The Two D’s of Unitarianism: Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin
Aiken UU Church
February 5 2012
Introduction:
This month is always special because of two great Unitarians who were born in February: Charles Dickens on the 7th in 1812, and Charles Darwin three years earlier on Feb 12th in 1809.
You all may recall the big celebration for Darwin to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, but the Dickens bicentennial is also a big deal – this fall will see a new cinematic production of Great Expectations, two new major biographies are published this year, and there is a major exhibition called “Charles Dickens at 200” at the Morgan Library in New York City, which boasts the largest private collection of Dickens’ papers in the US, including the manuscript of A Christmas Carol. And in London as well as his birthplace, the southern coastal city of Portsmouth, many other exhibits and festivals – in Portsmouth Dickens’ great-great-grandson Mark will present a reading of A Christmas Carol.
I, too, would like to be a part of this creative celebration, and so this service is my effort to give you a different perspective that reflects on how the towering personalities of Dickens and Darwin were shaped by some common elements. These two men, whose achievements have shaped Western culture, lived as contemporaries, but there is no evidence that they ever actually met. We do know that Dickens was impressed with Darwin’s work, but these two might have had a lot more in common than we might think. So this morning we present a purely speculative conversation that is my fictional creation: it might have occurred on the streets of London when one D bumped into the other D, maybe as they were strolling through Bloomsbury, where Dickens and his wife of 20 years Catherine once lived and where they raised 10 children…and perhaps Darwin would have been in London, traveling there from his home in rural Bromley a few miles away, visiting his brother Erasmus who lived near Cavendish Square. Imagine that, after exchanging ‘How do you do’s’ and comments about the weather, Dickens and Darwin saunter over to a nearby park bench and begin to tell each other stories about their early childhood years. Thomas Drake is our Dickens, and Ken Carlson reads the part of Darwin.
Dickens: My father was the illegitimate son of an aristocrat,
and he was a man who enjoyed living beyond his means –
a quality of which my mother learned only after they married!
I was the second of 5 children, and I was sickly but entertaining!
I was always singing comic songs, writing and acting character sketches.
My father recognized something special in me and sent me
off to grammar school, where I excelled – but within two years,
my spendthrift father was sent to debtor’s prison and all of the family – except for me – went with him. I lived in lodgings away from my family and was forced to work long hours with other boys in a shoe polish factory; I glued the labels onto the pots. I was alone in a world of adults, not sure if I could trust any of them…and one of those adults turned out to be my own mother. After my father was out of prison and had released me from the factory, my mother suggested that I go back there and continue to earn money for the family.
Even though my father refused to consider it, I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back. In my more introspective moments I know that the plucky orphans in my stories are born from the experience on the polish factory.
Darwin: My father built a house in Shrewsbury in the early years of marriage to my mother. He was a physician and did quite well; my mother belonged to the Wedgewood family, so our family lived comfortably. I was the fourth of five children, My mother was in charge of the children, the house and the finances, while my father tended to his patients. My dear mother died when I was eight, and my older sisters took over running the household while my father devoted even more of his time to his work. I was sent to a boarding school soon after called The Mount, and its curriculum was almost exclusively given over to the classics, which to me were quite useless. Although my father became quite worried that I had not inherited the intelligence of the Darwin family, I soon began conducting scientific experiments in the shed at the back of our house with my brother Erasmus, and continued to do so until he went off to Cambridge to study medicine. I became fascinated with collecting minerals and insects and bird-watching. I became very fond of hunting, especially when I went off to study at Edinburgh…so much so that my father feared I would become an ‘idle hunting man’! My father and grandfather both had studied at Edinburgh and when I was sixteen I was told it was time to make something of myself.
Dickens: Just as you began your experience with university education, I left school to work as a solicitor’s clerk and then taught myself shorthand. My uncle hired me to transcribe court proceedings and Parliamentary debates for his weekly newspaper. But I also wrote fiction under the pen name “Boz” and soon had a contract for my first novel. When The Pickwick Papers was published in April of 1836 the print run was for 40,000, and by November I quit the newspaper to become a full-time novelist. Five years later – after Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickelby were published - I was the most famous man in England!
My character Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop was based upon my beloved sister-in-law Mary who collapsed and died at home in 1837, and Nell’s illness and death elicited a storm of emotion from my readers: the Irish M.P. Daniel O’Connell, reading the book whilst in a railway carriage, burst into tears, groaning, “He should not have killed her”, and then throwing the book out of the train window!
But even though my aim was to make as much money as possible with my writings – having seen how my dear friend Walter Scott at one point lost all his money and it made me see that this possibly could happen to me – despite that, my contentment was not complete because of the inequities I saw in our society. I was a very lucky young man but felt I needed to do more to help my more unfortunate fellow human beings.
Darwin: I consider myself to have been lucky as well, my friend. I have always had the ability to act upon chance opportunities in life – one of those was when I completed my undergraduate studies at Cambridge and left for a voyage with Captain Fitzroy on the H.M.S. Beagle. As you know, the research that I did, the mentors that I met, and just generally making the best of a bad situation in terms of my health have all resulted in my views and theory on evolution. Although my intention was only to write for my family and never publish this as an academic exercise, there is a little-know impetus that I have had, just as you have in your charitable zeal…and that is my fight against slavery. As you also know, my Aunt Sarah gave more money than any other female donor to the anti-slavery cause – in fact the Darwins and Wedgewoods helped to fund and distribute large numbers of copies of anti-slavery literature.
My first encounter with a slave was while I was still a student at Edinburgh University. I was taught taxidermy by a freed Guayanese slave. I used often to sit with him, or he was a very pleasant and intelligent man. His name was John Edmonston, and he confirmed my own belief that black and white people possess the same humanity. My abhorrence of the slave trade increased on the Beagle voyage: whilst in Rio I witnessed slaves landing on the beach and saw the thumbscrews that were used to punish female slaves. And while staying there I saw a young household mulatto constantly reviled, beaten and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I heard of, but these deeds are done and palliated by men who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
Dickens: At the height of my fame, I travelled with Catherine to see America. With much anticipation to see for myself what I regarded as a trip to a ‘new Eden’, I found nothing but disappointment and disgust at the American way of life. I found a place where privacy and personal liberties were much eroded. And did not hesitate to say so: I had ample opportunity to express my opinions on the subject of slavery whilst touring the South! I dealt roundly with a certain judge in St. Louis and said I was very averse to speaking on the subject but when he pities our national ignorance of the truth of slavery, I told him…that men who spoke of it as a blessing, as a state of things to be desired, were out of the pale of reason; and that for them to speak of ignorance or prejudice was an absurdity too ridiculous to be combated. I wrote to my friend Macready that this was neither the republic I came to see nor the republic of my imagination. In everything of which it has made a boast- excepting the education of the people and its care for poor children – it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it upon.
Darwin: Never in five years on my travels had I been able to escape slavery. Once I returned to London Emma and I joined a radical abolitionist circle of family and friends, and I must admit that this group and its discussions influenced my scientific thinking on the unity of the races. The leading pluralist theories of race in the 1850s were used, as you know, to justify slavery. However, my idea of a branching common descent, if you can conjure up an image quite like that of a tree – unites all the races, plant, human and animal alike. And just as the slave-making in ant colonies is an odious instinct, so to is the great sin of slavery in our society.
Dickens: I know of your family’s sterling work in the anti-slavery movement, and I am well aware that the Unitarians like you were involved long before the more famous ‘Anglican saints’ like Wilberforce! I myself was born into an Anglican home and baptized into the faith, but became a Unitarian in my 30s. I felt that the Church’s hand was at its own throat because of the doctrinal wranglings of the various parties. Here, more popery, there, more Methodism – many forms of consignment to eternal damnation! So being disgusted with our established church I carried into effect an old idea of mine and joined the Unitarians, who would do something for human improvement, if they could, and who practice charity and toleration. I deplore those non-Unitarian clergy who fulminate against me because of their emotionalism, ignorance and lack of cultivation, and eve more so those missionaries who make themselves perfect nuisances who leave every place worse than they found it.
Darwin: When I was a young man I thought seriously about becoming a clergyman. And I thought of myself as a Christian when I went aboard the Beagle, but over the years disbelief has crept over me at a very slow rate until at last complete. I have believed that the degree of evil and suffering in the world throws doubt upon the idea of an omnipotent and loving deity. We might well be unique with consciousness and our ability to reason, but this uniqueness evolved, not having been bestowed upon us by a divine creator. I know that within the Unitarian movement in America, both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau have accepted my theory. My idea fosters a deeper, nature-centered spirituality; rather than focusing on the supernatural it evokes wonder and awe because of the amazing diversity and fecundity of the natural world. There is grandeur in this view of life, a larger meaning and a broader ethic.
Dickens: It seems, friend, that we have much in common: the way in which we coped with childhood hardships; the way our youthful experiences helped to shape our curiosity of the world and its inhabitants; our desire to show our love and concern for each other and a sense of solidarity in fighting the evils of slavery, which diminishes the humanity in all of us; and an abiding appreciation and fondness for the Unitarian faith that calls us to a higher vision of people connecting with the sacred in life. May it truly be said – as Tiny Tim observed – God bless us, every one!
Conclusion: Charles Dickens died in June 1870, while Darwin died in April 1882. "It's rare for scientists and literary authors to cross paths. A scientist often spends many hours within the four walls of a laboratory, while many authors never set foot in a laboratory their entire lives. As a result, they generally don't talk to each other."
However, Priya Venkatesan goes on to argue in a 2007 article in The Scientist, that they do talk to each other, albeit indirectly -- scientists are indeed influenced by literary and humanistic discourse, and scientific principles are reflected in literary works. This article argues that Dickens appropriated many of the elements of evolutionary theory into his work: The possibility that creation is through natural order, rather than through the unknown, permeates such novels as Bleak House.
But whatever the truth of intertextuality, I hope that my artistic license, as seen in the meeting of minds we have witnessed here today, has served to lift up our eternal gratitude for the tireless and timeless genius demonstrated by these two Unitarian ‘saints’ who have gone before us.
Gaye W. Ortiz
2/5/2012
Sources for “The 2 Ds”:
A. Adrian, “Dickens on American Slavery,” MLA, Vol 67 (4), June 1952, 318.
S. Baleé, “Charles Dickens: The Show (But-Don’t-Tell) Man.” Hudson Review, 64 (4), 2012, 653-661.
D. Beaudreault. “Charles Dickens: A UU Social Activist.” http://uucov.com/for-visitors/sundays-at-uucov/past-sermons-a-talks/145-charles-dickens-a-uu-social-activist
---“Charles Dickens and slavery.” Goliath Business News. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-9259281/Charles-Dickens-and-slavery.html
C. Darwin, Darwin to Asa Gray 5 June 1861. Darwin Correspondence Project. http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-3176.
C. DeCoursey, “Darwin and Dickens, 1860-65.”
A. Desmond and J. Moore, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause” First Chapter. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/books/chapters/chapter-darwins-sacred-cause.html
J Hammer, “Mad for Dickens,” Smithsonian Feb 2012, 74.
J. Moore, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause”. The Linnean Society of London Event. www.linnean.org/fileadmin/events2/events.php?detail=161, 3/19/2009.
M. Timko, “Ebenezer Scrooge’s conversion.” UU World, Winter 2005. http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2273.shtml
Voyage of the Beagle Ch 21. http://www.kellscraft.com/VoyageOfBeagle/VoyageOfBeagleCh21.html
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