Dec 26:posted by lucidprose at 10:47 AM on January 8, 2009 [1 favorite]
An excellent day for sailing, but the opportunity has been lost owing to the drunkenness of nearly the whole crew.
What followed has been called the “Delicate Arrangement.” The term, drawn from a phrase used by Huxley’s grandson, provides the title of a 1980 book by Arnold C. Brackman arguing that Darwin received Wallace’s paper earlier than he acknowledged, incorporated aspects of it into his own work, and then sent it on to Lyell pretending that it had just arrived. Much poring over postmarks and manuscripts is involved in this argument, but the recent biographies all make it pretty clear that, at its root, this was primarily an instance—perhaps the greatest—of great minds thinking alike. But there’s no question that Hooker and Lyell—Darwin’s friends, both of whom were powerful and wellborn members of the Royal Society—took action to protect Darwin’s “priority.” And although Darwin wrote to Lyell that “I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit,” he turned the matter over to Lyell and Hooker with enough hints to help them resolve things favorably for him. Lyell and Hooker arranged a reading, at a meeting of the Linnean Society, on July 1, 1858, of three items: the first was an unpublished sketch by Darwin written in 1844; the second was a letter he had written to a Harvard biologist in 1857 describing aspects of his theory; the final, making a sort of coda to Darwin, was Wallace’s paper.posted by lucidprose at 5:24 PM on January 8, 2009
Wallace, still in the Tropics, did not even know about the meeting—nobody told him until it was all over. When he found out, he expressed the humble satisfaction of a servant invited to eat at the master’s table, writing to his mother, “I sent Mr. Darwin an essay on a subject on which he is now writing a great work. He showed it to Dr. Hooker and Sir C. Lyell, who thought so highly of it that they immediately read it before the Linnean Society. This assures me the acquaintance and assistance of these eminent men on my return home.” One wonders what he might have written had he known the reason for such speedy publication. But later, when he had divined more of the circumstances, he retained his generosity, adding only that he wished he had been given a chance to proof his article.
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posted by boo_radley at 8:47 AM on January 8, 2009 [2 favorites]