‘Are you on our list?’ asked the man with the foggy glasses.
‘I should be,’ James said, in what he hoped was a tone that was part supreme confidence, part lightness and affability. The man on the door pointed James towards a table where two women were taking names. James thanked him and headed in that direction, only to drift away the instant the bell rang, summoning the sweating man on the door back to his duties.
The interior was cool and bright, like a London townhouse. He was standing in the hall on a floor made of stone tiles of black and white, like a diamond-shaped chessboard. Off it he could see a meeting room, the door open, the chairs already set out in rows in a fashion that recalled similar sessions at Oxford. This, he guessed, was that peculiar creature, the early-evening seminar: glass of wine, a show-off presentation, more show-off discussion.
He milled around, noting a crowd that looked utterly familiar: men, most of them middle-aged, in the crumpled linens and tortoiseshell spectacles of the academic. He avoided eye contact, fearing to be drawn into a conversation that might require him to explain himself. Instead, he chose to linger by one of the display tables covered with material relating to tonight’s talk. The title was ‘Eugenics, the next steps’ and the speaker was a Dr William Curtis of Yale Medical School. Was he another of McAndrew’s proteges?
Also on the table was a neatly-stacked pile of copies of a thin red volume which James took to be a kind of manifesto for the society, apparently offered free of charge. All true believers did this, James had noticed: communists giving away Marxist texts, evangelicals handing out bibles to passers-by. He wondered if this would be a scholarly seminar or an exercise in evangelism.
He picked up the book and saw that it was, in fact, a primer on the topic: What is Eugenics? by Major Leonard Darwin. The book did not mention what James already knew: that this Darwin was the son of Charles.
Not that he knew much more than that. He had long been aware of eugenics; it would be impossible to be an educated man in the 1930s and not be aware of it. There had been a Eugenics Society at Oxford, though whether it was still in business he would be hard pressed to say. There was the occasional lecture on the topic as well as frequent letters and articles in the periodicals. And yet James had let it pass him by. The language of the subject did not appeal to him and its leading advocates he found especially grating: so often well-born, busybody types all too ready to condescend to a scholarship boy from the provinces.
Now James ran his eye over the contents page of the junior Darwin’s book, picking out the chapter headings. Domestic Animals; Hereditary Qualities; The Men we Want; Inferior Stocks; Birth Control; Sterilization; Feeble- Mindedness; The Deterioration of our Breed, Eugenics in the Future; Selection in Marriage.
He glanced up to see that the room was filling up and for a while he eavesdropped on the greetings and handshakes taking place around him, with their talk of delayed trains from Boston and long drives from New York. This was, James understood, a meeting of scholars from beyond Yale, one that appeared to bring together colleagues from several Ivy League universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and the like. When James sensed that someone was looking in his direction, he quickly ducked back to the book, reading the first line of the first page:
When the time comes for the old dog to die and when with sorrow we shall have to replace him, will not the breed of our new companion be our first thought?
He jumped ahead.
Owners of cattle have always known that care in the selection of stock for breeding purposes will pay them well in the long run… And if men, however savage or however cultivated, have always given so much time to the study of the breed of the animals they own, why have they not paid equal or more attention to their own breed? Before a marriage is contracted many questions may be asked as to the amount of money likely to be inherited by the bride, while no consideration is usually given to the qualities of mind or body which she is likely to pass on to her children — to her breed, in fact. The aim of eugenics is to prove that the breed of our own citizens is a matter of vital importance…
James wondered again if he was wasting his time. Could there be any connection between Harry, Florence and all of this? All he could think of was that his wife’s field was academic biology and eugenics was, he supposed, not too far away from that. Was it possible that she had been drafted here to Yale as a scholar on a research project, one that had to be kept secret, even from him? The thought made him shudder: it would have meant everything he had been told about her fear of invasion, her desperate desire to protect Harry, would have been a lie. He could not believe it; he would not believe it. If she had had work to do that entailed travelling to the United States, even highly confidential work, she would have told him about it, of course she would. And what kind of work on eugenics would demand secrecy? It was not exactly a matter of war or peace.
He felt an unspoken shift around him. People were no longer chatting or greeting friends, but slowly shuffling their way into the meeting room. The seminar was about to begin. He took a seat at the back, next to a man who had already produced a notebook, running his pen in a clean vertical line down the page to create a margin.
The speaker appeared. He was no older than James: sandy-haired, with an easy, smiling manner, dressed in a summer suit that hung lightly on him. To James’s untutored eye, he looked as if he came from old money.
The man cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to begin by thanking you all for coming on this warm summer evening. Some of you, I know, have come from far and wide.’ There it was, the same accent as Dorothy Lake. Reflexively, James looked around the room, just in case she was here.
‘As you know, this is an invitation-only gathering. Our usual discretion applies, but it is especially pertinent tonight. Some of the items on our agenda would be open to… ’ He paused, ‘… misinterpretation, were they to be disclosed more widely than I intend. I hope I have your co-operation.’
There was a murmur of assent.
‘Good. Some of you will have seen the copies of the Darwin book in the foyer. Of course, I don’t mean to insult anyone here in making such a well-known text my starting point this evening. But I thought it might be useful to return to first principles.
‘Let me begin with this important statement from What is Eugenics? ’. Curtis lifted the book to his eye-level as if he were an actor declaiming from a script, and read aloud: ‘“ In order to improve the breed of our race, we should now take such steps as would result in all who show any natural superiority producing a greater number of descendants than at present, whilst making all who are definitely inferior pass on their natural inferiority to as few as possible.”’ He lowered the book. ‘From that single paragraph we derive what we know of as the two different strains of eugenic thought. So-called “positive eugenics”, encouraging procreation by the fittest and most intelligent-’ here he made a sweeping gesture as if to encompass his audience, which elicited a warm chuckle of approval, ‘and also so-called “negative eugenics”, which seeks to stop the unfit from reproducing. Forgive me for teaching grandmother to suck eggs in this way, but I hope my purpose will become clear in due course.
‘Put simply,’ Curtis went on, ‘the eugenic idea holds that if we have more of the strong and fewer of the weak, then the nation itself will end up stronger. It’s true of a herd of prize cattle and it’s true of us. Note Darwin’s own language in his summary of eugenics’ primary aim.’
Curtis raised the little red book once more, in theatrical style: ‘“ A lowering of the birth-rate of all the naturally inferior types and an increase in the birth-rate amongst the naturally superior.”’
With each word he heard, the more James remembered his aversion to the whole eugenics business. It came back to him not as a thought, but as a feeling, a creeping sensation across his flesh.
Curtis was reading again, from the Darwin chapter entitled ‘The Men we Want’.
‘“ It has been suggested that, whilst getting rid of these extremely undesirable types, we should endeavour to create a group of supermen at the other end of the scale. If a few perfect individuals were to appear on earth, and if their perfection were to be acknowledged by all, this would be very good. These supermen would rule over us to our great contentment.”’
Curtis lowered the book. ‘It’s quite a thought, is it not, ladies and gentlemen? Imagine it, a latter-day pantheon of the gods, human and yet blessed with the strength of deities.’
The man at James’s side was scribbling furiously. No one had so much as raised a hand in objection, apparently unfazed by the notion of this ‘group of supermen’ ruling the world.
Curtis too was moving on. ‘The question arises, how exactly is society to get rid of these “extremely undesirable types”? Here Darwin’s chapter on eugenic methods is extremely helpful, though he eliminates what would of course be the easiest solution from the start.’
Another knowing laugh rippled across the room.
