Here is a review of a book about Darwin's servant on the Beagle Syms
Covington. Interestingly the author portrays Darwin in a bad light and his
Christian servant in a good light. More evidence of a revulsion against
Materialism (and its handmaiden Darwinism), as we head into the 21st
Century?
The book is listed on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/087113733X/
qid=906348350/sr=1-20/002-7382439-9146420
at US$17.50 but is not yet available. I have seen it in Australian book
stores already.
Steve
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Books Edited by Rod Moran
big weekend Saturday September 19, 1998 8
Beagle boy evolves at Darwin's expense
Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald (Knopf, AUD$35) Review:
Christopher Bantick
There is something quintessentially Australian about Roger McDonald's
writing. One has only to think of 1915, his searing first novel dealing with
the unspeakable horrors of the Diggers in World War I. When there was
Shearer's Motel, his gritty, insightful and empathetic study of men and
work.
His new novel, Mr Darwin's Shooter, is a departure from familiar terrain.
McDonald, like Robert Drewe before him in The Drowner, opens his story
in England. This is an understandable approach.
If McDonald is to expand his audience to encompass an international
readership, then some attempt at broadening the physical setting makes
sense. This year's Miles Franklin Award winner, Peter Carey's Dickensian
Jack Maggs, is a highly successful example of the present fashion in
offshore settings combined with an Australian resonance.
So it is with Mr Darwin's Shooter. Before he became a novelist, McDonald
was first and foremost a poet. His eye for detail and the juxtaposition of
language, images and colour are evident in his prose.
We are introduced to Syms Covington, a boy, "naked as a bulb", son of a
Bedford butcher whose "wielding of a long knife brought unwanted
carthorses to their knees in a welter of blood and callous humour".
McDonald does not keep us waiting long to reveal Covington junior as a
sensitive boy who is both deeply religious and easily impressed. From the
almost pastorally evoked introduction of him- in the Bedfordshire of John
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Covington subtly shapes the narrative.
The weight of Charles Darwin's work and perhaps the emergence of one of
the greatest ideas in science-his theory of evolution through natural
selection - is a deft counterpoint to McDonald's concentration on
developing Covington as a character.
Syms Covington was Darwin's manservant on board the Beagle throughout
the monumental journey to the Galapagos Islands between 1831-36. He
was not a servant in a domestic sense but was what we would call today a
scientific assistant.
Covington becomes Darwin's shooter. This means simply that as Darwin
was painstakingly building his theory-to be published some 20 years later in
1859 as on the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection-he
required animals which he could study. Covington's "work was killing small
birds". He goes deaf in the process.
The tasks Covington performs as Mr Darwin's shooter sit uneasily with his
religious beliefs. Ever since Covington sat in the Bedford chapel and
noticed Christian, the "man with the golden curls" in a stained-glass
window, he was aware he had been summoned to "follow". There is
palpable tension in the novel as Darwin becomes more of an atheist and
Covington "asks God's forgiveness for harming his creatures".
Darwin does not emerge under McDonald's treatment of him as a man of
compassion and warmth. Covington seems strangely vulnerable. Darwin
and his "manner of always making him feel unfinished and rough" serves to
alienate us no matter how much we may wonder at the science.
In a letter to his sister during the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin said of
Covington:
"My servant is an odd of sort of person. I do not very much like him; but
he is, perhaps from his very oddity, very well adapted to all my purposes".
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"My servant is an odd of sort of person. I do not very much like him"
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Covington witnesses the development of a world-largely, we feel, at
Darwin's instigation --where the place of God has been usurped by the
discovery of, ironically, the richness of "creation".
In some ways, this is a poignant book. There is much to move us as
Covington struggles with his religious faith in the face of the research
Darwin is undertaking which if proved correct, may seriously challenge
Covington's beliefs. Moreover, Covington anticipates and wrestles with
what he considers to be Darwin's threat to the central tenets of Christianity.
One of the most arresting and eloquent scenes in the book comes at the
very end. Covington, the unsettled faithful soul, in a dream-like ethereal
state, imagines he "sees" the penitent and supplicant Darwin "on his knees,
and there was no difference between prayer and the pulling of a worm from
the grass".
We are left with greater knowledge and perhaps admiration for Covington,
the little known and dedicated servant to Darwin's greatness. There are also
traces of something more substantial. The words of Bunyan's celebrated
hymn, To Be Pilgrim, appear strangely apt in describing him:
Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
can daunt his spirit:
he knows he at the end shall
life inherit.
Gently and insistently, McDonald's narrative dethrones Darwin.
He is replaced with Syms Covington, someone less celebrated but infinitely
more spiritual.
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ senojes@hotmail.com
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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