Descent with modification: a great-grandson of Charles Darwin's opens new vistas into the voyage of the Beagle

Natural History, April, 2005 by Richard Milner

Born in 1919, Richard Darwin Keynes is one of Charles Darwin's twenty-five great-grandchildren and one of Darwin's hundred or so living descendants. His mother was Margaret Elizabeth Darwin, daughter of Darwin's son George, and his father was Geoffrey Langdon Keynes, a prominent surgeon and the brother of the economist John Maynard Keynes. A retired professor, Richard Keynes distinguished himself as a neurophysiologist at the University of Cambridge long before he became involved, as a historian of science, in the "Darwin industry."

As a young man, working with the giant nerve fibers of squid, Keynes helped discover how nerve impulses are transmitted in all animals. Later he worked out how electric eels project electric fields outside their bodies. His investigations took him on several occasions to South America, where he met the late Carlos Chagas, a biologist who had access to a ready supply of eels and other electrical fish. Coincidentally, Chagas's father was the physician who discovered the parasitic malady that some suspect Darwin contracted in South America, now known as Chagas' disease. The trips to South America sparked Keynes's scholarly interest in his illustrious ancestor. In this role he followed his mother's cousin Nora Darwin Barlow (1885-1989), daughter of Darwin's son Horace.

Keynes's house is situated near the Cambridge University Library, repository of the world's largest archive of Darwin letters and manuscripts. This interview, completed this past October, was conducted in his book-lined den, beneath a large portrait of Charles Darwin and pictures of other family members. Also hanging on the walls were some delicate sketches by Conrad Martens, who documented part of the Beagle's voyage, and a Victorian-era FitzRoy barometer (its inventor, Robert FitzRoy, was captain of the Beagle during Darwin's celebrated voyage).

NATURAL HISTORY: How are you descended from Charles Darwin? RICHARD DARWIN KEYNES: I am his great-grandson. Darwin knew only one of his grandchildren, Bernard; he never lived to see the others. The rest of the grandchildren were born later, including my mother, Margaret Darwin Keynes, my aunt Gwen Darwin Raverat, and my mother's cousin and great friend, Nora Darwin Barlow. All spent idyllic summers visiting their widowed grandmother, Emma Darwin, at Down House, the old homestead in the Kent countryside. My great-grandmother had moved to Cambridge after Darwin's death, but always summered at Down House--which has been restored as the Darwin Museum. Gwen wrote a classic reminiscence, Period Piece, about her childhood there.

NH: Do you have any special childhood memories of any of your eldest Darwin relatives?

KEYNES: For some reason my great-aunt Etty [Henrietta Darwin] hated stinkhorn mushrooms, and destroyed them whenever she saw them. I remember going with her along country paths, watching her smash stinkhorns with a special stick that she reserved for the purpose. Most of what I know about her, however, I read in Period Piece.

I also remember my great-uncle Leonard Darwin, who gave me an inscribed copy of the reissued Origin of Species in 1935. Some years later, in 1942, I was working at a government naval radar research station, and Leonard lived nearby. He was a nice old man, and I once stayed with him, but we never talked about anything significant. Later I found out that he was a leading figure in the eugenics movement.

NH: When did you begin your own Darwin research?

KEYNES: In 1968 I visited Chile to discuss neurophysiological experiments with colleagues. One day I was in Buenos Aires on my way home, when a British official, who knew I was a descendant of Darwin's, asked if I had seen a private Darwin collection there. Honestly, at that time I had taken hardly any interest in my great-grandfather. But I was fortunately taken to see these materials from the Beagle voyage, which turned out to be portfolios of drawings made by Conrad Martens, one of two artists aboard the ship [see "Conrad Martens and the Art of the Beagle," on preceding page]. And these splendid drawings--I've got three of them hanging here in my study--are what switched me on to Darwin. I asked the owner if I could borrow them to take back to England.

NH: What was Nora Barlow's influence on you?

KEYNES: The first thing I did when I returned home was to talk with her, and she realized at once the importance of the pictures. She had published, in 1933, a transcript of the Beagle diary, the journal that Darwin kept on board ship and sent piecemeal to his family from various ports. Nora's meticulous scholarship in publishing Darwin's informal writings was the inception of what is now called the Darwin industry. She became my mentor in Darwinian studies, and I've been following in her footsteps ever since.

Then the owner of the Martens portfolio wrote and asked me if I would sell it for him. I couldn't understand why he wanted to part with it, because he was a wealthy collector. I certainly couldn't see it go up on the auction block, so I enlisted the help of Nora Barlow, who purchased the pictures and presented them to the Darwin Archive at the Cambridge University Library.