Edward Lumb was born in Yorkshire. According to the memoirs of his daughter Anne, Lady Macdonell, he travelled to Buenos Aires aged sixteen with his merchant uncle, Charles Poynton, and after some fortunate enterprises set up in business there. In 1833 while voyaging on the Beagle Charles Darwin stayed with Edward Lumb, and he wrote to his sister Caroline that it was strange to sit in an English merchant's house and watch a lady making tea amid English furnishings.
As an author, friend and correspondent, Charles Lyell played a crucial role in shaping Darwin's scientific life. Born to a wealthy gentry family in Scotland in 1797, Lyell had a classical and legal education but by the 1820s had become entranced by the popular and exciting subject of geology. Geologists had already revealed a succession of unexpected forms of animals and plants and demonstrated the need for a vastly longer time scale than that allowed for by traditional Biblical criticism. Lyell believed, however, that the subject remained beset by speculation and uncertainty
Conrad Martens was born in London, the son of an Austrian diplomat. He studied landscape painting under the watercolourist Copley Fielding (1789-1855), who also briefly taught Ruskin. In 1833 he was on board the Hyacinth, headed for India, but en route in Rio de Janeiro, learned that Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, was looking for a replacement after Augustus Earle, the Beagle's original artist, had become seriously ill.
Richard Matthews was 21 years old when he stepped aboard the Beagle, destined for a lonely career as a missionary in Tierra del Fuego. The Church Missionary Society had arranged for him to accompany the three Fuegians (Fuegia Basket, Jemmy Button, and York Minster) whom Robert FitzRoy was returning to their homeland after a few months in England, where they had received some education and been taught the principles of Christianity.
Arthur Mellersh was a midshipman (promoted to mate during the voyage) serving on the Beagle at the time when Darwin was travelling around the world. One account suggests an inauspicious start to their friendship; apparently Mellersh introduced himself saying 'I'm Arthur Mellersh of Midhurst, and I have read Lord Byron, and I don't care a damn for anyone!' (Mellersh 1968 p. 72). Despite this notable beginning, Darwin and Mellersh seem to have got on well and remained in contact almost to the end of Darwin's life.
In the second half of 1874, Darwin's peace was disturbed by an anonymous article in the Quarterly Review suggesting that his son George was opposed to the institution of marriage and in favour of 'unrestrained licentiousness'. Darwin suspected, correctly, that the author was St George Jackson Mivart, who had previously written hostile reviews of his work. Darwin wondered whether to take legal action and, when warned that this was unlikely to be successful, helped George write a letter repudiating Mivart's accusations. The letter was published in the Quarterly Review with an anonymous rejoinder from Mivart that Darwin found inadequate as an apology. Darwin's friends Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley joined the fray but the painful episode was not resolved until 1875, and never to Darwin's satisfaction.
Fritz Müller, a German who spent most of his life in political exile in Brazil, described Darwin as his second father, and Darwin's son, Francis, wrote that, although they never met 'the correspondence with Müller, which continued to the close of my father's life, was a source of very great pleasure to him. My impression is that of all his unseen friends Fritz Müller was the one for whom he had the strongest regard.'
Hermann (Heinrich Ludwig Hermann) Müller, was born in Mühlberg near Erfurt in 1829. He was the younger brother of Fritz Müller (1822-97). Following the completion of his secondary education at Erfurt in 1848, he studied natural sciences at Halle and Berlin, focusing on botany, zoology, and geology. In 1852, he qualified as a teacher, but returned home to recover from illness before making his first of many trips to the Alps in the summer of 1853. He spent a probationary year teaching at a secondary school in Berlin and then half a year as a substitute teacher in Schwerin.
Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who specialised in non-fiction, particularly politics, travel and science, and had published Darwin's account of the Beagle voyage, Journal of researches. He was the grandson of John Macmurray, a Scot who had arrived in London, altered his name and in 1768 acquired a publishing house. The third John Murray, who followed his father as head of the business in 1843, made a successful business decision when he included Charles Darwin among his authors and added Origin to his list. Successive John Murrays ran the publishing house; the seventh sold the business in 2002. The John Murray Archive was acquired by the National Library of Scotland: it contains more than two hundred letters from Darwin, from his first negotiations in 1845 until his final years.
Marianne North was born in Hastings where her father became a Liberal MP. Her family supported Marianne's attempts at singing and painting as suitable activities for a Victorian lady. After her parents died, Marianne sold the family home and began travelling with the aim of painting the flora of different countries. Between 1871 and 1885 Marianne North visited America, Canada, Jamaica, Brazil, Tenerife, Japan, Singapore, Sarawak, Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles and Chile.
