Development of Darwin's Theory - Married Life

Married Life

In 1839, now married to Emma and settled in London, Darwin continued to look to the countryside for information and began a Questions & Experiments notebook with ideas that would have seemed bizarrely mundane to the "philosophical" scientists of the time. He printed Questions about the Breeding of Animals and sent them out to gentlemen farmers, asking for information on animal husbandry from their nurserymen and gamekeepers on how they crossed varieties or selected offspring. Of only three who responded one simply found the questions too overwhelming to answer. He found agreement with the visiting Swiss botanist Alphonse de Candolle whose father Augustin had used the idea of "nature's war". However, when he tried explaining his theory to Hensleigh Wedgwood, his cousin "seemed to think it absurd... that tiger springing an inch further would determine his preservation".

The publication in May of Darwin's Journal and Remarks (The Voyage of the Beagle) brought reviews accusing him of theorising rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. He turned his attention to expanding his investigations and theory of the formation of coral atolls as the first part of his planned book on geology.

In December as Emma's first pregnancy progressed, Charles fell ill and accomplished little during the following year. He did accept a position on the Council of the Geographical Society in May 1840. In 1841 he became able to work for short periods a couple of days a week, and produced a paper on stones and debris being carried by ice floes, but his condition did not improve. Having consulted his father he began looking for a house in the countryside to escape a city suffering from economic depression and civil unrest. Owen was one of the few scientific friends to visit Darwin at this time, but Owen's opposition to any hint of Transmutation made Darwin keep quiet about his theories.