Saint Darwin

The Story of Charles Darwin is not to be found here*. That was written once and for all by his son. Its bare outline is sufficient for Author Bradford's purpose: born in 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln), son of a prosperous doctor, he attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, gave up tentative plans for medicine and the clergy, obtained the post of naturalist on the cruiser Beagle, was gone five years observing and exploring, married his cousin (one of the pottery Wedgwoods) in 1839, conceived the principle of evolution of species through natural selection the same year, fathered ten sons and daughters, spent 20 years amassing proof for his hypothesis, published The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871), died in 1882 having sorely suffered from chronic indigestion for 40 years.

The Facets of Charles Darwin, mental, emotional, spiritual, are what this book contains.

The Observer comes first. The power and habit of seeing in minute detail were upon him from childhood. Once, with a rare beetle in each hand and a third in sight, he transferred one wriggling creature to his teeth, with distressing results. He studied facial expressions of people in trains, of his children from infancy, of dogs, which always took to him. He would painstakingly count tens of thousands of plant seeds under his microscope. He devoted years and two fat tomes to barnacles. An invalid, he had to systematize his work rigorously. He trusted few reports save of his own eyes.

The Thinker. Fertile, vigorous, imaginative of mind, he disciplined himself to follow only inductive logic--from observation and experiment to hypothesis. He could not rest until he had tried experiments which seemed absurd even to himself. Slow in argument, a poor expositor, he was a great night-thinker, losing much sleep longing to correct possible false impressions. Huxley described "a marvelous dumb sagacity about him ... he gets to truth by ways as dark as those of the Heathen Chinee." Eternally openminded, he was frank before criticism, glad to acknowledge error, seldom condemned another's views by any word stronger than "odd."

The Discoverer. When Darwin had labored 20 years to support his theory, another man (Alfred Russel Wallace) appeared about to forestall him by announcing the same theory, with him a week old. Far from jealous or bitter, Darwin joined his announcement with Wallace's. They were warm friends. Darwin's point: the the ory outweighed its authors' feelings as the earth does a peanut.

The Loser. His lifelong application to biologic detail cost Darwin dear (suggests Author Bradford) in other fields of interest: in literature, history, politics; in esthetic enjoyment of nature; in religion. Some Catholics asked him what he was. "A sort of a Christian," he said. Habitually moral, gentle, tolerant, noble-minded, this was the truest answer, yet he regarded himself quite simply and scientifically as "differing" from faithful folk who "make themselves quite easy by intuition." He avoided cosmic thoughts, kept his writing purposely free from Pantheism, stuck to his species and specimens and "let God go" as imponderable. The Lover of mankind was his second greatest role. He was too gentle, reasonable, humble to quarrel or criticize. Attacks upon himself left him unmoved. Sociably inclined, he had to contend with his fondness for people to get his work done. His love and respect for his children was immense. A keen sportsman in youth, he could hardly bear to dissect pigeons later. The favorite game of his gentle, invalid age is referred to in a letter: "Now the tally with my wife in backgammon stands thus: she, poor creature, has won only 2,490 games while I have won, hurrah, hurrah, 2.795 games!" A pious country Woman, on hearing that he would go to hell for his beliefs, replied: "God Almighty can't afford to do without so good a man."

The Destroyer. This was the man who "slew God." This was the man who "typified the vigorous logic that wrecked the universe" for very sympathetic Author Bradford. The significance and explanation are: 1) that Darwin, saintliest of men, though he may have been the critical instrument and though he saw whither his brave thought tended, was yet no more responsible personally for the catastrophe than was many another honest thinker just before him--the German metaphysicians, Herbert Spencer, Poet Goethe, Poet Emerson; 2) that those for whom God is a necessity, as He was not for Darwin, will recreate Him.

FICTION

Rejected Giant

The Story.* On a December night in 1906, a ferocious storm swept across Glebeshire. In its cathedral town of Polchester (by the river, by the sea) in her old, old house in Canon's Yard, sat Mrs. Penethen, respected, kindly widow. She sat by her kitchen fire, her skirt drawn up to her knees, her toes resting on a woolworked cushion. She was to admit to her home that night, against her will and yet somehow with all her heart, a vast foreigner: a simple Swede, a blond HerculesApollo, whose strangely formal card contained the words: Hjalmar Johanson, Gymnastic Instructor. The storm passed in the night. But only with convulsive effort and in the space of a year did Polcastrians rid themselves of Harmer John, as they, first in affection, later in derision and finally in hate, miscalled him. During that year he encountered, with unintentionally poignant results, the public and secret lives of nearly all the town--among others:

Mrs. Penethen, who, at the end of the year, warned him to leave town, adding: "I'm fond of you as I've never been fond of any man since my poor husband died." He embraced .and kissed her. "I'm staying," he said.

Maude Penethen, her daughter, vain, violent-tempered, selfish, and when she had removed her frowsy, clothes, beautiful. "She would spend hours attending to her body. . . . So, also, she kept her mind clean." She nearly forgot all the tricks and businesses of a belle, so ardently did she love the lofty giant. But when he would not abandon his friend for her pride's sake, she married a wastrel.

Judy Penethen, her sister, ugly. Ignored, she did all the work. She loved Hjalmar. She, only, understood him, even to the childish depth of his dream. But no one knew it, except

Miss Midgeley, spinster, secondrate authoress, first-rate diarist who also came in an odd quiet sort of way to love the Swede and whose notes on his Polcastrian year were valuable. She wanted to wring Maude's beautiful neck. She told Harmer people were all rotten somewhere. He would not believe it. They, thought he, would recognize beauty when they saw it. They would, once they saw beauty, make themselves and all Polchester beautiful.

Canon Ronder was the suave ecclesiastical power. He "made" Harmer by letting him come into his silken bedchamber and massage some of the fat off him. But before all the fat was off, Harmer became revolutionary (wanted to "tear down" the miserable slums where ratlike people slept all-in-abed), and the Canon canceled the massages.

Mr. Hogg owned most of the slums. Villain, he inspired a rabble to lynch* Harmer. They cast him over a wall into the river. (As his body was never recovered, more than one person, years later, said: "He liveth.") But, first, Harmer had gone down into the slums, had laid his firm hand upon the forehead of a dying boy, had cured him. Also, Harmer had knocked out the biggest brute of the place in fair fight. Reported uptown as a drunken brawl, this victory, which might have made him a hero in the slums, blasted his reputation. Mr. Hogg was cunning.

Rev. Tom Longstaffe was not intellectual but he was saintly and almost as sensitive spiritually as Harmer. He had a daughter who had an illegitimate child whom, together with herself, she brought back to proper Polchester. Tom was Harmer's friend, so Harmer was a friend of Tom's daughter. That was forgiven by Mrs. Penethen but not by Maude nor by the town.

Significance. Author Hugh Seymour Walpole, than whom there is no more forceful living writer, has written a Messianic story. After the Palestinian manner, his Messiah is rejected by society, Chough loved by individuals. But Farmer John is human, not divine. His great temptation is Maude. He would have been as little troubled by the dark temptations which faced Jesus of Nazareth in the wilderness, as Jesus was by the ordinary temptations of the flesh. Harmer's obstacle was his own blindness to the complexities of human life, but Jesus' obstacle was the bindness of human beings to the power of God. Jesus knew he would be rejected; Harmer was rejected and could not understand why. Strong in body, noble in purpose, but as lacking in insight as he is in moral authority, Harmer, no epic figure, makes an absorbing hero for a modern novel. In Harmer John, Author Walpole has added a unique, and perhaps a lasting character to fiction. Sociologically, he has left the world much as it was before.

* DARWIN--Gamaliel Bradford -- Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

* HARMER JOHN--Hugh Walpole--Doran ($2),

* Of course, Author Walpole, British, did not use this word.