Creation Darwin and fossils: the Victorian struggle for science

Prologue

On 22 February 1875, Sir Charles Lyell, ‘the greatest English geologist, probably the greatest geologist who ever lived’,1 died at his home, 73 Harley Street, London. Lyell was a colossus of the Victorian scientific establishment. His Principles of Geology ran to 11 editions in his own lifetime. A champion and friend of Charles Darwin, his theories of sedimentation demonstrating that rocks were laid down by the deposition of layers of sediment over unimaginable periods of time, was essential to the timescales required by Darwin for his process of evolution by natural selection.

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The funeral service, in Westminster Abbey, began at 1pm on 27 February, with the Dean of Westminster, Arthur Stanley, officiating. A large congregation of scientists and statesmen watched the solemn procession of eight pallbearers carry the coffin from the west door to its place before the altar.2 All had been friends of the deceased and were distinguished by their contributions to Victorian science and government.

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Chief among the pallbearers was Sir George Campbell, 8th duke of Argyll, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), Privy Councillor and noted critic of Darwin. His views were balanced by Thomas Henry Huxley FRS who, in contrast, was nicknamed ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – challenging, mercurial, ‘the premier advocate of science in the nineteenth century [for] the English-speaking world’.3 Next were Sir Edward Ryan FRS, former Chief Justice of India and reformer of the British Civil Service who had been introduced as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society by Sir William Herchel; and Sir William Grove QC FRS, a judge and researcher in physics, whose electric generator, the ‘Grove Cell’, was used by Thomas Edison as the basis of his electric light.

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Sir John Evans FRS, archaeologist, current President of the Geological Society, and father of Sir Arthur Evans the excavator of Knossos, was partnered by John Carrick Moore FRS, geologist, mathematician and physicist, whose father had counted Edward Jenner among his friends. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker FRS was the last of these eminent men. He was the curator of Kew Gardens and a major figure in botany, exploration and plant-hunting. Hooker’s mentor, Sir Joseph Banks, was the botanist on Captain Cook’s voyages.

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The final pallbearer was, at first sight, a diminutive figure by comparison. He was the rector of a small parish on the southern border of Worcestershire, where it meets Gloucestershire. He did not have a title, major published research or Fellowship of the Royal Society. Instead, he was an example of a breed of clergyman whose intelligence and energy led them to become the champions of natural science, education and social reform, and a founders of the naturalists’ field clubs that extended scientific knowledge through their amateur observations. A friend of Lyell, correspondent of Darwin and Murchison and of all the major figures of Victorian geology, novelist and editor of Hugh Miller’s final book, his story originated in the Marches of medieval Herefordshire, and one of his descendants would command the evacuation of Dunkirk and the beachheads of D-Day.

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His name was Revd William Samuel Symonds, the Rector of Pendock.