The Evolution of Inanimate Objects: The Life and Collected Works of Thomas Darwin

The Evolution of Inanimate Objects: The Life and Collected Works of Thomas Darwin
Harry Karlinsky

LONGLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZE 2012While carrying out historical research at an Ontario asylum, psychiatrist Harry Karlinsky comes across a familiar surname in the register. Could the “Thomas Darwin of Down, England” be a relative of the famous Charles Darwin?In a narrative woven from letters, photographs, historical documents and illustrations, what emerges is a sketch of Thomas’s life — the last of eleven children born to Charles Darwin. It tells of his obsession with extending his father’s studies into the realm of inanimate objects – kitchen utensils, to be precise. Can the theory of evolution be aplied to knives, forks and spoons?In this stunning factitious biography, Karlinsky presents us with the tragically short life of Thomas Darwin, leaving the reader to decide how much is fact and how much is fiction.

The Evolution of Inanimate Objects

The Life and Collected Works of Thomas Darwin (1857-1879)

A Novel by

Harry Karlinsky

Dedication

For Sally, Franny, April, and Elizabeth

Epigraph

He who will go thus far, ought not to hesitate to go one step further

— Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

A world of made is not a world of born

— e. e. cummings, Complete Poems, 1904–1962

CONTENTS

Cover (#ulink_bb345a65-c263-5258-9faf-d4d70bf5a626)

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

To Dr. William Osler

Part One Thomas Darwin

One Down House

Two School Days

Three Cambridge University

Four London Asylum

Part Two Collected Works

Five Species and Varieties

Six Rudimentary Characters

Seven The Pastry Fork

Eight Hybrid Artefacts

Part Three Illness

Nine Bucke – Darwin Letters

Ten Dr. Bucke’s Diary

Part Four Epilogue

Eleven One Step Further

Thomas Darwin: A Brief Chronology

Sources for Quotations

Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Copyright

About the Publisher

Frontispiece: The Darwin Family Tree

Utilizing data from Figure 5 in Atkins H. Down: The Home of the Darwins. London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1974 and from the Darwin Pedigree, Emma Darwin Litchfield H. E. (ed) Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters 1792-1896. In Two Volumes. London: John Murray, 1915.

PREFACE

This work was intended to be a treatise on the history of Canadian asylums, particularly the London Asylum, which was among the first Canadian facilities established for the care of the insane. Opened in 1870 three miles east (at the time) of the city of London, Ontario, by 1879 more than 700 patients were lodged — a word chosen carefully — within its imposing structure. Regrettably, detailed descriptions of the initial patients and their illnesses are virtually nonexistent. Although casebooks, now housed in the Archives of the Province of Ontario, were maintained throughout each patient’s stay, the most consistent entries at the time of admission were limited to the patient’s name, sex, age, religion, birthplace, occupation, and civil condition (whether single, married, or widowed). Additional notes describing a patient’s symptoms or circumstances prior to admission were rare.

Sadly, “scant though this admitting information was, it was far more than was usually recorded later in the patient’s career.”

Career was an apt word. The majority of those admitted to the London Asylum did not recover and receded quietly into the anonymity of institutional life. Most commonly, subsequent documentation was confined to brief annual notes to the effect that a patient’s clinical status had remained unchanged. Only dramatic and untoward events altered this singular and uniform rhythm.

My preliminary research included a casebook review of all admissions to the London Asylum during the year 1879. On July 2nd of that year, Thomas Darwin, age twenty-one, was assessed and admitted by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, Medical Superintendent. Aside from the dull identifying details referred to above, there were no further clinical observations. Mr. Darwin was a single male of unstated religion and occupation. His birthplace was Down, England. An accompanying, and apparently standard, document issued by the Department of the Provincial Secretary of Ontario authorized transfer of Mr. Darwin from the Toronto Gaol (now better known as the Don Jail), where he had evidently been imprisoned for the previous twelve days as “dangerous to others.” The only additional entry in Thomas Darwin’s casebook was dated just under four months later — “Death due to tuberculosis — October 23rd, 1879. R. M. Bucke.”

The surname Darwin aroused my immediate interest. There was Charles Darwin, of course — the Charles Darwin — of On the Origin of Species. But who was Thomas?

The imperfect story has now emerged.