Hooker and Huxley, for their ‘short-sighted adherence’. Darwin thought his review
‘spiteful, extremely malignant, clever, and ... damaging’ and later commented that
‘The Londoners say he is mad with envy because my book is so talked about. It is
painful to be hated in the intense degree with which Owen hates me.’
Wallace received his copy of the Origin while in Ambon on his way to Ceram and
then Waigeo. He wrote to Darwin expressing his admiration for the book and this time
Darwin replied by addressing him personally:
My Dear Mr Wallace,I received this morning your letter from Ambon containing some
remarks and you high approbation of my book. Your letter has pleased me very much, and
I most completely agree with you on the parts which are strongest and which are weakest
... Before telling you about progress of opinion on the subject, you must let me say how I
admire the generous manner in which you speak of my Book: most persons would in your
position have felt some jealousy. How nobly free you seem to be of this common failing of
mankind. But you speak far too modestly of yourself; you would, if you had my leisure done
the work just as well, perhaps better, than I have done it.
Talking of envy, you never read anything more envious and spiteful than Owen is
in the Edinburgh Review ... The attacks have been heavy and incessant of late. Sedgwick
and Professor Clark attacked me savagely at the Cambridge Philosophical Society, but
Henslow defended me well although not a convert. Phillips has since attacked me in a
lecture at Cambridge. Sir W. Jardine in the New Philosophical Journal. Wollaston in the
Annals of Natural History. A. Murray before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Houghton
at the Geological Society of Dublin. Dawson in the Canadian Naturalist Magazine. And
many others. But I am got case-hardened and all these attacks will make me only more
determinatey to fight.Case-hardened? His dilemma of whether to publish On the Origin of Species had
been decided. In fact the ensuing controversy seems to have revived the Darwin of
his youth. The Charles Darwin who had spent months riding the Argentinian pampas
with the gauchos, sleeping rough, and consorting with generals and revolutionaries.
There were challenges to be met and the elderly and perennially ill Darwin was for
now, at least, cast aside. The newly invigorated Charles Darwin and his lieutenants,
Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley, were ready to go into battle for an idea whose
time had come.
Charles Darwin – On the Origin of Species 181