The year 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species. The University of Cincinnati is marking these anniversaries with a year-long celebration of Darwin’s life and work. This series on the life of Charles Darwin is part of the celebration.
On February 12, 1880, Charles Darwin celebrated his 71st birthday much the way he had celebrated the previous 20, quietly at his country house just outside of Downe village, Kent. With the conclusion of his work on plant carnivory, pollination, and movement, Charles’s scientific attention shifted focus to the behavior, activity, and ecological role of earthworms. Enlisting the help of family, servants, and friends, he examined worm sensitivity to vibration and light, response to touch and odor, and preference for dozens of vegetables. Jars of soil littered almost every room in Down house as Darwin delved into the secret world of annelids. He was surprised to discover that earthworms display a wide range of adaptations, including behaviors that facilitated copulation and retrieval of foods. The fruit of these studies, “The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits,” was published in the fall of 1881. It would be Darwin’s last book.
By mid-1881, Darwin had neither the strength nor the heart to pursue the kind of intricate biological observation and speculation that provided his raison d’etré and had won him so much national recognition. He used this recognition to secure a government pension of 200 per year for naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-formulator of natural selection. Unlike Darwin, Wallace neither benefited from the aid of a wealthy family nor secured professional appointment through supportive colleagues. As such, Wallace struggled most of his life to attain both professional and financial security, earning only 60 a year at the time of the pension award. While Wallace and Darwin were never close friends, their shared development of natural selection forged a unique kinship between them. They began to drift apart in the early 1870s, partly due to disagreement over the power of natural selection and partly due to Wallace’s interests in socialism and mysticism. Although they never bridged the space between them, they remained on respectful and cordial terms.
On August 26, 1881, Erasmus Darwin, Charles’s older brother and compatriot in chemistry, died in London. The body was transported to Downe village, where it was interred in the cemetery of St. Mary’ church, not far from where baby Mary Eleanor had been buried 39 years before. With Charles’s own health rapidly declining, Erasmus’s death marked the beginning of the final phase of Charles’s life. Decades of scientific experimentation, writing, and constant illness had taken a fearful physical and mental toll. In early 1882, Darwin began suffering irregular bouts of chest pain, dizziness, and severe nausea. Despite regular doctor’s visits in March and April, and the near constant attention of Emma, the frequency and severity of Charles’s affliction worsened. On April 15 he collapsed during dinner and was momentarily unconscious. He recovered, however, and was able to resume much of his normal routine for the next several days. But the recovery was short lived. Darwin’s pain, nausea, and dizziness returned with a vengeance in the hours just before midnight on April 18. He fell into and out of consciousness, convulsing as waves of severe pain and nausea swept through him. The end was near. Finally, at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1882, with Emma, Elizabeth, Frank, and Henrietta at the bedside, Charles Darwin breathed his last.
The next day, the Darwin family began the somber task of making the necessary preparations for Charles’s funeral. They planned to bury him next to Erasmus in St. Mary’s churchyard in Downe. It was an arrangement Darwin himself probably would have approved of. Colleagues Thomas Henry Huxley and William Spottiswoode, then president of the British Royal Society, however, had something grander in mind.
There are several outstanding biographies of Charles Darwin readily available to the public. The definitive biography is a two volume work by E. Janet Browne titled Charles Darwin: Voyaging and Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. Darwin: the Life of a Tormented Evolutionist by Adrian Desmond and James Moore is also highly regarded. For a shorter biography of Darwin try The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen.