Charles Sheffield - The Amazing Dr. Darwin

Although the general setting of this story is real, Lambeth is an invented village. It lies near the north coast of Norfolk, midway between The Wash and Cromer. Since the villages of Blakeney and Stiffkey are still there to this day, the interested reader can locate Alderton Manor with fair precision. “The Blues,” cockles from Stiffkey, used to be famous, and the locals around Cromer still tell the story of Black Shuck, the giant hound who haunts the seacoast.

It would be quite plausible for Darwin to visit Norwich Hospital. As one of the first hospitals to be built outside London, it had been opened only in the early 1770s. At the time Norwich was the third largest city in the country, inferior in size only to London and to Bristol.

The lack of hospitals may have been a good thing since the death rate in them was terrifyingly high. As Darwin remarked to Ledyard in “The Lambeth Immortal,” a book, De Contagione , by Girolamo Fracastoro had as early as 1546 proposed a germ theory of disease, but the hospital authorities remained blissfully ignorant of any such ideas; or of simpler ones, such as cleanliness. Sir John Floyer wrote a book, Inquiry into the Right Use of the Hot, Cold and Temperate Baths , which ran to six editions between 1697 and 1722. It does not mention anywhere the idea of bathing for the sake of cleanliness.

“The Solborne Vampire” mingles three important themes of Darwin’s life. James Watt and Matthew Boulton excited Darwin’s interests as engineer, though he probably recognized Watt as his eternal superior in that field. No one, however, was Darwin’s superior when it came to medical diagnosis, or the skeptical evaluation of “supernatural” phenomena. Darwin was an ardent believer in the freedom of mankind, and welcomed both the American Revolution, and, in its less bloody phase, the French Revolution.

On the question of dates: the “chess automaton” of Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen was first exhibited in 1769. Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Empress Catherine of Russia, and Napoleon Bonaparte were all taken in by it, and persuaded that it was a real automaton. The centrifugal governor, which uses the speed of rotation of a steam engine to control the steam input, is attributed to James Watt and was produced around 1784. The relationship between Darwin and James Watt, the father of the steam engine, is neither invented nor exaggerated. They were close friends for 25 years. Watt said, after Darwin’s death, “It will be my pride, while I live, that I have enjoyed the friendship of such a man.”

This story called for little background invention or supposition. Cross Fell is real. It is the highest point of the Pennines, the chain of hills that runs from the English Midlands to the Scottish Border. At one time Cross Fell was indeed known as Fiend’s Fell, and according to legend St. Augustine drove the fiends away with a cross. Since then it has been called Cross Fell. Lead mines abound there, and have since Roman times.

The Helm is also real. It is a bank of cloud that sits on or just above the summit of Cross Fell when the “helm wind” is blowing. As a natural but a puzzling meteorological phenomenon, the Helm has attracted a good deal of scientific attention. The reasons for the existence and persistence of the Helm are discussed in Manley’s book Climate and the British Scene , published in 1952.

As for the botany, the medications used by Darwin are pretty much those available to the practitioner of eighteenth-century medicine. The plants used by the red fiend are consistent with the botany of the high fells, but so far as I know the medical value of most of them has not been established.

The eighteenth century is hard to see through twenty-first-century eyes, and when we meet someone who thinks with a modern mind it is surprising. Like Franklin, Darwin was centuries ahead of his time. If in these stories I have emphasized his more colorful and flamboyant side, that should not obscure the real man. The true Darwin is not to be judged by his pockmarked face or his overweight body. He is to be judged by his mind, and on that basis he carries off the highest honors.

The man to remember is the one described in The Torch Bearers , by Alfred Noyes:

Erasmus Darwin makes us look around and ask a question: Who, two hundred years from now, will serve as an emblem for the best of our own times?

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Charles Sheffield “The Devil of Malkirk”

© 1982 by Mercury Press; “The Heart of Ahura Mazda”

© 1988 by Davis Publications; “The Phantom of Dunwell Cove”

© 1995 by Dell Magazines; “The Lambeth Immortal”

© 1979 by Davis Publications; “The Solborne Vampire”

© 1998 by Dell Magazines; “The Treasure of Odirex”

© 1978 by Ultimate Publishing.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3529-X

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First printing, June 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sheffield, Charles.

The amazing Dr. Darwin / by Charles Sheffield.

p. cm.

“A Baen Books original”—T.p. verso.

Contents: Introduciton — The devil of Malkirk — The heart of Ahura Mazda — The phantom of Dunwell Cove — The Lambeth immortal — The Solborne vampire — The treasure of Odirex — Appendix: Erasmus Darwin, fact and fiction.

ISBN 0-7434-3529-X (HC)

1. Darwin, Erasmus, 1731-1802—Fiction.

2. Adventure stories, American.

3. Science fiction, American.

4. Naturalists—Fiction. I. Title: Amazing Doctor Darwin. II. Title.

PS3569.H3953 A83 2002

813’.54—dc21 2002022328

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Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America