Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I Part 49

I know that Lyell has been INFINITELY kind about my affair, but your dashed (i.e., underlined) "INDUCE" gives the idea that Lyell had unfairly urged Murray.

CHARLES DARWIN TO ASA GRAY. April 4th [1859].

...You ask to see my sheets as printed off; I a.s.sure you that it will be the HIGHEST satisfaction to me to do so: I look at the request as a high compliment. I shall not, you may depend, forget a request which I look at as a favour. But (and it is a heavy "but" to me) it will be long before I go to press; I can truly say I am NEVER idle; indeed, I work too hard for my much weakened health; yet I can do only three hours of work daily, and I cannot at all see when I shall have finished: I have done eleven long chapters, but I have got some other very difficult ones: as palaeontology, cla.s.sifications, and embryology, etc., and I have to correct and add largely to all those done. I find, alas! each chapter takes me on an average three months, so slow I am. There is no end to the necessary digressions. I have just finished a chapter on Instinct, and here I found grappling with such a subject as bees'

cells, and comparing all my notes made during twenty years, took up a despairing length of time.

But I am running on about myself in a most egotistical style. Yet I must just say how useful I have again and again found your letters, which I have lately been looking over and quoting! but you need not fear that I shall quote anything you would dislike, for I try to be very cautious on this head. I most heartily hope you may succeed in getting your "incubus" of old work off your hands, and be in some degree a free man...

Again let me say that I do indeed feel grateful to you...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, April 5th [1859].

My dear Sir,

I send by this post, the t.i.tle (with some remarks on a separate page), and the first three chapters. If you have patience to read all Chapter I., I honestly think you will have a fair notion of the interest of the whole book. It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original. If you think otherwise, I must repeat my request that you will freely reject my work; and though I shall be a little disappointed, I shall be in no way injured.

If you choose to read Chapters II. and III., you will have a dull and rather abstruse chapter, and a plain and interesting one, in my opinion.

As soon as you have done with the MS., please to send it by CAREFUL MESSENGER, AND PLAINLY DIRECTED, to Miss G. Tollett, 14, Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square.

This lady, being an excellent judge of style, is going to look out for errors for me.

You must take your own time, but the sooner you finish, the sooner she will, and the sooner I shall get to press, which I so earnestly wish.

I presume you will wish to see Chapter IV., the key-stone of my arch, and Chapters X. and XI., but please to inform me on this head.

My dear Sir, yours sincerely, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 11th [1859].

...I write one line to say that I heard from Murray yesterday, and he says he has read the first three chapters of one MS.(and this includes a very dull one), and he abides by his offer. Hence he does not want more MS., and you can send my Geographical chapter when it pleases you...

[Part of the MS. seems to have been lost on its way back to my father; he wrote (April 14) to Sir J.D. Hooker:]

"I have the old MS., otherwise, the loss would have killed me! The worst is now that it will cause delay in getting to press, and FAR WORST of all, lose all advantage of your having looked over my chapter, except the third part returned. I am very sorry Mrs. Hooker took the trouble of copying the two pages."

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April or May, 1859].

...Please do not say to any one that I thought my book on Species would be fairly popular, and have a fairly remunerative sale (which was the height of my ambition), for if it prove a dead failure, it would make me the more ridiculous.

I enclose a criticism, a taste of the future--

REV. S. HAUGHTON'S ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, DUBLIN. (February 9, 1859.)

"This speculation of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace would not be worthy of notice were it not for the weight of authority of the names (i.e.

Lyell's and yours), under whose auspices it has been brought forward. If it means what it says, it is a truism; if it means anything more, it is contrary to fact."

Q.E.D.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

Thank you for telling me about obscurity of style. But on my life no n.i.g.g.e.r with lash over him could have worked harder at clearness than I have done. But the very difficulty to me, of itself leads to the probability that I fail. Yet one lady who has read all my MS. has found only two or three obscure sentences, but Mrs. Hooker having so found it, makes me tremble. I will do my best in proofs. You are a good man to take the trouble to write about it.

With respect to our mutual muddle ("When I go over the chapter I will see what I can do, but I hardly know how I am obscure, and I think we are somehow in a mutual muddle with respect to each other, from starting from some fundamentally different notions."--Letter of May 6, 1859.), I never for a moment thought we could not make our ideas clear to each other by talk, or if either of us had time to write in extenso.

I imagine from some expressions (but if you ask me what, I could not answer) that you look at variability as some necessary contingency with organisms, and further that there is some necessary tendency in the variability to go on diverging in character or degree. IF YOU DO, I do not agree. "Reversion" again (a form of inheritance), I look at as in no way directly connected with Variation, though of course inheritance is of fundamental importance to us, for if a variation be not inherited, it is of no significance to us. It was on such points as these I FANCIED that we perhaps started differently.

I fear that my book will not deserve at all the pleasant things you say about it; and Good Lord, how I do long to have done with it!

Since the above was written, I have received and have been MUCH INTERESTED by A. Gray. I am delighted at his note about my and Wallace's paper. He will go round, for it is futile to give up very many species, and stop at an arbitrary line at others. It is what my grandfather called Unitarianism, "a feather bed to catch a falling Christian."...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 18th [1859].

My dear Hooker,

My health has quite failed. I am off to-morrow for a week of Hydropathy.

I am very very sorry to say that I cannot look over any proofs (Of Sir J. Hooker's Introduction to the 'Flora of Australia.') in the week, as my object is to drive the subject out of my head. I shall return to-morrow week. If it be worth while, which probably it is not, you could keep back any proofs till my return home.

In haste, ever yours, C. DARWIN.

[Ten days later he wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker:

"...I write one word to say that I shall return on Sat.u.r.day, and if you have any proof-sheets to send, I shall be glad to do my best in any criticisms. I had... great prostration of mind and body, but entire rest, and the douche, and 'Adam Bede,' have together done me a world of good."]

CHARLES DARWIN TO J. MURRAY. Down, June 14th [1859].

My dear Sir,

The diagram will do very well, and I will send it shortly to Mr. West to have a few trifling corrections made.

I get on very slowly with proofs. I remember writing to you that I thought there would not be much correction. I honestly wrote what I thought, but was most grievously mistaken. I find the style incredibly bad, and most difficult to make clear and smooth. I am extremely sorry to say, on account of expense, and loss of time for me, that the corrections are very heavy, as heavy as possible. But from casual glances, I still hope that later chapters are not so badly written. How I could have written so badly is quite inconceivable, but I suppose it was owing to my whole attention being fixed on the general line of argument, and not on details. All I can say is, that I am very sorry.

Yours very sincerely, C. DARWIN.

P.S. I have been looking at the corrections, and considering them.

It seems to me that I shall put you to a quite unfair expense. If you please I should like to enter into some such arrangement as the following: when work completed, you to allow in the account a fairly moderately heavy charge for corrections, and all excess over that to be deducted from my profits, or paid by me individually.