MISSING LINK – LEMON & DARWIN

One of my Victorian heroes is Charles Darwin. Experts may disagree but I think the most important letter written to Darwin by a fellow naturalist was from Alfred Russel Wallace in the Spring of 1858. In it he wrote his essay “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type “. This ‘threat’ to the originality of Darwin’s own big theory motivated him at last to finish and publish On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, after years of hesitating. It is arguably the most important book in science, and perhaps ever.

Experts will certainly (and quite understandably) disagree with me that the NEXT most important letter written to Darwin by a fellow naturalist was in 1880 from William George Lemon (WGL). Also, a letter sent suggests that a letter of reply may have been received, although Darwin was by then very elderly. So, I wondered, did WGL receive a letter back from Darwin?

Of course, the experts would be right. To find a letter or letters from an amateur naturalist like WGL would only be important to someone like me which is why they are lost and why probably only I have bothered trying to track them down. Many letters to Darwin are well preserved but my search through on-line catalogues turned up nothing from W.G. Lemon even though he was, like Darwin, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London.

Wm Geo Lemon, Chairman, writes that the society has unanimously agreed to write a letter to Charles Darwin on the 21st anniversary of Origins.

Records of the West Kent Natural History Society (WKNHS) - of which WGL was then Chairman – show that the Society sent a letter to Darwin in November 1880 to congratulate him on the 21st anniversary of his great work. We know that WGL met Wallace around the same time and that he was friends with Darwin’s ‘apprentice’ Sir John Lubbock (who owned Darwin’s house), but I wanted to find out if WGL ever met Darwin in person. Their homes were only 12 miles apart. Imagine what the conversation might have been - WGL was an evangelical and expert on various 19th century evidences used to support Biblical truth. Darwin had become an atheist. That might suggest they were antagonists, but WGL also held strong views that Darwin’s theories could be reconciled with the Old Testament, (see Note-1).

Archive storage depot - the most unglamorous 'museum' you could possibly imagine in beautiful Greenwich

In 2024, to solve this possible 'missing link', I arranged to inspect a forgotten box of WKNHS archives in London. The said archive, (lost in limbo between two museums for years) is now held by the Greenwich Museum but due to lack of space is locked away on a nearby industrial estate. According to the head archivist, the steel and brass box had not been opened in at least 50 years and never catalogued. They agreed I could spend a couple of days exploring.

With the help of my wife, I spent an entire afternoon, plus the following morning, working through what turned out to be 3 boxes, photographing papers and meeting minutes written between 1857 and 1900. There were photographs too. This West Kent society had been founded two years before Darwin’s seminal book and its Honorary President was Darwin’s close friend Sir John Lubbock. The WKNHS held its monthly meetings in the school hall in Blackheath where William George Lemon was a former headmaster and the society usually invited local experts to speak. Darwin also lived in Kent and the society often arranged field trips and outings. Did they ever visit Down House to meet the great man, or did Darwin ever contribute a lecture hosted at the Mission School?  The names of invited lecturers are recorded, so the answer to the latter is ‘no’. However, the co-discoverer of Natural Selection, Wallace did visit and gave a lecture in 1881.

Sir John Lubbock, "Darwin's apprentice" - a CDV photograph within the Society's album of member portraits created around 1870. (Copied by Tim Lemon with permission of Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust).

Within the records were several of Darwin’s friends (including John Lubbock and aeronaut James Glaisher) plus two transcripts of lectures given by William George Lemon. These alone made the time and expense worth it. The records do refer to the letter sent to Darwin and confirmed that there was a reply. But, alas, the correspondence itself was not in the box. There was a pencil notation next to the log of Darwin’s reply in the Minutes which suggests that an earlier archivist had removed the letter – presumably for safe keeping. Of course, I asked the current archivists, but they could not trace it. This would have been one of Darwin’s last letters – he fell ill and died a few months later. So, while some answers have been found, the letters remain missing.

Minutes from the WKNS meeting of December 15th,1880 reporting a letter of reply from Mr. Darwin. Written at the side in pencil is "letter with archivist". Below that is a minute that Mr. Wallace had accepted an invitation to lecture and would be invited to speak on 12th January 1881.

*Note-1: In 1864, William George Lemon was one of 700 signatories listed under a "Declaration of Students of the Natural and Physical Sciences” published in newspapers around Britain which stated:

      “WE, the undersigned Students of the Natural Sciences, desire to express our sincere regret, that researches into scientific truth are perverted by some in our own times into occasion for casting doubt upon the Truth and Authenticity of the Holy Scriptures. We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God, as written in the book of nature, and God's Word written in Holy Scripture, to contradict one another, however much they may appear to differ...."

I imagine today these 700 men (they were all men) would be called early Creationists.