Charles Darwin: Voyaging [Paperback]

The main strength of Browne's book, Charles Darwin: Voyaging, (and I expect the main strength of her second volume) is that she has a fantastic ability to weave details into the story without getting bogged down. This is a well-written and very well researched book and I found myself amazed at some of the material she had found on Darwin's earlier life, especially as a medical student in Edinburgh. The book is almost a social and scientific history of England starting with the late Georgian period. However, Browne makes the historic references very pertinent to her story. Anybody reading this book and (I'm sure) the second volume, will come away with a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for the struggle that has gone into the development of our modern worldview. Darwin certainly had his flaws, as do we all, but he was also certainly one of the most admirable of men, despite all his human failings. Browne makes us understand why this man was great and how he reached this greatness by following his curiosity beyond the superficial. She also gives us a more detailed understanding as to why Darwin found solace in natural history, instead of following his father, Robert, into the medical profession.

This is certainly just the best book to read to understand Darwin's early life before the publication of the Origin of Species. I recommend it without any reservation.

I actually only noticed this book because of the laudatory reviews that appeared recently for volume II ("The Power of Place"). Perhaps it is true that I cannot get enough of Darwin, so I was drawn to this as any addict to his fix. But I think that for me the most appealing thing about Charles Darwin is his quintessential Victorianism. He lived and worked in a privileged position in a culture that was as sublimely self-confident as any the world has ever seen, and that, moreover, bestrode that world as none before or since (our blundering and half-hearted imperialism not excepted).

Actually, the Darwin Story is becoming canonical. Our culture is about the clash of narratives as much as anything else. The Free Market opposes the Welfare State, the Promise of Progress is really the Erosion of Identity, and, most shrilly, the Blind Watchmaker threatens to displace the Christian God.

So, I suppose that to read this book is to choose sides. Shame about that, but there it is. Anyway, even if you know the story, this book (and its sequel) will tell it better and deeper. Janet Browne has not only mastered the Darwin materials, but his milieu as well. She seems to have gone far afield in researching the lives of those that impinged on Darwin, just in order to make throwaway statements and large judgments on people who are perhaps bit players in his life. They, of course, have lives of their own, fully lived, and like a novelist, Browne hints at more that she tells. The occasional summarizing aside of some life that glances on Darwin's gives this book a novelistic texture and feel. The author has pulled off the difficult trick of making us feel she is telling a story that she owns.

Browne starts with a leisurely scene-setting that places the Darwins and the Wedgwoods (Charles's paternal and maternal lines) in the Georgian society of the day. She discusses the culture and the family traditions, and places the players in the landscape and houses them grandly. (Very helpful here is a generous genealogy in the front matter.) We see young Charles carefree and out-of-doors, with his loving and indulgent older sisters and his great friend, older brother Erasmus. We see him rather reluctantly growing up, attending Edinburgh University and then Cambridge, where he is unscathed by the official curricula, but emerges with firm friends among some bug-loving students as well as the naturalists on the faculties.

About one-third of this book covers the voyage of the Beagle, the forming event in Darwin's life as a scientist. Of its five years, Darwin spent more than three of them on land, exploring, collecting, and observing all up and down the coasts of South America and, finally, in islands of the Pacific (including, most famously, the Galapagos).

When Darwin got home his troubles began. All the glorious collecting and larking about of his school days and the grand adventure on the Beagle were over. Those experiences drew on his enthusiasm, energy, and growing expertise in zoology and geology. Now, back home, he had to make something of himself, he had to secure an identity. Could he use the physical materials he had gathered and his position in society to do it? Darwin's real story begins when he steps off the dock after five years away from home.

Browne tells this life in a quietly gripping way. The vast amount of material that she had to integrate does not get in the way of the tale, but allows her to tell it seamlessly. She never lets the narrative bog down in irrelevancies, but always paints a full picture of the scene, giving its human, intellectual and social components their due.

The story of Charles Darwin is really the story of an idea. Darwin was the central figure, but Hooker, Wallace, Lyell, Huxley, and many others had important parts to play. But in the progress of abstract ideas the personal is important: a strong motivation for Darwin's secrecy with his thoughts on evolution was to avoid distressing his wife Emma, a fervent believer in a Heaven where she would be reunited with those siblings and children so cruelly taken from her. Browne always shows this human side to science, shows that science is a quite human endeavor. And in this volume she takes the story up to 1856, as Darwin finally decides to take the plunge, after a dozen years of doubts and obsessive preparations.

Now, he will write a book....

After he writes that book, Darwin's life is never the same. Actually, after that, nobody's life is the same. Big drama is coming up in volume II, so why bother with this book? It is entertaining and brilliantly done, but is just prologue, right?

I disagree. In fact, if you just glance through "The Origin of Species" you will see that Darwin put most of his life up to that point into his book. And his later life was built firmly on the foundation of his earlier: he made the friends and formed the ideas that were to become central in the controversies over natural selection. Themes have been stated and developed. Volume II will develop them further, and introduce new matter, but does not tell a separate story.