Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Darwin letters evolve to webBy James Randerson

In his own words, it was a "presumptuous" idea that, more than any other, opened up a long-standing rift between the sciences and religion. Now an online database of Charles Darwin's correspondence with colleagues, family and friends http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2007/05/17/darwin_letters_evolve_to_web.html#more - has made it possible to follow the evolutionist's thinking as his revolutionary idea took shape. At the same time, the letters give a wonderfully rich and moving portrait of Darwin as a compassionate and caring family man.


The database which contains the full text of 5000 letters sent to or from Darwin up to 1865, includes correspondence home from the five-year, round-the-world expedition on HMS Beagle, as well as tentative notes to colleagues in which he floated his scientific bombshell. In one famous letter in 1844 to his close friend, the botanist Joseph Hooker, he described coming out with the theory as "like confessing to a murder".

Alison Pearn, of the Darwin Correspondence Project based at Cambridge University Library, says it is an incredible opportunity to get inside his mind. "There's a huge interest in Darwin and one of the great things about the letters, unlike the published work, is that they are very accessible so it is a very good route in for all sorts of people."

The collection, which is part of a project started three decades ago, contains letters to and from many of the great and the good of Victorian society, including public figures, thinkers and naturalists. In that list is the eminent geologist Charles Lyell, Queen Victoria's physician Henry Holland and the novelist George Eliot.

The letters are invaluable for scholars aiming to trace the origin of Darwin's ideas. He is constantly asking friends and colleagues for observations and evidence, and the correspondence reveals that he didn't always get it right. "You can follow not just the things that worked that we all know about, but the things that didn't work," said Dr Pearn.

In one case he wrote an extremely embarrassed letter to the banker, politician and naturalist John Lubbock after an idea about the evolution of bees turned out to be wrong. In the grovelling note, dated September 3 1962, he apologised for asking Lubbock to make observations of clover flowers and bees for him that turned out to be useless. "I do so hope that you have not wasted any time for my stupid blunder - I hate myself, I hate clover and I hate bees."

In many letters he displays great sympathy, humanity and compassion. On November 27 1863 he responded movingly to Hooker's letter about his son Willy contracting scarlet fever. Both men had already lost children to illness. "I grieve to hear about the Scarlet-Fever: my poor dear old friend you are most unfortunate. The tide must turn soon .... Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love."

In a happier moment in June 1854, Darwin jokes to Hooker when he hears of the botanist's wife's successful labour, "Did you administer the Chloroform? When I did, I was perfectly convinced that the Chloroform was very composing to oneself as well as to the patient."..... what a guy ..;)..

Darwin the cad is also there in a letter to a university mate called Charles Whitley when he is about the embark on the Beagle voyage. He reminisces on student hijinks at the "Glutton club" which he calls, "that day of victory and triumph and inward glorying which some call sublime". In the same letter dated November 15 1831 he looks forward to what would turn out to be perhaps the most significant gap year in history: "The scheme is a most magnificent one. We spend about two years in S America, the rest of time larking round the world."

The letters are also a great resource for anyone interested in the concerns and politics of the Victorian age. In a letter from a stop-off on the Beagle voyage at Rio de Janeiro on May 18 1832 he denounces the Tories "on account of their cold hearts" and declares that slavery is a "scandal to Christian Nations".

Despite knowing that the implications of his theory would be far-reaching and extremely controversial, Darwin was still dismayed at the reaction from some of his critics when he did eventually publish in 1859. Confiding to Hooker his thoughts about an anonymous reviewer of "On the Origin of Species" on November 22 1859 he wrote, "The manner in which he drags in immortality, and sets the Priests at me and leaves me to their mercies, is base. He would on no account burn me; but he will get the wood ready and tell the black beasts how to catch me."



http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2007/05/17/darwin_letters_evolve_to_web.html#more

.. the link for his letters at the top is a keeper ...imo...