Hey, it’s Charles.
Remember how I said I was hoping to wait a little longer? The universe decided that was not an option.
A letter arrived yesterday from a young naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace, currently in Malaysia collecting specimens. I have never met him. We have exchanged a few letters — he seemed bright, enthusiastic, the kind of person who reminds you of yourself when you were younger and still thought the world was simple.
His letter contained a short essay. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought.
I read it. I had to sit down.
Wallace has figured it out. Independently. On his own.
Sitting in a hut in Malaysia with a fever, he arrived at essentially the same theory of natural selection that has been locked in my drawer for twenty years. Not vaguely similar. The same theory. The same mechanism. The same conclusion.
Twenty years I have been agonizing over this. Twenty years of barnacles and stomach aches and telling myself I needed just a little more evidence. And some young man with a fever on the other side of the planet worked it out in a week and mailed it to me like it was nothing.
I am not angry at Wallace. He did brilliant work. But reading his essay felt like being punched very slowly in the stomach. My friend Hooker has been telling me for years to just publish. He practically begged me. And I kept saying not yet, not yet, I need more time. Now there is no more time.
Hooker and Charles Lyell stepped in immediately. They arranged for both Wallace’s essay and a summary of my work to be presented together at the Linnean Society — a joint presentation, my name and Wallace’s side by side, establishing we both arrived at the same conclusion independently. Wallace, to his enormous credit, was gracious about the whole thing.
But a joint presentation is not enough. If I do not publish a full account of my theory immediately, it will belong to Wallace in the public mind. Twenty years of work, thousands of specimens, notebooks full of evidence — all of it a footnote.
So I am writing. Finally. After two decades of hiding, I am writing the book.
I am calling it On the Origin of Species. I am trying to make it readable — not just for scientists but for anyone. If I am going to start a war, I want to make sure everyone understands exactly what I am saying and why.
I am working faster than I have ever worked. My hands cramp. My stomach is a disaster. Emma brings me tea and does not ask what I am writing about because I think she already knows and would rather not have it confirmed.
My publisher printed 1,250 copies for the first run, which he thought was generous for a science book.
They sold out on the first day.
The drawer is finally empty. After twenty years of carrying it around, I feel lighter than I have in as long as I can remember.
I do not know what happens next. Actually that is not true — I know exactly what happens next. The Church is going to be furious. The newspapers are going to call me a madman. People who have smiled at me for decades are going to pretend they never knew me. My quiet life in the countryside with my barnacles and my garden is probably over.
Whatever comes next, at least it is the truth.
— Charles
