The Origin: A Biographical Novel of Charles Darwin (review)

REVIEWS 275 were Christ-like. Dyer Lum, one of her lovers, did not have this particular attribute but he had another: he wanted to emulate the martyr John Brown. Cleyre was also drawn to Jews, a persecuted people, and to the Haymarket anarchists whose executions in 1887 forever haunted her dreams. She dressed the part of the martyr, too, wearing simple (when not ragged) dresses, cropping her hair short, and often walking barefoot. She made a virtue out of her "ascetic cast" and poverty, and felt better for not "making a trade of [her] beliefs," like Emma Goldman . Clearly, self-denial was a prominent theme in Cleyre's life (as in those of her comrades) and the movement provided her with ample opportunity to play secular nun. With this kind of information, Avrich could have conjectured about the anarchist personality, if such exists, but he does not do so in a sustained manner. In short, Paul Avrich has not written a biography in which the various themes of his subject's life are interwoven into a comprehensible whole. Indeed, the significant events in her life are often lost in a narrative weighed down with small and unimportant facts. We are told at what precise address she lived, who she had tea with in London, who met her at railroad stations, and what banal comments the police made when they arrested her in 1907. Such endless and tedious detail obscures the "rich drama" of Voltairine de Cleyre's life. In the end, Avrich demanded neither enough of his materials nor of himself. Char Miller University of Miami Irving Stone, The Origin: A Biographical Novel of Charles Darwin. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1980. 743 pp. $14.95. In The Origin, Irving Stone reveals three attitudes toward his subject: an affection for Darwin the man; a recognition that Darwin the thinker was one of those very rare individuals who intellectually "turned the world around"; and a determination to know all relevant facts—and more. Stone has spent years of careful and varied research in preparing this book. He has sojourned in those English and South American places where Darwin lived and worked, has read most of the published and unpublished writings by and about Darwin (including important, and little known, unpublished letters in libraries and private collections ), and he has consulted with scholars who have specialised knowledge of different aspects of Darwin's life. With a veteran biographer's sense of the appearance of an important 276 biography Vol. 4, No. 3 tension in an individual life, Stone begins his book in July 1831, when 22-year-old Darwin is at his home in Shrewsbury, preparing to go out on his first geological expedition with the older geologist, Adam Sedgwick . When Darwin returns home from this expedition, he finds a letter offering him a position on the Beagle. Like a long, leisurely paced, and informative documentary film, The Origin narrates the main events of Darwin's life: the peoples and places he visited during the Beagle voyage; his return to England and the development and publication of his revolutionary theory; his family life and his illness. Stone always strives to be accurate, and, in the main, he succeeds. He reports many unknown, or little known, biographical details: the youthful affectionate relationship between Darwin and Fanny Owen; Darwin's fear that his old father would die while he was away on the Beagle; a letter written to Darwin by Robert FitzRoy (ex-Beagle Captain) at the time of publication of The Origin of Species. His narrative is frequently enriched by accounts of contemporary food, clothing, events, and local surroundings. He is the only Darwin biographer who has depicted what the port of Plymouth was like in 1831, when Darwin was residing there. (At this time, Plymouth was one of the richer cultural centers in England.) Considering the size and scope of this work, there are only a very few factual errors. In 1831, young Darwin is reported as "swimming" in a Welsh bay. Darwin never refers to himself as swimming, and it seems likely that he was unable to swim. (His inability to swim makes his decision to go on the Beagle even more courageous...