What's in a Name?

First off, Happy New Year everybody. Now is the time for men to make their resolutions (women don’t need to, of course) and promptly to break them. I don’t do any of that stuff, of course, but I thought I’d try – if not resolve – to find some time for a little bit of thoughtful blogging this year. I can’t guarantee to deliver an article every week, but we’ll see how we get on. In a crunch, the books will always take priority.

So let’s start by looking at the origins of Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow. Authors are always asked where they get their ideas from. Most of the time this results in a vague, even flippant answer, largely because authors don’t really know themselves. Some may even be afraid that to speak of their fonts of inspiration would be to lay them open to any passing misfit with dreams of literary stardom. I have no such fears, because I know the source of my ideas is the rather odd way my brain works, the way it absorbs a great deal of unrelated information and latches it together in unexpected fashions. Nobody is going to be able to use that to usurp my literary camp chair (I don’t merit a throne at this point) without an MRI scanner and a research grant larger than the likely proceeds of any ensuing book.

That’s the general source of ideas: asked about specific books, most authors are more lucid. Ask for the origins of character x or plot y and the author will happily wheel out the time-honoured anecdote or the dusty old book which served as the inspiration (probably an algebra textbook). For my book, probably the most interesting question is where the central character, Erasmus Hobart, comes from. Even with the raw work done at the font (or secular equivalent) by the average middle-class family these days, it has to rate as an unusual name for a character.

As, of course, it is. There haven’t been a great many Erasmuses (Erasmusii?) in history. The most famous is probably the mediaeval philosopher, after whom the character is not named. Less well-known, but more interesting is Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin. I first came across him on a visit to Lichfield. It’s a beautiful place and well worth a visit. Tucked away on one of its quieter streets stands an elegant Georgian town house and it is here, in his former residence, that a museum dedicated to this unsung scientific hero is to be found.

Because Erasmus Darwin is a hero. Founder member of the Lunar Society – an eighteenth century group of thinkers, poets and other (pardon the pun) luminaries – inventor of such things as differential steering, poet, scientist and – perhaps most surprisingly – one of the first people to formulate a theory of evolution. That’s right – we all think of Charles Darwin as the man who dreamt up evolution, but his grandfather was there first and he wrote his in rhyme, a lengthy piece called The Origin of Society. The reason most of us don’t know this is not due to poetry critics, but poor timing. Erasmus Darwin’s views on evolution came at a pivotal moment in history – just before the French Revolution.

Now you may ask why a group of French proletarians with a penchant for lopping off the heads of their aristocrats would be interested in evolution. The truth is they weren’t – they didn’t know anything about Erasmus’ seminal work. But the climate of political tension created by the Reign of Terror made any idea which threatened the status quo in England dangerous. A generation of rising stars hid their light under bushels rather than be viewed as traitors to king and country. By the time the dust settled, Erasmus Darwin had died and his poem, published posthumously, was largely passed over by the masses. Had Charles Darwin not been forced to publish by news of a fellow researcher reaching the same conclusion, it is possible that The Origin of Society would have been rediscovered by the scientific establishment and that Erasmus, not his grandson, would have become the hero of biology. Perhaps the vogue for scientific poetry might have continued, making A Brief History of Time even harder to follow.

Discovering Erasmus Darwin for myself made a profound impression. How could such a man be so unknown? What could I do to redress the balance? I wasn’t going to write a history, of course, that would require far too much research, but I would honour his name by using it as the basis for the name of another thinker and inventor, the time-traveller Erasmus Hobart. Why Hobart? Well, Darwin (Charles, that is) was honoured by having a town in Australia named for him. Looking for another name on the same continent, I lighted on the capital of Tasmania. Although it also takes its name from a person, since it was only a colonial secretary, nobody remembers him. It’s also an obscure enough place name that it doesn’t sound daft (imagine calling him Erasmus Melbourne or Erasmus Adelaide by contrast). I don’t imagine it will, in itself, bring glory to Erasmus Darwin, but if asking the question leads more people to look him up it can be no bad thing.