A Delicate Arrangement: The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
Arnold C. Brackman
Times Books (1980)
Excerpts:
From Brackman's A Delicate Arrangement
Among Darwin's letters and journals that June morning of 1858 was a relatively thick envelope containing some twenty sheets of a thin 'foreign' stationary, probably rice paper, and probably pale violet in color. The manuscript was accompanied by a note from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had initiated a correspondence with Darwin only some twenty months earlier from Sarawak, Borneo... (Chapter 2)
(Chapter 3) Since the manuscript Wallace mailed from Ternate contained--in complete form--what is today known as the Darwinian theory of evolution, the date of its arrival at Down House acquires profound historical significance.
A quartet of dates is in the running as the date on which the postrider handed Wallace's envelope to Parslow. The first of the four-Friday, June 4--is speculative; the second--Tuesday, June 8--is the day Darwin wrote Hooker that he had suddenly found the missing 'keystone' of his theory; the third--Monday, June 14--is suggested by Darwin's 'little diary'; and the fourth--Friday, June 18--is the date publicly advanced by Darwin himself. Wherever the chronological reality may rest, June 1858 clearly marked for Darwin the moment of truth.
The problem is compounded by the disappearance of the Darwin envelope. The envelope...In all probability it no longer exists. It has either been misplaced or, more likely, destroyed.
The postal history of the period, the survival of a number of other Wallace letters from Ternate, and a consensus among philatelists is that it would take a letter from Ternate some twelve weeks to reach Down. According to the evidence found in Wallace's papers, he wrote out his complete theory of evolution toward the end of February and posted it March 9, when the first available Ductch vessel dropped anchor at Ternate. This is corroborated by a letter Wallace sent that same day by the same ship to Frederick Bates, the brother of Henry Walter Bates with whom Wallace had scoured the Amazon for species some years earlier. H. Lewis McKinney, a memeber of the University of Kansas faculty, was the first to draw attention to the Bates letter....
Wallace's letter to Darwin should have arrived the same day as Bates', June 3, or perhaps a day or two later. "It is only reasonable to assume that Wallace's communication to Darwin arrived at the same time and was delivered to Darwin at Down House on 3 June 1858, the same day as Bates' letter arrived in Leicester," said McKinney. "If this sequence is correct, as it appears to be, we must ask ourselves what Darwin was doing with Wallace's paper during the two weeks between 4 June and 18 June (when Darwin claimed to have received it)."
Source/Fonte: Amazon
