How Darwin’s view from his bedroom window ushered in a scientific revolution

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/18/darwin-heritage-down-house-kent

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The room that Charles Darwin used to monitor his revolutionary biological experiments has been recreated more than 100 years after it was closed and its contents were dispersed. Visitors to Down House, the great scientist’s home in Kent, will now be able to sit in the great bedroom where Darwin once monitored the research that helped him to develop his theory of natural selection.

Curators from English Heritage have used decorators’ inventories, family photographs and paint analysis to recreate the likely wallpaper, carpets, chintz curtains and giant four-poster bed that would have adorned Down House’s great bedroom. There is also a sofa based on the one that Darwin used while listening to his wife, Emma, reading extracts from popular novels, as well as a bookcase that includes a volume of Darwin’s favourite book, Mark Twain’s The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

From here, at the back of Down House, Darwin could gaze through a giant three-bay window over its huge gardens and survey the experiments that he had created to test his theories.

“Most great houses have a garden that is merely an addition, though often a spectacular one,” said curator Sarah Moulden. “But at Down, the garden and house were linked inextricably. What was written about and thought about in the house was put into practice in the garden. And it was from the main bedroom that Darwin could best survey what went on outside. That is why it is so important to understanding Darwin.”

Darwin moved into Down House, in the village of Downe near Orpington, in 1842, after his round-the-world trip on HMS Beagle, and he began developing his theory of evolution, carrying out a host of garden experiments to test out his ideas. These included small test plots of dug-up soil that can still be seen from the bedroom. Darwin counted the shoots that struggled to take over the plot.

“He concluded that only about one out of eight plants which started to take over a new plot would make it to the end,” said Rowan Blaik, Down’s head gardener. “It was evidence of the harsh nature of the struggle for survival that lay at his theory’s heart.”

Another example of his bedroom-monitored work is provided by climbing plants. A dozen varieties – including Virginia creepers, Boston ivy and Dutchman’s pipe – cover the walls surrounding its vast bay windows. All were planted by Darwin. “He could sit in his bedroom – which he used frequently as a refuge while suffering from poor health or avoiding unwanted guests – and watch the climbing plants trying to spread in different directions.”

Darwin was also fascinated by the interaction of plants and animals and he carried out careful inventories of populations in the local fields which led him to conceive of the idea of a trophic cascade, in which fluctuations in species numbers have all sorts of unexpected effects,” said Blaik.

What was written about and thought about in the house was put into practice in the garden

“He decided cats could have an impact on the flowers in local fields, for example,” said Blaik. “High cat numbers meant low mice numbers and, in turn, that meant high numbers of bumble bees – because mice destroy bee combs and nests. And, because bees pollinate clover, he argued that we should find more clover in fields where there are lots of cats.”

Darwin also dusted bees with flour so that his children could identify them and follow them through the fields. “From this work, he suggested bees were laying down some kind of chemical trails for other bees to follow,” added Blaik. “We know these today as pheromone trails.”

Darwin died in 1882, and Emma followed in 1896, after which the house was rented out before being turned, in 1907, into a girls’ school. In 1921, the Downe House School for Girls, whose former pupils include Kate and Pippa Middleton, moved to Cold Ash, in Berkshire, while Down House was turned into a museum run by the Natural History Museum before it was taken over, and renovated by English Heritage in 1996.

“The bedroom project now gives visitors an added dimension to understanding the man,” added Moulden.