THEDARWIN CONVERSION STORY:

ANUPDATE

RobertC. Newman*

Abstract

Since the discussions of Rusch (1975),Rusch and Klotz (1988) and Herbert (1990), new information on the Darwinconversion story has come to light. The earliest version of the story has been located in the Watchman-Examiner, and some furtherbiographical information on a possible candidate for Lady Hope is presented.

Introduction

Probably no other individual in modern times hashad a greater influence in turning people away from the biblical account ofcreation, the scriptural view of mankind, and the authority of the Bible thanCharles Darwin. His Origin ofSpecies(1859) and Descent of Man (1871) were seen by many of his contemporariesas giving scientific credibility to the idea that all life developed by purelynaturalistic processes. As aresult Darwin provided considerable impetus for several atheistic ideologieswhich have dominated our troubled twentieth century.

In view of this, most people are surprised tohear that Charles Darwin allegedly became a believer in Christ near the end ofhis life. This story – whichwe should rejoice in, if true – has circulated in numerous tracts andmagazine articles since 1915 (see Rusch [1975], Rusch and Klotz [1988] andHerbert [1990]). It narrates aninterview with Darwin, in the fall of the last year of his life, by a"consecrated English woman" identified only as "LadyHope." According to heraccount, she was allowed to visit with Darwin, and found him reading the NTepistle to the Hebrews, which he called "the Royal Book." When she asked him about Creation, hebecame very distressed and said that people had taken his unformed ideas andmade a religion out of them. Darwin then invited her to speak to some of his servants, tenants andneighbors in his garden summerhouse on "Christ Jesus, and Hissalvation," and promised that he would sing along with them from his openbedroom window.

As Rusch (1975), Rusch and Klotz (1988), Herbert(1990) and others have pointed out, this account does not square well withother information we have about Darwin. His correspondence in the winter and spring following this allegedincident give no indication that Darwin's agnosticism had changed or that his beliefin evolution had lessened. WhenDarwin's daughter Henrietta Litchfield heard this story, she denied that LadyHope had visited Darwin, that Darwin's estate had a summerhouse, or that the"servants or villagers ever sang hymns to him." She claimed the story was invented inAmerica (Rusch and Klotz [1988], 20-21, quoting from The Christian, 23 Feb 1922).

Some confusion exists in the various tracts asto whether this story was first reported by Lady Hope in Northfield, England orNorthfield, Massachusetts. Thedate of her report is given as August 15, 1915. Rusch's attempt to find this report in the issues of the Watchman-Examiner available to him in themidwest was unsuccessful (Rusch and Klotz [1988], 3).

SomeNew Findings

Intrigued by this story and spending my summersin the Washington, DC area, I decided to try to locate the article in theLibrary of Congress with its extensive resources. Assuming the Watchman-Examiner was some sort ofperiodical and using the date of August 15, 1915 as a starting point, thesearch was successful. The Watchman-Examiner was a national Baptistnewspaper issued weekly from Boston and New York since 1819, with somevariation in name over its history. The Library of Congress has a nearly complete run of the paper.  The article turned up in the firstissue following the above date (Hope [1915]) and is reprinted below for yourconvenience:

This article was preceded by a four-page reporton the 1915 Northfield Conference, a summer Bible conference held on thegrounds of the Northfield Seminary, a girls' school in Northfield,Massachusetts founded years before by Dwight L. Moody. The conference that year ran from July30 to August 15, and Lady Hope gave this testimony at one of the morning prayerservices, the date not specified. The particular issue of this paper was stamped as received by theLibrary of Congress on August 19, so the account was in print no more than afew days or weeks after she gave it orally. Thus, so far as we know, the story was first circulated inthe United States some 33 years after Darwin's death. Since this is also long after Darwin's wife Emma died in1896, the suggestion that she started the story is unfounded.

Who was this Lady Hope? The Watchman-Examiner gives us no moreinformation than has circulated in the tracts. As reported by Rusch and Klotz (1988) and Herbert (1990), aformer editor of Burke's Peerage, L. G. Pine, was asked this question also. He could come up with only one"Lady Hope" who would have been grown in 1881 and still alive in1915, a woman he names Elizabeth Reid Stapleton-Cotton, mentioned in Burke'sPeeragein the lengthy article on Viscount Combermere. In seeking to verify this reference, I discovered that Pinehad mistakenly put her in the Stapleton-Cotton branch of the family, though herancestors separated off from the line before the "Stapleton" wasadded. Her proper maiden nameshould be Elizabeth Reid Cotton.

According to Burke's Peerage and Burke's LandedGentry,Miss Cotton was born sometime after 1841 and was married twice. Her first marriage (2 Dec 1877) was toAdmiral of the Fleet Sir James Hope, G.C.B., by which marriage she became LadyHope. He died less than four yearslater on 9 June 1881. So in thefall of 1881, when our story is set, Lady Hope would have been less than fortyyears old and recently widowed. She later married Thomas Anthony Denny (27 Sept 1893), son of asuccessful Irish bacon merchant and founder of T.A. Denny and Co.  He, too, was much older than she (born2 Apr 1818) and he died 25 Dec 1909. Apparently there was no issue from either marriage.  Pine suggests that she preferred to beknown as "Lady Hope" (certainly more prestigious than "Mrs.Denny") right up to her death (8 March 1922), but it is not known wherePine got this information. According to the 1921 edition of Burke's Peerage, her address when thatedition went to press was Buccleuch House, Richmond, Surrey.  Lady Hope's father, General Sir ArthurThomas Cotton, K.C.S.I., has a brief obituary in Who Was Who, dying 25 July 1899.

Perhaps one of our British readers could followup on this biographical information with the more extensive resources availablein the U.K. It would be ofconsiderable interest to see if this Lady Hope was the sort of Christian workerpictured in the Darwin conversion story, what Christian groups she might havebeen associated with, what her reputation for veracity was, and whether shevisited America in 1915. Ofcourse, Elizabeth Reid Cotton might not be the Lady Hope we are looking for.

AlternativeExplanations

What can we say of the authenticity of the storyitself? Besides the twosuggestions that (1) Lady Hope made up the whole account, or that (2) Darwinreally became a Christian but his relatives sought to cover this up, two otherpossibilities should be considered. (3) Perhaps Darwin did meet with Lady Hope but she later elaborated whatwere his much more non-committal statements. (4) Or perhaps Darwin did say all the things reported in thestory, but he did so as a cover to avoid being evangelized by Lady Hope –a technique frequently encountered in personal work with unbelievers of thesort of strongly non-confrontational temperament Darwin is known to havehad. The Darwin correspondencementioned above makes alternative (2) unlikely, but there is still more work tobe done before we can give a final verdict on this story.

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*Robert C. Newman, Ph.D., is Professor of NewTestament at Biblical Theological Seminary, Hatfield, Pennsylvania, andDirector of the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute there.

References

________. 1908. SirJames Hope. Dictionary of National Biography 9:1212-1214.  An extensive article giving his navalexploits, but only mentioning that he was married twice and had no issue.  His obituary appears in the London Times, 10 June 1881.

________.1965. Denny. Burke's Landed Gentry, 18th ed.: 200.

________. 1967. ViscountCombermere. Burke's Peerage 104th ed.: 583 (differing pagination in variouseditions) under Sir Arthur Thomas [Cotton], son of Henry Calveley Cotton, sonof Sir Lynch Salusbury Cotton, 4th Baronet of Combermere; it was the sixthbaronet who added the name "Stapleton."

Herbert, David.  1990. Darwin's Religious Views: From Creationist toEvolutionist. Hersil Publications, London, Ontario.

Hope, Lady.  1915. Darwin and Christianity. The Watchman-Examiner new series 3 (August 19): 1071.

Rusch,W. 1975. Darwin's Last Hours. Creation Research Society Quarterly 12:99-102.

Rusch, W. and J. W.Klotz. 1988. Did Charles Darwin Become a Christian?  Creation Research Society Books,Norcross, Georgia.