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Darwin letters show personal side of author

93 Unpublished Epistles Soon to Be Exhibited in N.Y. Reveal His Nature

Praised Marriage – Message of Friend Offers Sincere Congratulations

By Robert Batcheller (Special to The Times – Dispatch)

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 – In the New York office of a professional bibliophile, Gabriel Wells, there is a card with a black border. On it is the crown seal, that of the monarch of Britain, Queen Victoria.

The card is simple. Without its black border it might be an invitation to a formal tea, but the wording is significant. It shows the final and official capitulation of England to the genius Charles Darwin, author of "Origin of Species," and many other works, the kindly agnostic who became a leader in scientific theory, and who braved the criticisms of the church and state.

Here was his great triumph, and history lurks on the formal English card. It reads like this, the misspelling in the fourth line being that of the printer:

FUNERAL OF MR. DARWIN

Westminster Abbey,

Wednesday, April 26th, 1882.

At 12 o'olock precisely.

Admit the bearer at Eleven o'clock to the CHOIR

(Entrance by West Cloister Door, Dean's Yard)

G.G. Bradley, D.D.,

Dean.

N.B. – No person will be admitted except in mourning.

Went to Rest Quietly

With this solemn and official fanfare, the quiet man who had cruised the seas, walked through the English woodlands, worked day and night over his experiments, and scattered his iconoclastic ideas throughout the civilized world, went to his rest.

He said that men came from monkeys, according to the popular theory, and that was heresy, although other scientists of his day had the same idea in part, but not his persuasive precision.

The Personal View.

Today, known in England and elsewhere as "the monkey man," his memory is engraved on the tablets of science, and is recalled with respect by an intelligent public.

There has been some doubt about his personal reactions toward life. Men and women have wondered although his theories have been widely accepted, if he were not just another "one of these cranks."

Mr. Wells went to Europe and tried to solve the problem for the American public. After a time he got from a dealer a collection of ninety-three letters, hitherto unpublished, an old lithograph showing in heartless detail the public attitude toward this friendly soul, and the funeral token of his final victory.

Darwin had two great friends. One of them was H.W. Bates, the author and naturalist, who was noted as an expert on geological and naturalistic conditions along the Amazon, and Brodie Innes, a friend from boyhood days in college.

He wrote to them occasionally, and to them alone spoke frankly and personally. The majority of the manuscripts are hopelessly scientific. All, of course, are in longhand, and almost illegible.

But reading Mr. Well's collection, there comes vistas of understanding of the life of this great man. One learns that he walked daily in the morning, and contemplated personal affairs. After 8, he worked or studied assiduously for two hours, believing that his mind was clearer at this time.

He imitated in his mind way that he had other human emotions and traits besides the obvious one of sensitiveness.

Marriage of Friend

Bates had written that he had been married, and in his wild scrawl, Darwin sat at his desk and penned the following, unable as always, to forget his work and his experiments.

"I congratulate you," he wrote, "and most sincerely, on your marriage. Judging from my own experience it is the best and almost only chance for what share of happiness this world affords. I hope you may succeed, for the sake of science, in getting fixed near London.

"I am heartily glad to hear that your great labors over your book are drawing to a close. I know that I for one will read it with great interest.

Pray thank Wallace when you see him about Melestomas. The fact is I cannot endure being beaten over a beggardly flower.

"With my renewed congratulations and hopes for your happiness, I am

"Yours Sincerely,

"CH. DARWIN."

[See the 1863 letter letter in Correspondence vol. 11, p. 83.]

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He wrote to Innes during the following year from his home in Kent, spending most of the sheet on zoological remarks. Then, in the final paragraph, he seemed quite bewildered because he reported that one of his neighbors, according to his wife, had been carrying on with one of the maids.

"Our maids tell my wife," Darwin wrote with obvious distress, "that hardly any one will go to church now that Mr. R. has returned."

[See the 1868 letter in Correspondence vol. 16, p. 888.]

Reactions to His Book.

Vitally important, and showing his sensitive nature, is another letter to Innes in 1871.

"I have been very glad," he says in part, "for to tell the truth, I have sometimes wondered if you would not think me an outcast and a reprobate after the publication of my last book. I do not wonder at all by your not agreeing with me, for a good many perfervid naturalists do not. Yet when I see in how extraordinary a manner the judgment of naturalists has changed since I published Origin, I feel that there must be in ten years as much uncertainty about man, as far as his corporeal frame is concerned."

[See the 1871 letter in Correspondence vol. 19, p. 401.]

In 1882, there is another Innes letter, which discusses largely Darwin's disappointment about the failure of bees to enter bottles after proper bait had been placed for them. A concluding paragraph mentions casually his sorrow at the death of his brother, and there is a postscript apologizing for the fact that after writing the letter he realized that he had forgotten to use black-edged paper. [Erasmus Alvey Darwin died 26 August 1881, aged 76.]

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