Mr. Darwin's Shooter

Syms Covington, the protagonist of this magnificent novel, was a real person. A seaman on board the HMS Beagle, he became the personal servant to Charles Darwin, helping him gather specimens in South America, tending him in England, and maintaining a correspondence even after his emigration to Australia. He might have remained a mere footnote to history, mentioned in Darwin's letters but not acknowledged in either THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE or THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, had Roger McDonald not given him an intensity of life that, in this book, quite eclipses the reticent Darwin. One thread of the novel begins with Covington as a knacker's apprentice in Bedford, England, a latter-day follower of the Christianity of John Bunyan and his PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. Meeting a charismatic sailorman-preacher, he goes with him to sea, both ending on HMS Beagle, where Covington strives to get noticed by Darwin. Through strength, skill, and sheer persistence, he eventually succeeds, and embarks on a series of adventures, both scientific and amatory. Alternating with these sections are others set thirty years later in Australia. Covington has become an eccentric half-deaf old man, his fortune made, but terrified that Darwin's conclusions in the forthcoming ORIGIN OF SPECIES will reveal him as an accomplice in disproving the scriptural foundations of the faith on which he has based his life. The unequal relationship between the old hermit and the ambitious young doctor who at first tries to patronize him has an austere fascination as the facts gradually emerge, but I cannot say that it is realized with sufficient clarity to bring Covington's spiritual crisis truly into focus. By contrast, the youthful chapters leap off the page in an incandescence of language that is at once brilliant and strange. Darwin's vessel called in at Australia on her return voyage; his servant Syms Covington emigrated there; and now an Australian author is writing about both characters. It seems appropriate; Australia, as McDonald's Covington observes, is a country where servants soon become masters. It is also, like the hinterland of South America and the wastes of the Galapagos, a land of strange wonders where even to inhabit it is to partake in a new act of creation. And to match it, McDonald virtually creates a new language out of old ingredients: one part deliberate archaism, one part the scriptural overtones of John Bunyan, one part vernacular slang, and one part sheer invention, the whole making a brilliant verbal coinage that feels new-minted. Take this description of Covington playing his fiddle outside the cabin where the four officers are carousing: "They saw it, the winking curves of walnut wood. And presto Covington was enjoined to render a tune, a merry jig played in the inn near the crowded kennel where Spit and Polish were fart-daniels in his Pa's litter. Pelting over the bridge Covington bowed, raising a fine dust of resin. Soon his four were fox-hunting, with all the tally-hos

McDonald's book is a beauty for those whose idea of a "good read" entails historical fiction in service of Big Ideas.The "shooter" is McDonald's fully fleshed-out version of Darwin's right-hand man and specimen collector; shown at different ages and in particular as an aging father and rancher in Australia wondering at his own role in helping Darwin undermine Faith.First class. Thoroughly researched but, as one professional reviewer notes, it "wears that scholarship lightly" -- all in service of the story. Still, it's more challenging to read than most modern fiction, and belongs more to readers of Umberto Eco (or maybe John Le Carre) than to those of Grisham or Crichton.

It is such a pleasure to find a book which grapples with some of the Big Ideas of history. Surely the theory of evolution and the publication of Origin of the Species are among the most life-changing developments in intellectual history in the past two hundred years. McDonald does justice to these, attempting to present momentous ideas with the seriousness they deserve while at the same time creating compassion for the people whose immediate lives and religious beliefs are seriously challenged, if not threatened. Though some may feel that the use of 19th century language and vocabulary are pretentious, I found them completely appropriate to the subject, creating a realistic setting for the ideas and themes. Since fiction by definition involves pretense, the use of "dated" language is not necessarily a failing. This is a challenging, fascinating work, which is, at the same time, great fun to read.

We always see Darwin as this bearded, even owlish face, peering out of the 19th Century. With the fictionalization of an obscure associate, an unlettered but not unintelligent sailor who helped the master with his collections of species during the voyage of the Beagle, McDonald has enlarged our image of Darwin and the times in which he flourished. Not only is it a tremendous read, a great tour-de-force of story-telling, but it provides many cogent commentaries on the theory and its impact on ordinary, God-fearing folk. This is really great historical writing.