The Sociable Sciences

Darwin and His Contemporaries in Chile

P. Schell

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137286062
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

This beautifully written history traces the fortunes of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries in Chile. It explains how they showed Chileans a new way to see their own natural environment, teaching a younger generation of scientists there and forging international networks that helped to shape the modern world.

Chapter 1

The Making of a Naturalist

If you believe their accounts, the naturalists whose stories are told here were born, not made. Study of the world around them, of its loping animals, or its climbing fauna, was never a choice but an innate compulsion. These naturalists were the sort of children who had to be hauled into the house, well after dark, with stones in one pocket and bugs crawling out of the other, having lost track of time as they followed an ant journeying home. I expect they were like my friend’s son, who at 18 months would wake up and immediately start calling, “Outside! Outside!” Although this book focuses on naturalists in Chile, we begin in England, with the Cambridge University Arts graduate whose year(s) out provided the material for his theory that revolutionized all of the natural sciences. We start with this young man because the role friendship played in fostering natural history is evident even from his youthful relationships.

Born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England, Charles Darwin never lacked materially, thanks to his father’s successful medical career and wise investments. His mother, Susannah Wedgwood, came from the family that founded the Wedgwood pottery firm, first British manufacturers of bone china. Charles was the fifth of six children, two boys and four girls, whose mother died when he was eight, leaving his parental care to his older sisters, especially Caroline, who looked after him and their younger sister Catherine. Darwin was one of those small boys who could not keep himself from amassing collections and later loved hunting; butterflies, beetles, and other creatures from the Shropshire countryside near his family’s home, “The Mount,” first succumbed to Charles’s lethal curiosity.¹

When not botanizing or conducting chemical experiments with his elder brother Erasmus, Charles could be found under the dining room table, reading books like Robinson Crusoe, as well as literature, plays, and poetry. The contents of these volumes prompted avid debates with other schoolboys and dreams of finding new worlds. This reading sculpted the descriptive language he would use as a writer. He later regretted losing his love of poetry, but the poetics of landscape remained a life-long love. An 1822 riding tour of Wales with his sister Caroline, when he was 13, was his first memory of taking “a vivid delight in scenery.”² It’s evident now that Charles was preparing to be a naturalist, but during this period, a “professional scientist” did not yet exist. The word “scientist” was not even coined until 1834, when a Cambridge academic sought a term to describe the attendees of the first British Association for the Advancement of Science conference. “Professional” was equally problematic, as naturalists took pride in belonging to a community of gentlemen who reflected on philosophical issues without remuneration.³

Charles’s father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was determined that his son would have a respectable profession, either medicine, Dr Darwin’s preference, or the clergy. Both professions would still allow Charles time to be a hobby naturalist. Thus when Erasmus needed to complete training courses in medicine, Dr. Darwin saw a chance for both of his sons: Erasmus would study at Edinburgh University and Charles would keep him company and sit in on lectures. Later he, too, would study medicine at Edinburgh, like his grandfather, the doctor and botanist Erasmus Darwin; father; and brother.⁴ But after two years in Edinburgh with Erasmus, Charles had neither increased his interest in medicine nor decreased his love of natural history. In his first year, even though he was not enrolled, he borrowed more books from the library than the typical Edinburgh student: most of these focused on natural history.⁵

Darwin instead soaked up the scientific offerings of Scotland’s capital city. He attended meetings of the Wernerian Natural History Society, walked in the countryside, and trawled for oysters with the Newhaven fishermen, whom he had befriended. He also hired John Edmonstone, a former slave and freelance taxidermist, to train him in basic taxidermy. One-hour daily over two months, Edmonstone taught Darwin how to skin birds and preserve their skins.⁶ Darwin recalled how he would visit often, enjoying Edmonstone’s company and intelligence.⁷ Darwin’s time with Edmonstone also helped turn the question of slavery from a lively political debate to a personal matter. From a staunchly abolitionist family, Darwin himself would strongly argue for the unity of humanity, and against the view of multiple creations of different humans (polygenesis) in The Descent of Man, published in 1871.⁸

Edmonstone was not the only older man to befriend Darwin. Charles Darwin proved himself a likable protégé. He arrived at Edinburgh remembering his father’s “golden rule”: “Never become the friend of any one whom you cannot respect.”⁹ Among these mentors was geologist Professor Robert Jameson. Jameson had founded Edinburgh’s Natural History Museum in 1804; when John James Audubon, the ornithologist and exquisite painter of US birds, embarked on a European tour in 1826–1827, he traveled to Edinburgh especially to meet Jameson. Darwin enrolled in Jameson’s natural history class, covering topics in botany, zoology, paleontology, mineralogy, and geology through lectures; work with the museum collection; and local field trips.¹⁰

Dr. Darwin despaired because of his son’s lack of ambition and the—apparently—wasted time in Edinburgh. Giving vent to his fears, Dr. Darwin told his youngest son, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”¹¹ This time the answer was to pack him off to Christ’s College, Cambridge University.¹² In 1828, Charles went to Cambridge expecting that he would become yet another rural curate without any religious calling, with a sideline in natural history.¹³ But in Cambridge Charles met the man whose friendship proved most influential to Darwin’s life: Rev. John Stevens Henslow, professor of botany, 13 years older than Darwin. Initially their socializing was part of the process of studying natural history, not any favors Henslow showed to Darwin. The professor took his students on wonderful excursions, walking or on a river barge, lecturing on what they saw. Soon Darwin was singled out for walks with his mentor, spending time looking for specimens, and enjoying each other’s company. At the discussions that Henslow hosted, Darwin would arrive early to arrange the room and set out key materials. Their close friendship prompted some of Henslow’s colleagues to refer to Darwin as “the man who walks with Henslow.”¹⁴ As Darwin recorded, during the months of 1831, he “lived much with Prof^e Henslow often dining with him & walking with became slightly acquainted with several of the learned men in Cambridge, which much quickened the zeal which dinner parties . . . had not destroyed . . . . In the Spring Henslow persuaded me to think of Geology,” a lively new science that promised to explain the earth’s long history and the stories of its inhabitants.¹⁵

The Cambridgeshire fens and flatlands could not contain the imaginations of student and teacher. Darwin read Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, falling under the spell of descriptions of tropical rainforests and the snowy Andes. Henslow, perhaps because he had the responsibilities of marriage, children, and work, rather than in spite of them, also dreamed of travel.¹⁶ The two friends egged each other on, planning an expedition to Tenerife to see for themselves the cactuses on the sandy plains leading up to the Pico del Teide volcano. The arrival of another Henslow baby closed the door on Henslow’s participation.¹⁷ Darwin, however, began learning Spanish. Tenerife was to be his adventure before returning to theological study and the life of a rural curate, who, between tea visits and sermon writing, indulged his natural history passions.¹⁸

In both Edinburgh and Cambridge, then, Charles Darwin’s relationships with older men, especially Henslow, provided him with access to information and opportunities, as well as helping him to develop his talents.¹⁹ Darwin himself, reflecting about this period, mused that “there must have been something in me a little superior to the common run of youths, otherwise . . . [these men] so much older than me and higher in academical position [sic], would never have allowed me to associate with them.”²⁰ It was the approval of these mentors, and later his scientific peers, that Darwin sought throughout his life: although he remembered being ambitious to make a mark on natural history, he could truthfully say that later, although, “I cared in the highest degree for the approbation of . . . my friends, I did not care much about the general public.”²¹

In this respect, he was very much a naturalist of his time: “The moral character of the man of science included a capacity for sincere friendship, which was evidence of his sociability and courtesy.”²² Scientist/inventor Victor Frankenstein’s reflection on his mentor, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, could just as easily be about the Darwin-Henslow relationship: “In M. Waldman I found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged with dogmatism; and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge.”²³ At Cambridge, Darwin found a similar “true friend.” His years at Cambridge and, crucially, his friendship with Henslow, gave Charles the opportunity to travel around the world. The invitation to join the Beagle expedition was a direct result of Henslow’s opinion about Darwin’s likeability.

The Beagle expedition itself was part imperial and part personal mission. The English had long sought influence over, or at least trade with, Spanish America, frustrated that Spain, a closed, Catholic country at the edge of Europe, would control this wealthy territory, stretching from north of San Francisco Bay to Tierra del Fuego. Yet by the second decade of the nineteenth century, the British realized that the easiest means to gain wealth from the Spanish New World was through trade: raw materials for new industries and markets for finished products. Moreover, in this period of arduous land transportation, the major trading routes of Britain, France, and the United States were along the oceans and waterways, requiring detailed charts, as well as knowledge about transportation routes, stopping posts, or new harbors. Exploration also remained important at the time of the Beagle expeditions, as there were still vast territories where opportunities for colonization and wealth might yet arise.

In Spanish America, these converging trade and military interests were strongest at the tip of the continent. Southern South America, home to many different groups of indigenous peoples and much sought-after for geostrategic reasons, remained outside the control of any colonial power or nation-state. The area where two oceans converge is a landscape of islands, glaciers, fjords, sounds, and inlets, known for its great winds. When the storms clear, it is as if God has smiled, and it is the most glorious place on earth. The dense forest that edges onto sapphire water becomes lush and inviting, rather than dark and brooding. But, a curtain of storms threatening to close can often be seen in the distance.

Before the building of the Panama Canal and before accurate charts, rounding Cape Horn, at the southern extreme of the American continents, was the route between Pacific and Atlantic coasts, and between Europe and the Pacific. Rounding the Horn, however, had serious drawbacks. Even today, this sea is notorious for its temper, but in the era of tall ships this sea was legendary. In 1788, Captain William Bligh, intentionally heading the Bounty to Tahiti to collect breadfruit and unintentionally about to become infamous for the mutiny against him, spent a month trying to round the Horn, before deciding that the winds pushing against him could as well push him the other direction. He crossed the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, taking the long way round, instead of continuing to sail into the storms of Cape Horn.²⁴

But there was another route between these great oceans: through the Strait of Magellan, north of Tierra del Fuego, and south of the continent. In the early nineteenth century, this region of jostling islands had not been adequately mapped. Exploring and charting this strategic region would help secure control of the maritime route. With accurate charts of southern South America, the British would have greater potential influence in the region.²⁵ Tierra del Fuego and the strait were already part of the regular run for sealing and whaling vessels, whose sailors traded with the local people, the Yámana, the Selk’nam, the Haush...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction   Friendship, Science, and Chilean Nature
• Chapter 1   The Making of a Naturalist
• Chapter 2   Chile and the Scientific Imagination
• Chapter 3   Making Friends in Chile
• Chapter 4   Darwin, Gay, and the Utility of Chile
• Chapter 5   The Prussian Connection
• Chapter 6   A New Naturalist in Town
• Chapter 7   Expanding the Web
• Chapter 8   At the End of Their Days
• Conclusion   Reflections on the Life of a Fly Hunter
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index