Sunday Times (London), February 18, 2001, Sunday

HEADLINE:  Bigger than Darwin

BYLINE: Miranda Seymour

     VICTORIAN SENSATION The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and
Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. By James
A Secord. Chicago U P Pounds 22.50 pp624

     Tennyson, with whom this accomplished work begins and ends, was an
avid reader. In 1844, he spotted a review of an anonymously authored book
which, according to the critic, convincingly linked the natural sciences
to the history of creation.

       The poet, like many other readers of Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation, had already formed what we might consider advanced views on
this subject. Man had resulted from a slow gestation beginning with simple
invertebrates; man's ability to reason and distinguish between good and
bad was part of his development. Tennyson had already completed much of In
Memoriam, arguably the most powerful of Victorian poems. After reading
Vestiges, he used its notion of an ever-ascending condition to celebrate
the idea of a link "Betwixt us and the crowning race".

     Tennyson's readers knew exactly what that reference meant. It is we
who have lost it. Hailing Darwin as the great originator, we have
forgotten that Vestiges, in the mid-19th century, had a greater impact, reaching far
more readers and being discussed at all levels.

     This is the central point of James A Secord's book. The idea he
illustrates in a hundred entertaining ways is that we, as readers, like
making narratives. We want things tidy, with beginnings and ends. It's
reassuring to suppose that the concept of evolutionary culture began with
Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859. Reassuring, and wrong, not just
because Darwin's grandfather had been writing about evolutionary matters
in the previous century, but because geologists had reached Darwin's
conclusions on evolution -not natural selection, which blew up a storm
rather later -years before he published his turgid and, in many respects,
quite cautious book.

     Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published (anonymously) in 1818,
was not directly responsible for the upward surge of new ideas about
creation and spontaneous generation. Shelley's extraordinary book did,
however, provide the creationists and their opponents with a potent image.
Discussions of man's origins were regular among the circles in which she
herself moved; her own interest in fossil history led her to consider
writing a book on the subject.

     The suggestions made by Vestiges were, then, original only in the
elegance of their formulation. (Even its opponents conceded that the prose
was superb.) Revealingly, the gossips and critics were able to produce at
least 10 authors who might have produced such an argument. Two of them,
intriguingly, were women.

     "Sensational" was the description always given to Vestiges. In
Britain alone, it went through 14 editions and sold 40,000 copies: why? It helped,
of course, that Vestiges looked small and user-friendly, its scarlet cover
causing one irate reviewer to compare it to "the accomplished harlot". It
was, unlike Darwin's later work, easy to follow and illustrated with
homely analogies. Above all, it was a curiosity. The anonymity by which the
Scottish publisher, Robert Chambers, screened himself for 40 years became
one of the book's hottest selling points.

     Not even Secord, whose knowledge is impressively omnivorous, is
certain why Chambers continued to hide his identity for so long. The
decision was first taken, it seems, from a combination of prudence and
shrewdness. He wanted to sell copies; he knew that his unscientific status
would be held against him. Anonymity, while frequent in fiction, was
unusual in the fields of biography and history. To be anonymous in this
area was to attract attention and speculation. Guessing the author became
part of the enterprise in a period that extended into decades during which
Vestiges and its authorship were passionately discussed. An anonymous
sequel, published in 1845, may have sold only 3,000 copies, but it
achieved  the more important goal for Chambers of keeping up interest.

     Transmutation was the brand-new theory of creation that Chambers put
on offer in his book, prefacing it with the bold, Frankenstein-led query:
"In what way was the creation of animated beings effected?" The notion of
endless ascent was not received with unanimous respect. Florence
Nightingale joked that she found it impossible to climb down again, "and
was obliged to go off as an angel". Darwin, scratching for fleas while he
furtively studied the British Museum's copy, thought the geology and
zoology were hopelessly amateur, although he agreed with the general
conclusions. Philip Gosse, rejecting the idea that fossils indicated a
pre-biblical history, wrote a response, Omphalos; 75% of the published
copies were pulped through lack of demand. Vestiges continued to sell.
Punch joked about a lonely book that is spurned at the door of every famous
author who might have claimed it. Chambers, confronted with an inquiry
about "that horrible book" and whether he had read it, kept his counsel.

     It is hard to overpraise this book. Magnificently illustrated,
erudite, thoughtful and stimulating, it has the added bonus of a wickedly
subversive style. I liked, to single out a small example, Secord's
throwaway description of a Punch journalist: "Douglas Jerrold was a known
infidel (and ate his peas with a knife)." One of the illustrations shows a
group of "advanced thinkers" chatting by the fire. The light catches their
faces; they look intensely alive, and enthralled. Reading Victorian
Sensation gives you the illusion, at least, of joining them.

     Available at the Sunday Times Books Direct price of Pounds 20.50 inc
p&p on 0870 165 8585

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