Darwin's daughter Henrietta kept a diary for a few momentous weeks in 1871. This was the year in which Descent of Man, the most controversial of her father's books after Origin itself, appeared, a book which she had helped him write. The small lockable volume records her thoughts on attending an Anglican mission organised by one of her father's critics, her own inclination to thoughtful scepticism, and her intimate reflections on the consequences of her father’s theories for religious belief. This was also the year in which, within the space of three months, she met and married her husband, Richard Litchfield: the intensely personal and deeply reflective journal entries from July cover the period of their courtship.
On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher who had studied medicine in London and Paris in the early 1840s, visited Down to consult with Darwin about his ill health. In 1863 Chapman started to treat epilepsy with ice and developed a theory of ‘neuro-dynamic medicine’ according to which many diseases were treatable through applications of heat or cold to the spine over long periods.
Charles Darwin’s observations on the development of his children, began the research that culminated in his book The Expression of the emotions in man and animals, published in 1872, and his article ‘A biographical sketch of an infant’, published in Mind in 1877. As early as 1839 Darwin had begun to collect information on the behaviour of infants from his relatives with young families. However, it was Darwin’s personal experience of fatherhood that was central to his formulation of the questions he was to pursue regarding the nature of the expression of emotions. He closely observed the development of his first child, William Erasmus, the stages of his development suggesting to Darwin those expressions which are instinctive and those which are learned. This research was ultimately directed towards showing that the physiological expression of the emotions in humans was no different in kind from that exhibited by animals.
Darwin became increasingly involved in botanical experiments in the years after the publication of Origin. The building of a small hothouse - a heated greenhouse - early in 1863 greatly increased the range of plants that he could keep for scientific investigations, in particular tropical plants for his experiments into their sensitivity to touch. He was persuaded to build it - an expensive undertaking - by a neighbour's gardener who had been helping Darwin use his employer’s hothouses over the previous two years. Darwin enjoyed looking through plant catalogues and making lists of exotic specimens with which to stock the hothouse, and it proved so valuable, and the work so engrossing, that in the end he built a complex of greenhouses capable of sustaining a wide range of species.
In October 1825 Charles Darwin and his older brother, Erasmus, went to study medicine in Edinburgh, where their father, Robert Waring Darwin, had trained as a doctor in the 1780’s. Erasmus had already graduated from Cambridge and was continuing his studies; his father thought that Charles, who was only sixteen and had not found his years at Shrewsbury School very enjoyable or profitable, would find the discipline of medicine more congenial.
Thomas Dixon, 'America’s Difficulty with Darwin', History Today (2009), reproduced by permission.
Darwin has not been forgotten. But he has, in some respects, been misremembered. That has certainly been true when it comes to the relationship between his theory and religion. Charles Darwin himself hated religious controversy. Creationism and ‘Intelligent Design’ are not evidence of some general and timeless antagonism between faith and reason. Rather, they are the products of a particular place and a particular time: the United States of America since the end of the Second World War.
The original manuscript about varieties that Wallace composed on the island of Gilolo and sent to Darwin from the neighbouring island of Ternate (Brooks 1984) has not been found. It was sent to Darwin as an enclosure in a letter (itself missing), and was subsequently sent by Darwin to Charles Lyell (letter to Charles Lyell, 18 [June 1858]). The only known version of the text is the one published in Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 3 (1859): 45–62, and this text is reprinted below.
Testimonial on behalf of J. D. Hooker, addressed to Lord Seymour as Chief Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, signed by CD and many other scientists.
