Summary

The title page of Chapter 24, “Terrible Suffering” begins with a quote from Charles about the survival of species from a sketch in 1844. The chapter opens in 1854 as Charles had finished with barnacles. Now he could turn to his book about species and natural selection, and many of his friends urged him to publish, as they were worried someone else would publish before him. But Charles wanted to take his time. Emma was pregnant again, at age 48, and gave birth to Charles Waring in December of 1856. They knew from the outset that something was different about Charles Waring. Meanwhile, George and Etty got sick in the summer of 1858, and Charles knew that he was seeing the “struggle for existence” that he was “writing about in his book” (169).

On June 18, Charles received a letter from a young naturalist, Alfred Wallace, with an essay called, “On...