We all know the story of the joint Darwin/Wallace paper on the evolutionary process delivered at the Linnean Society in 1858, except that I bet we do not. The double paper (not joint) was read to an audience of only 25 fellows who, after five more papers had been read that 1 July evening, did not enter into any debate about it. Neither Darwin nor T.H. Huxley was there (with Huxley not even a fellow). As for distant Wallace, then at Ternate on a Dutch island between Sulawesi and New Guinea, he would not hear of the meeting for six months (and would not become a Linnean fellow until 1871).

Darwin, as we do know, had been sorely troubled about priority and exposure ever since Wallace’s bombshell of a letter had arrived less than one month before the meeting (after being posted in February). Within 24 hours Darwin was also to be more than troubled by family sickness. His 15-year-old daughter, Henrietta, showed signs resembling those of the dreaded diphtheria. He next learned that a son at school had developed measles, another frightening hazard. And one day later his tenth child, born to the 48-year-old Emma, became feverish when aged 19 months, and would die from scarlet fever (three days before the meeting) during that same pulverising June.

Charles Darwin, who so enjoyed a quiet and studious life, had never suffered so much upon his mind – what to do about Wallace and scholarly priority, and what about the ailing Henrietta, let alone the sick schoolboy, and the painfully distracting infant death, plus of course a miserable Emma? These anxieties were all fearfully entangled, and had arrived virtually simultaneously. Was it even right, as Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker had recommended when reading Wallace’s letter, for its information to be disseminated without first acquiring that man’s permission?

The explosive piece of correspondence had not been written with a view to publication; so was it right to treat it as a polished article? And what about Darwin’s contribution to that Linnean evening? He had written 250,000 words of his own thoughts on the subject, but no concise version. A mere two days before the famous gathering, having been urged to do so by his eminent friends, Darwin collected together some manuscript material, and posted it off to Hooker.

This included a letter he had sent to the distinguished American botanist Asa Gray in 1844. It had not only sketched out his current ideas on evolution, but would strengthen his case for priority. Darwin’s accompanying note to Hooker shows up his bewildered mind at that time rather too acutely: ‘I am quite prostrated & can do nothing, but I send Wallace & my abstract of abstract of letter to Asa Gray.’ A great brain was indeed sorely troubled.

Upon receiving Darwin’s collated package other brains had to work upon it. Hooker’s wife transcribed – presumably at her husband’s direction – portions of the material, but she also made some helpful changes of her own. The finished version of the two men’s contributions (with no changes made to Wallace’s letter) would be read out by a Linnean secretary, in alphabetical as well as chronological order. First was Darwin’s 1844 outline to Gray, then Darwin’s follow-up letter to Gray of 1857, and finally Wallace’s letter/essay despatched by him to Darwin in 1858. The matter of priority therefore rested most comfortably in Darwin’s lap, with Wallace’s account apparently in a supporting or secondary role (instead of having triggered the whole business). Darwin himself did not know precisely what had been said until reading the printed proofs of that evening’s session several weeks later.

So why the Linnean? Lyell and Hooker were opportunistic, knowing a re-scheduled meeting of the society would be taking place on 1 July, partly to commemorate the death of a former president. Hooker was on the Council, Lyell was to deliver the eulogy, and both knew that the more formal Royal Society was unlikely to welcome such a hasty arrangement. The Zoological Society was also less suitable; so too the Botanical Society, the Royal Institution, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Linnean was therefore apt, and the difficult occasion then passed off smoothly. In fact so smoothly did it pass that in May 1859, when the Linnean’s president was summing up the year of 1858, he said it had not ‘been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionise the department of science on which they bear.’

The rest of Darwin’s life, and the rest of Professor Browne’s second volume, occupy its remaining 500 pages. Some of them chronicle Francis Galton’s association with him, even though the relationship was never close. They shared a grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and were therefore cousins, but Galton, according to this book’s author, ‘was never really part of the Darwinian club’. He welcomed On the Origin of Species enthusiastically, declaring that it marked an ‘epoch in my own mental development’ and he ‘assimilated Darwin’s arguments as fast as he could read them’. Browne also writes that Galton ‘liked to think that he and Darwin shared the same hereditary bent of mind – a proposal that probably seemed more convincing to him than it would have to Darwin’.

Incidentally it was apparently Galton who, on the day following Darwin’s death, hurried to William Spottiswoode, president of the Royal Society, with a request that the great naturalist should be interred in Westminster Abbey. And so it happened, one week later, in the nave fairly near John Herschel and Isaac Newton but not so near to Lyell as Emma had hoped.

Janet Browne’s Volume 1, which dealt with Darwin until 1858, received resounding praise – ‘a triumph’, ‘splendid’ (Nature), ‘definitive’ (Ernst Mayr), ‘authoritative and highly readable’, ‘wonderful and marvellous, even magisterial’ (Stephen Jay Gould). I have no doubt whatsoever that Volume 2 will gather just as many magnificent accolades. It is supreme and deserves to do so.

Anthony Smith