Darwin's Image

  
Today is Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin. I know that, but for a few twists of fate, we might be instead celebrating Wallace Day on 8th January each year (with the bicentenary in 14 years’ time), but Homo sapiens is a funny creature, and we like to have an event to celebrate. We have National Doughnut Week, National Conifer Week and a whole lot of other worthy causes, so why not have a Darwin Day to celebrate evolution by means of natural selection?

All the media bumf (possibly aided and abetted by the NHM's Darwin exhibition posters) insists on showing Charles Darwin the old man. Hell, both the icons and codes I put at the top of the post show the old, grey-bearded Darwin. It is the old Charles Darwin who is most caricatured in the Punch cartoons, a bias I put down to the fact that the satirists only really got going on Darwin after the publication of "The Descent of Man" in 1871, when he was already in his sixties.


It's this Darwin-as-an-old-man portrait which is so haunting. I think it is because the eyes look so sad that the images of the elderly Darwin stay etched in our memories. Darwin was 71 years old when this photo was taken.

But what did the man look like when "On the Origin of Species" was published?


This was him at the age of 51, just after the publication. Still not looking overly happy with his lot, but by now he had lost his daughter Annie and, over his gradual loss of faith, stopped attending church with his family.

I far prefer the photo of Darwin shortly after his wedding:


He looks ready to change the world. He's brimming with ideas from his long voyage on The Beagle. He's a newly-wed with a long life ahead of him. He did so much of his scientific research between the return from the Americas and the publication of "Origin".

There's a film coming out, called "Creation", starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin. Paul Bettany is an excellent actor, and I think he will do a great job of bringing out the facets of Darwin's personality that we don't often see. I like the casting of Toby Jones as Huxley and Benedict Cumberbatch as Hooker. But I'm really unsure about the plot. I have a horrible feeling it's going to make me very unhappy indeed. I think it's going to try to put faith where there wasn't faith, and add the supernatural to the natural.

Enjoy Darwin Day wherever you are.