Review

Our imagination is built on what we know of the real world. There has to be some basis in reality for the meandering of our minds in fantasy or fiction. We need reference points to comprehend journeys of the imagination, and some of these parameters can be set by dates, times, and events. Starting with such basic parameters, Roger McDonald fills in the blanks with his novel Mr. Darwin's Shooter to create a coming-of-age fictional account of a real person, the specimen collector aboard the H. M. S. Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the world. The book is set in a time when social class determined an individual's fate, and much of what people thought they knew about the world was about to crumble.

Syms Covington was not fictional. He was born in 1813 and died in 1861. McDonald has succeeded in creating a new life for him based on the most important of actual experiences. Covington's personal history is largely unknown compared to that of Charles Darwin, although his impact on Darwin's life was significant. Like many men who went to sea, he started out young, a requirement for proper molding in the ways of the sea, and he braced himself against the hardships of intercontinental exploration, which was then at its height. McDonald recreates Covington as a talented, intelligent, yet underprivileged young man. At sea, his education was limited to self-proclaimed preachers for matters of the heart and soul, and to veteran sailors for lessons in seamanship and a chance to ascend the short professional ladder available to sailors of his day.

The early part of Mr. Darwin's Shooter is devoted to Covington's personal development aboard H.M.S. Beagle, told in flashbacks by a older Covington who has retired to Watson's Bay, on the shores of Australia. There a young, local doctor named MacCracken befriends him. Suffering from deafness caused by one too many shots of the musket, Covington is aloof to the prying of the doctor. Although separated by social class, the doctor tries to understand the contradictory world of this crusty ex-sailor who seems to have a wealth of knowledge greater than his appearance would indicate. "There were diffuse shapes down there," MacCracken perceived, "like shadows in the tide."

Back in time and back onboard H.M.S. Beagle, under the watchful eye of his peers, Covington watches Darwin from afar. By chance and circumstance, aided by perseverance, Covington enters Darwin's alien world of collecting beasts and birds. "To be on the good side of a well-heeled passenger" had its advantages, Covington believed, for the young naturalist "was counted upon to have silver to spread around for favours."

As he learns to collect and to apply his prior knowledge of preserving animals, Covington embarks with Darwin to the mystical world of South America. There he bags everything that flies, walks, crawls, or slithers, not just in the name of science, but in the name of Darwin, for Darwin is his new teacher, whether the gentleman naturalist wants to be or not. Covington also discovers that there is a market for exotic skins and skulls back in England. One shot for Darwin, one shot for Covington. But by the final leg of their voyage, the meaning of his experiences became clearer. "The question of Creation was strong in the air, for their cargo was the cream of it."

It is in the same South American paradise that the "boy-man" Covington meets his first love, a love that unbeknownst to him produces his first child, who grows up to play a vital role in not only Covington's world, but in Dr. McCracken's as well.

For a while, Darwin only partially understood how all they collected would eventually fit together, like pieces of an unassembled puzzle. But over the years, Covington experienced the stress of trying to complete a puzzle with too few pieces. As he recounts, "I have been a collector in my life. . . . Birds and insects, small and large. Fossils. Mammals. Corals. You get so you forget what is man. You start to think, 'Man? Why, he is just a stack of bones.'"

One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle was the question, What meant the variety of finches from the Galapagos Islands? Fortunately for Darwin, Covington and other members of his crew were meticulous and exacting when dealing with the provenance of all the specimens they collected. It became particularly important when Darwin realized that what at first appeared to be mere varieties of finches represented, in fact, completely different species. These finches would become a major component of Darwin's theory of evolution. But more important to Covington than Darwin's theory, as he copes with an aging mind, was whether Darwin would acknowledge his efforts.

Mr. Darwin's Shooter is about an individual capable in mind but restricted by social class, unable to achieve the prestige even close to that achieved in scientific circles by the legendary Darwin. But Covington shows us that self-drive and a desire to learn can overcome some social barriers since, in fact, it is Covington who shows the would-be-essayist Dr. McCracken how to invest money. MacCracken writes in his journal "a man does not have to be just as he seems. He can be more, in the light of understanding." This is truer of Covington than the doctor. Still, Covington is always searching for the ethereal gist of life, torn between his religious submergence prior to and aboard H.M.S. Beagle, and his personal emergence during the collecting trips with, and observations of, the man who revolutionized the science of biology in the nineteenth century.

History has been referred as a choir, not a solo of subjectivity. The focus on Darwin, in fiction and history, has perpetuated his glory. Covington the real person and Covington the fictional character join in this novel to bring less familiar aspects of the nineteenth century to life. From the perspective of the less fortunate, but no less sympathetic, Covington is a vital member of history's choir. He stands for the rest of us who cannot be Charles Darwin. Mr. Darwin's Shooter is a wonderful, entertaining exercise in the melding of real time, real events, and real imagination.