By the beginning of Act Three, called The Descent of Man, all En gland is caught up in a fierce religious controversy over Darwin’s theories. Darwin has published a book about the Origin of Species; and Wilberforce, now Oxford’s head Bishop, has made a point of denouncing that work and ridiculing the author. He hopes by this strategy to create a conflict between Darwin and Emma Wedgwood, who have postponed their marriage (under pressure from Emma’s family) until Darwin’s respectability is more firmly established in the public mind. It seems a distant goal, at a time when English churches resound with anti-Darwinian rhetoric, torch-bearing mobs threaten Oxford, and Emma herself is torn by the conflict between Romantic Love and Religious Duty. The tempest culminates in a public Debate in a crowded London hall, where Darwin and Wilberforce argue over the ancestral relations of Ape and Man. Darwin expounds ( sings, that is) his doctrine eloquently, with gentle humor; while Wilberforce, under the fierce lamp of logic, is revealed as a jealous poseur. “Darwin a True Scholar!” a headline in the next morning’s London Times proclaims, calming the general excitement and smoothing the way for Emma and Darwin to marry. But Wilberforce won’t suffer himself to be humiliated in such a manner. He accuses Darwin of blasphemy and personal insult, and challenges him to a duel. Darwin reluctantly accepts, seeing this as his only chance to rid himself of the meddlesome Bishop; and both men climb to a craggy meadow high in the wild and windblown mountains that loom over Oxford University.
The climax of the movie is essentially that duel, with ruses and low tricks attempted by Wilberforce, and thwarted by Darwin. There is singing, and pistol-shooting, and some lively screaming from Emma, and more pistol-shooting, and wrestling about on cliff-edges, until Darwin stands wounded but victorious over the cooling corpse of his ruthless enemy.
Followed by a wedding ceremony, bells rung, cheerful noises, and so forth.
Julian gave his approval to this outline, though he took a certain pleasure in pointing out the distance between our dramatic liberties and historical truth in the strictest sense. (“If Oxford has Alps,” he liked to say, “then perhaps New York City has a Volcano, geography being so flexible a science.”) But these were amicable objections, not serious ones; and he understood our motives in remodeling the obstinate clay of history.
As for the songs and their lyrics—so important to the success of any such enterprise—what could we do but recruit Calyxa’s formidable talents? Julian supplied her with a biography of Darwin recovered from the Dominion Archives, along with works discussing the taxonomy of beetles, the geography of South America, the habitat and life-cycle of Pirates, and such subjects. Calyxa undertook her assignment very seriously, and read all these books with close attention. Several times, when the household help was absent, I was delegated to attend to Flaxie’s infant requirements (which were numerous and urgent) while Calyxa continued her creative work at the desk or the piano.
In a few days she had sketched out Arias and melodies for all three Acts of Charles Darwin.
She presented these to Julian on a night when he arrived along with Pastor Stepney for our weekly Script Conference. Julian leafed through the music and lyric sheets with deepening appreciation, judging by the expression on his face. Then he turned to Calyxa and said, “You ought to sing some of it for us. Magnus doesn’t read music, but I want him to hear it.”
“Most of the Arias are male parts,” Calyxa said, “though Emma Wedg-wood has a song or two.”
“That’s understood. Here,” Julian said, handing over one of the first sections, in which the young Charles Darwin, during a beetling expedition outside Oxford , spots his cousin Emma in the woods. [The English, in those days, were not particular about wooing and marrying cousins. It was a practice as acceptable to them as it is to our own Eupatridians.]
Calyxa sat down at the piano and picked up the song at the point where Darwin is inspecting the contents of his bug-net, singing:
These creatures yet are all alike in
Several ways that I find striking:
Six legs fixed on a tripart body;
External shells, some plain, some gaudy;
Some have wings, or hooks, or hair—
distinctions, yes, eight, ten, a dozen—
And yet in General Structure they’re
As like as I am to my cousin.
Here comes my cousin now! And as she
Pauses in the shady hedge-wood
I hope she’ll turn her eyes to me,
That young and pious Emma Wedgwood!
White summer dress, blue summer bonnet,
A red coccinellid clinging on it—
“Stop!” cried Julian. “What’s a coccinellid?”
“Ladybug,” said Calyxa, tersely.
“Very good! Carry on.”
All life intrigues me, without doubt,
And yet in truth (for truth will out),
I find Miss Emma’s pretty legs
More interesting than Skate-Leech Eggs…
There were a few more interruptions from Julian, when he needed some point clarified, but for the most part Calyxa sang without interruption—the whole score, except for one duet (which she couldn’t manage by herself) and the final choral Medley. She sang the male parts with gusto and the female parts in a fine contralto, and banged the piano with great enthusiasm and skill. Little Flaxie could not sleep through all this noise, of course, and her nurse eventually brought her down to join us. In the end we had nearly an hour of Calyxa’s wonderfully entertaining performance, at the end of which she sat back from the piano with a satisfied smile on her face. She undid the scarf she was wearing, “and down her slender form there spread / Black ringlets rich and rare,” while Julian clapped his applause, and the rest of us joined him for a long ovation. Even Flaxie attempted to clap, though she was inexpert at it, and her flailing hands passed in mid-air more often than they collided.
It was altogether the finest time we had had for quite a while, and we might have been some large family, joined together after a long absence, taking delight in one another’s company, and never heeding the griefs and dangers that circled about us like carrion birds over a tubercular mule.
7
It was late that summer when an assassin crept into the Executive Palace and hid himself in the Library Wing, for the purpose of putting a pistol to Julian Conqueror’s head and killing him.
August had just given way to September, and the production of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin was well under way. Julian had not been idle during the preparation of the book and music. All the power of the Presidency and much of the wealth he controlled as a Comstock had been devoted to it. He had renovated a set of unused stables at the West 110th Street end of the Palace grounds, turning them into a “movie studio” as modern as anything in Manhattan ; and he had recruited the talents of the city’s finest Production Company, which was called the New York Stage and Screen Alliance. This combination of players, singers, noisemakers, camera-operators, film-copiers, et alia, had been responsible for many well-regarded movies, including Eula’s Choice, previously described. In the past, however, they had always been bound by the rules of the trade and the strictures of the Dominion. In this case Julian had taken charge of them directly; and they were bound to his instructions, and no one else’s.