File pulled from the Talk.Origins Archive, with additional information from the Autobiography of Charles Darwin and The Darwin Legend, by James Moore.
by Simon Yates
few more details on the spread of the story and its subsequent rebuttal, taken from the book
The Survival of Charles Darwin: A Biography of a Man and an Idea, by Ronald W. Clark, (published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985 ), p. 199.“Shortly after his death, Lady Hope addressed a gathering of young men and women at the educational establishment founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody at Northfield, Massachusetts. She had, she maintained, visited Darwin on his deathbed. He had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, had asked for the local Sunday school to sing in a summerhouse on the grounds, and had confessed: ‘How I wish I had not expressed my theory of evolution as I have done.’ He went on, she said, to say that he would like her to gather a congregation since he ‘would like to speak to them of Christ Jesus and His salvation, being in a state where he was eagerly savouring the heavenly anticipation of bliss.’
“With Moody's encouragement, Lady Hope's story was printed in the Boston Watchman Examiner. The story spread, and the claims were republished as late as October 1955 in the Reformation Review and in the Monthly Record of the Free Church of Scotland in February 1957. These attempts to fudge Darwin's story had already been exposed for what they were, first by his daughter Henrietta after they had been revived in 1922. ‘I was present at his deathbed,’ she wrote in the Christian for February 23, 1922. ‘Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. . . . The whole story has no foundation whatever.’” (Ellipsis is in the book)
Clark's source for Lady Hope's supposed quotations of Darwin is given as Down, the Home of the Darwins: The Story of a House and the People Who Lived There, by Sir Hedley Atkins KBE, published by Phillimore for the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1974. Henrietta's rebuttal is referenced more fully as: Mrs. R B Litchfield, "Charles Darwin's Death-Bed: Story of Conversion Denied," The Christian, February 23, 1922, p. 12.
"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many fake religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."
( Charles Darwin in his Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Dover Publications, 1992, p. 62. )
Sir Francis Darwin (1848-1925)
"Lady Hope's account of my father's views on religion is quite untrue. I have publicly accused her of falsehood, but have not seen any reply. My father's agnostic point of view is given in my Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I., pp. 304-317. You are at liberty to publish the above statement. Indeed, I shall be glad if you will do so. Yours faithfully, Francis Darwin. Brookthorpe, Gloucester. May 28, 1918."
( Quoted from James Moore, The Darwin Legend, Baker Book House, MI. 1994, p. 21. )
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
"I think that generally (& more & more as I grow older), but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."
( Quoted from Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 636. )
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