The Midnight Man. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
confirmed Busk, donning spectacles to peer at the agenda before him. He shook his head imperceptibly at the long list of items before removing his spectacles with a snap. “I know, gentlemen, what is surely percolating in your fine scientific minds. It would be your wish that we move the Oxford debate to the top of our agenda.”
“Hear, hear.” The voices raised in unison.
Busk leaned back in his chair, waiting for the rumbling to calm down before continuing. “And since our host has been delayed”—he paused with the slightest unease—“I would suggest that we proceed with Dr. Dalton, who was present at the scientific conference where Bishop Samuel Wilberforce chose to speak against Mr. Darwin’s views. I will cede the floor to you, sir.”
Dalton bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.” He tipped his chair back and hooked his thumbs in the lapels of his melton jacket. “Having witnessed the debate firsthand, I can wholeheartedly endorse Huxley’s new moniker, Darwin’s bulldog.”
The room erupted in laughter with several of the men lifting their water glasses in a toast.
Raising his voice over the clamor, Dalton continued, “As we are all aware, the publication of Mr. Darwin’s book last year proposing a mechanism for evolution, that is, natural selection, caused outrage both in the Church and in society.”
Across from him, Edward Frankland nodded. “Implying, of course, that humans were not created by God but had evolved from other animals. And perceived as an assault on the divinely ordained aristocratic social order. This does not sit well in many circles here in England. And I must say, most unfortunate, that Darwin himself was too frail to attend the debate.”
A chorus of agreement met the statement before Dalton interrupted. “Unfortunate, yes, gentlemen, but hardly fatal, as you’ll discover if you would allow me to continue my account. First to set the scene.” The men leaned forward in anticipation, waiting as Dalton cleared his throat before carrying on.
“The room was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared in the hall, 700 persons or more managing to find places. The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side was packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the bishop’s speech, were an unforgettable factor in the acclamation of the crowd.”
Tyndall shook his head. “A behavior one would expect from the fairer sex.”
Dalton ignored the interruption. “Wilberforce took the podium first, attempting to undermine Darwin’s supporters with a provocative question: Was Thomas Huxley descended from an ape on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side of the family? As you can imagine, a shocked silence blanketed the room.
“Huxley, just as formidable a public speaker as Wilberforce, responded sharply. And if I may quote: ‘If then said I, the question is put to me, would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.’”
Dalton barely paused before the room broke out in cheers of approbation, several of the men pounding the table with enough vigor to have it shake on its legs.
“Well done, well done,” Frankland applauded. “I’m sure Huxley’s suggestion that he would rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop caused an uproar.”
“As a matter of fact, yes. One lady actually fainted and had to be carried from the hall while Robert Fitzroy, Darwin’s captain on his voyage aboard the Beagle, if you can imagine, brandished a Bible and implored the audience to have faith in God.”
“Damn sorry I missed it,” Busk muttered into his beard. “And a damn fine show, by all reports, although I must ask the question, Where does this debate leave us?” Like the bearer of bad news, his query cast a negative pall on the proceedings. “As we know, anyone who publicly supports scientific views at odds with accepted religious dogma risks ostracization and worse.”
“There is much at stake,” concurred John Lubbock from the end of the table. A short man with rounded glasses to match his girth, he had lost his position as head surgeon at King’s College Hospital for his unorthodox views. “I have already heard it said that Wilberforce, the High Church, and evangelicals will organize petitions and a mass backlash. They propose to bring forward a declaration at the upcoming Anglican convocation reaffirming their faith in the harmony of God’s word and try to make this a compulsory Fortieth Article of faith.”
“And we have also learned that they will take their campaign to the British Association for the Advancement of Science,” added Frankland soberly. “We find ourselves, indeed, as members of the X Club, involved in the struggle for freedom from clerical interference in science.”
Busk stroked his beard contemplatively. “Clearly, this is simply the beginning. Huxley is not endearing himself to society by lecturing to workers who, apparently, arrive in droves to hear him speak. And vicars, in turn, are encouraging factory owners to dismiss freethinkers.”
“It is rumored that while only half the nation frequents Sunday services, next to none attend from the slums,” added Frankland.
Busk nodded. “I digress only slightly when I ask all of you to remember the night of our first meeting when Huxley proposed, in jest, that our club be named Thorough Club, referring, of course, to the concept of freedom to express unorthodox opinions.”
“Although it was your wife Mrs. Busk, as I recall, who proposed our current name because it committed us to exactly nothing,” reminded Tyndall, tapping his pen pointedly on the sheaf of papers in front of him.
It had also been decided that meetings would be scheduled on the first Thursday of each month with dinners taking place at St. George’s Hotel on Albemarle Street, Almond’s Hotel on Clifford Street, and then, finally, at the Athenaeum Club. Meetings always started at six in the evening so that the repast would be over in time for the Royal Society session at eight o’clock.
Save for this evening, an exception of which they were readily aware to the last man. Suddenly, they were all thinking the same thing.
“Has he arrived yet?” asked Lubbock from his end of the table. The imposing ancestral portraits of the fourth Marquess of Conway loomed over the assembly, as though each august personage were considering the question.
“He’s somewhat delayed, I’d heard earlier from his butler,” supplied Busk, somewhat reluctantly. He sifted through the papers before him, trying to ignore the fact that they were ensconced in one of the country’s most ornate homes, invited by a usurper whose motives were about as transparent as the muddy Thames.
Conway House was overflowing with treasures that the late marquess had purchased in the decades before his untimely death late last year. Everyone knew that his life had been devoted largely to dissipation and foreign travel, making him a considerable connoisseur. He had snared Titian’s Perseus and Andromeda and seventeenth-century gems such as Rembrandt’s Good Samaritan, along with a trove of French furniture, gilt bronzes, and Sevres porcelain. Attracted to the luxury and refinement of eighteenth-century French art, the marquess, along with other English collectors, profited from the dissolution of many Continental collections during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.
And now, as everyone around the table recognized with painful clarity, 500 years of a family’s wealth and riches were lost to a clever and monstrously powerful upstart.
“Survival of the fittest, all right,” muttered Lubbock, not unaware of the terrible irony in the situation. He looked pointedly at the heavy gold candelabra at the center of the table. “Very good of our host to fund our work and to invite us to have our meeting at his new home whilst he’s in London.”
Busk concurred, alert to the tension filling the room. “Very gracious, very gracious, indeed. He is abroad much of the time, I deduce, running his shipping and banking kingdom from all corners of the empire.