into action in order to put his
best face forward. We are like the army mobilising for the Crimea. Mamma
organises the household with quiet command. Mrs Davies heaves pots hither
 
and yon on the fire with great urgency and much yelling, so that soon aromas
of spiced lamb and baking potatoes fill the house all the way to the servants’ 
rooms. Parslow readies the wine in the butler’s pantry. The gardener, Comfort, harnesses the horses and drives the waggonette to Orpington to fetch the
guest or guests (since there are likely to be more than one).

Now that I am eighteen years of age, I am forced to wear one of my crinolines and endure the torture of tight lacing (twenty-four inches around the
waist—not an inch more). I find I can hardly move nor breathe, I who love
nothing better than to run unfettered in the fields and hide in the woods
and clay-pits. Etty is permitted to forgo the corset owing to her delicate
constitution.

In short, all are busily occupied, with the exception of poor Papa who is
usually confined to bed with stomach ailments in anticipation of the socialising to which he must needs submit himself.

The bustle provides the impression, if only for the afternoon, that the Darwins are a normal and contented family. In some ways, we most certainly are,
though at times I perceive a strangeness beneath the gaiety and manners.

What it is that is amiss I do not know. But an astute observer sitting in our
midst at the grand table might notice a forced quality to the laughter and,
were he as perspicacious as some of our modern novelists from Mudie’s
Library like Mrs Gatskell or Mr Trollope, he might be able to detect the reasons for it. We are not as we present ourselves to the unknowing outsiders.

Indeed, I sometimes feel that our attempts at hospitality and gaiety are mere
play-acting.

6 January 1865

Papa, as always, is at the centre of our household. I feel his moods have
grown increasingly worse in the six years since the publication of
Origin.
He
now retreats to his study for hours on end, but not in the old way which I recollect so fondly. Then he would immerse himself in his study of barnacles or
some such, scooting around contentedly in his wheeled chair, emerging every
so often for a pinch of black snuff from the jar in the hall, looking up with
curiosity when one of us children burst in upon him to ask for a foot-rule or a 
pin and never taking umbrage at the interruption. Now, he hides himself
away for hours on end, almost as if he did not want to be in our company,
and try as I might, I cannot fathom the reason for his ill humour.

Three days ago, in search of a sticking-plaster, I chanced to open the door
and came upon him sitting in his black leather horse-hair chair, so lost in
gloomy thought that when I spoke, he started like a deer. He rose up and
demanded to know why I was ‘stealthily creeping up’ on him so that he could
not have ‘a moment’s peace’. He thundered on in that vein so long that even
when I closed the door, his voice could be heard throughout the hall, with the
result that Camilla broke off her German lessons with Horace to come to the
top of the staircase and peer down with evident concern.

Recently he directed Parslow to attach a small round mirror to the window-casement so that by positioning himself in his chair he could obtain a view of
the front step. He told us that in that way he could catch sight of the postman,
but I doubt the explanation. I believe that the arrangement enables him to
examine unseen any caller, the easier to support the pretence that he is not at
home. My concern is that it is not simply the desire to avoid interruption that
impels him to this course but rather something more profound and disquieting.

Nor has Papa’s health shown any improvement. Quite the contrary, it has
worsened noticeably in recent times. He now retches two or three times a day
and often complains of stomach problems, including wind, which is so odoriferous he refuses to travel. In addition to dyspepsia, he is subject to dizziness,
fainting-spells and headaches. On some days he breaks out in eczema. Poor
Mamma has become a veritable Florence Nightingale, sacrificing herself at
all hours to bring him tea and rub his back and read aloud to soothe his
nerves and distract him from his various ailments. He has had constructed a
sort of water-closet in his study, a basin set inside a platform in the floor, hidden behind a half-wall and curtain, no more than ten feet from his corner of
precious books and tiny drawers. It is for emergencies; in this way, he is able
to lunge up from his chair, thrusting his writing-board to one side, and run to
vomit. At the sound, which is truly horrible, the servants gather nervously in
the hall, looking at one another, and only Parslow is allowed to enter to offer
aid. Sometimes he has to actually lift Papa, limp and pale and dripping with
perspiration, and carry him upstairs to his room.