Darwin’s Creatures 
by Stephen Jay Gould 
The Zoology of the Voyage of 
H.M.S. Beagle, edited by Charles 
Darwin. Nova Pacifica Publishing Co. 
(P.O. Box 11106, Wellington, New Zea- 
land), Facsimile reprint, 3 vols., $795.00 
(including freight). 
Charles Darwin was not a city boy. 
He grew up in the countryside, attend- 
ed Cambridge University, and of 
course, spent five years at sea aboard 
the Beagle. Yet Darwin chose London 
for his first independent home and lived 
there for several years, beginning as a 
bachelor and ending as the young hus- 
band of Emma Wedgwood. He claimed 
a deep antipathy for his new home in a 
letter to the Reverend Leonard Jenyns 
in 1837: “This London is a vile smoky 
place, where a man loses a great part of 
the best enjoyments in life. But I see no 
chance of escaping, even for a week, 
from this prison for a long time to 
come.” If Darwin disliked London so 
much, what was he doing there? 
The answer to this question requires 
that we abandon the usual image of 
Darwin, fostered by the photographs of 
his old age, as a quiet, reclusive, self-ef- 
facing, sick (or at least hypochondria- 
cal) man. In London, Darwin was an 
ambitious, driving, energetic youth just 
home from a five-year trip around the 
world. Darwin stayed in London for 
the same reason that many young peo- 
ple today live, with great reluctance, in 
New York: he was building his career, 
and the sources of power, cash, and in- 
tellectual influences were concentrated 
in England's version of the Big Apple. 
In particular, Darwin was busy poli- 
ticking for the proper scientific disposi- 
tion of his Beagle specimens (and — 
why not, after all? — for the resultant 
prestige that would accrue to him). 
This young and untested man wanted 
to line up the finest taxonomists of his 
day to describe the varied animals he 
had collected; above all, he needed cash 
for a lavish and uniform publication. 
Indeed, he had written to Jenyns to ad- 
vance his project and to procure his col- 
laboration: 
It would be more satisfactory to myself to 
see the gleanings of my hands, after having 
passed through the brains of other natural- 
ists, collected together in one work. . . . The 
whole scheme is at present merely floating 
in the air. ... I apprehend the whole will be 
impracticable, without [5/c, we would write 
“unless” today] Government will aid in en- 
graving the plates, and this I fear is a mere 
chance, only I think I can put in a strong 
claim, and get myself well backed by the 
naturalists of this place. 
(Mr. Jenyns, by the way, deserves our 
deepest gratitude for far more than de- 
scribing the Beagle's fishes. He had 
made it all possible in the first place — 
by refusing Captain FitzRoy’s invita- 
tion to sail on the Beagle and thus open- 
ing a job for a young fellow named 
Darwin.) 
Darwin was charming, patient, per- 
sistent, and well connected; he succeed- 
ed in wringing £1,000 from the Lords 
. \ mtZ/ti nuo- /7a f 
Saffron-cowled blackbird Coxe-Goldberg Photography 
92 
