The doctor also told him to stop using snuff, “the chief solace of life,” because it might harm his troublesome digestion. His only complaint was that he couldn’t think—he had “the most complete stagnation of mind. I have ceased to think even of barnacles!”
He was feeling so much better that when they got home he continued much of the regimen; he even installed a cold shower outside.
But even with all of this treatment, he did not get appreciably better. Emma spent many nights sitting with him, holding him, comforting him, tending to him, as he suffered from sleeplessness, heart palpitations, and his almost constant digestive upset. During the day she tended to him, too. It was the norm for Charles to be sick.
And for the children, as long as they weren’t too horribly ill, it was nice to be sick at Down. Emma and Charles were both loving parents, and illness had kind of a happy aura about it, in part because Charles was always sick, and everyone loved Charles. One of their granddaughters later wrote that “at Down ill health was considered normal.” If not normal, at least kind of special. The sick child got the treat of being able to spend the morning in Papa’s study, curled up on the sofa while he worked. In the afternoon the sick child got to play many games of backgammon with Papa, or hear stories read by Mama or Papa. The sick child received, above all, extra attention. So it was nice to be sick at Down House. At least just a little sick.
Chapter 19
Doing Custards
A good, cheerful, and affectionate daughter is the
greatest blessing a man can have, after a good wife.
—JOSIAH WEDGWOOD TO DR. ROBERT DARWIN UPON
THE ENGAGEMENT OF THEIR CHILDREN, NOVEMBER 1838
Annie often waited outside her father’s study until it was time for his morning walk. She hated to disturb him, but she was eager to take some turns around the Sandwalk with Papa. Although Charles walked at a brisk pace, Annie went ahead, pirouetting in front of him. She called it “doing custards.”
From the time she was a baby, Annie was a family favorite. She was a joyful, happy child, with a bright face and a ready smile. She loved to play and was a good big sister and older cousin. The grown-ups loved her, too, for she was open and honest, a much-prized virtue. “Transparent,” as Emma had called Charles a dozen years earlier. Annie’s aunt Catherine Darwin said of her that she was “always so candid and kind-hearted.” Aunt Fanny Wedgwood called her bright and engaging, “so open and confiding and lovable.” Another relative said he “always found her a child whose heart it was easy to reach.”
Annie could also read other people easily. Even when she was playing boisterously with her cousins, all Charles had to do was give her a quick look and she would quiet everyone down. She loved to please; Charles could count on her to sneak him a pinch of snuff from the snuffbox, and she watched with pleasure as her father indulged his naughty habit.
Annie took after both Emma and Charles; they felt she was a lovely combination of both of them. She was musical like her mama. But Charles could claim her neatness and propensity for order. Charles noted that from an early age she was neater than her big brother. When she was just over a year old, he watched “how neatly Annie takes hold in proper way of pens, pencils and keys. Willy to present time with equal or greater practice cannot handle anything so neatly as Annie does, often in exact manner of grown-up person.” As she got older, she loved to read, like both of her parents, but she had a particular fondness for looking up words in the dictionary and for comparing word by word two editions of the same book. She liked to look up places on the map, and to arrange objects by color.
She was also a good dancer and a good artist. And unlike Emma, Annie liked to dress up and look nice. Charles remembered that one day she dressed up in some of Emma’s clothes—a silk gown, cap, shawl, and gloves. Charles thought she looked like a little old woman, “but with her heightened colour, sparkling eyes & bridled smiles, she looked, as I thought, quite charming.”
Annie often climbed into Charles’s lap or stood behind him and arranged his hair, making it “beautiful,” for half an hour at a time. She loved being with her mother, too, and Emma adored her. When she was little she hated to part with her mother even for a short time. Once, when she was very young, she said, “Oh Mama, what should we do, if you were to die?” And when she was sick, she wanted to be near both of them. Charles said that when Annie was unwell, “her mother lying down beside her seemed to soothe her in a manner quite different from what it would have done to any of our other children.”
In the summer of 1850, Annie was nine. Charles described her as very tall for her age, sturdy and strong. She had a firm step. She had long brown hair, dark gray eyes, good white teeth, and a slightly brown complexion. Sometimes when Charles looked at her he thought that in his dear Annie he would have a kind soul tending him in his old age. She would be his solace, his nurse.
Willy was off at boarding school now, for the first time, so Annie was the oldest child at home. They had cousins visiting, and normally Annie would organize games for the younger children. But it was very hot, and she clung to Emma and Charles. At night she cried herself to sleep. She was obviously sick, but she didn’t have any clear symptoms that they could point to, and she did have some good days.
Annie and the two other girls, Etty and Elizabeth (nicknamed Betty), had had scarlet fever the year before, but they had all gotten better. Looking back, Charles and Emma realized that Annie had not been herself again after the scarlet fever. Later Emma went back and wrote in her diary on the day marked June 27, 1850, “Annie first failed about this time.”
As summer turned to fall, the house was bustling, as usual. In the midst of the bustle, Charles studied his barnacles, and the older girls, Annie and Etty, had their lessons together. They took lessons from a drawing master and a writing master. Emma taught them, too, and wrote in her diary to keep track of their Latin grammar exercises. Etty, two and a half years younger, was a contrast to the easy-going, cheerful Annie. She was a willful child, with a sharp temper. But the sisters were close, though perhaps not as close as the Dovelies had been.
The other Darwin children were little—George was four, Betty was three, Frank was almost two, and there was, as usual, a baby. Leonard (Lenny) had been born that January—the fourth son and the seventh living child in the family. For the first time, during this, her eighth labor, Emma had had some pain relief for the birth. Chloroform, which had been discovered in 1831, had begun to be used to relieve labor pains a few years earlier. So Charles, who truly hated to see Emma go through the pain of childbirth, had arranged for some to be on hand for the doctor to use when he arrived.
But, as he later wrote to his old professor Henslow, Emma’s pains were severe and fast, and he couldn’t wait for the doctor to get there: “I was so bold during my wifes confinement which are always rapid, as to administer Chloroform, before the Dr. came & I kept her in a state of insensibility of 1 & ½ hours & she knew nothing from first pain till she heard that the child was born.—It is the grandest & most blessed of discoveries.”
It was nice to be able to relieve the pain of one you loved, and Charles and Emma wanted desperately to help Annie feel better.
Charles Darwin’s list of marriage pros and cons
BY PERMISSION OF THE SYNDICS OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY (F.2R FROM DAR.210.8)
Portrait of Emma Darwin painted by George Richmond (1840)
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY / BY KIND PERMISSION OF DARWIN HEIRLOOMS TRUST
Maer Hall, Emma’s childhood home (present-day photograph)
COURTESY OF J. H. WAHLERT
Portrait of Charles Darwin painted by George Richmond (1840)
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY / BY KIND PERMISSION OF DARWIN HEIRLOOMS TRUST
The Mount, Charles’s childhood home
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Annie’s grave (present-day photograph)
COURTESY OF JOHN VAN WYHE
Charles and William, 1
842
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Annie, 1849
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Henrietta, c. 1852
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Geroge, 1851
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Emma and Lenny, c. 1854
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Title page, The Origin of Species, first edition
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Emma and Charles Waring, c. 1857
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
From left to right: Leonard, Henrietta, Horace, Emma, Elizabeth, Frances, and a visitor at Down House
BY PERMISSION OF THE SYNDICS OF CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY (F.9 FROM DAR.219.12)
The Sandwalk
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Down House (present-day photograph)
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Charles Darwin, 1880
© ENGLISH HERITAGE PHOTO LIBRARY
Darwin’s signature on an 1879 letter: It was unusual for him to sign his full name.
COURTESY OF GEORGE BECCALONI
Chapter 20
A Fretful Child
Her sensitiveness appeared extremely early in life, & showed
itself in crying bitterly over any story at all melancholy; or on
parting with Emma even for the shortest interval.
—CHARLES, ON ANNIE, 1851
Other than losing Mary Eleanor as an infant, nothing terrible had happened to the Darwin family. They had had the usual bouts with childhood illness, including the recent scarlet fever, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still, Charles could be an anxious and worried father. His own health was so bad, he was afraid he had passed it on to his children. He now worried that Annie had inherited his wretched digestion.
It was hard for Charles to concentrate on work with Annie being listless and weak, so unlike her usual energetic, engaged, cheerful self. He gave her and Etty a canary, hoping it would cheer Annie up. He watched as his daughters played with the bird and taught it how to sing. In the Galapagos, the finches from the different islands were less like each other than birds on the mainland. The birds had evolved because of their island environments. It was those birds that had given him one of his eureka moments about natural selection. He would use them in his argument. But now he focused mainly on the barnacles splayed out in front of him. He was describing them in minute detail, so as to understand the similarities and differences between the different species.
He could not understand or even describe Annie’s condition in such detail as he could describe the barnacles. It was frustrating that she didn’t have clear symptoms that could point to a particular illness. It could have been consumption or tuberculosis; Erasmus seemed to be a consumptive, always weak and lacking in energy. But he wasn’t acutely ill, and no such diagnosis was made with Annie. Since sea bathing was a sort of cure-all for delicate children and invalids, Charles and Emma decided to give that a try. It wasn’t as extensive and exhausting as the water cure. But people felt plunging into the ocean was good for the body, promoting good circulation and overall health. And the hope was that sea breezes and fresh air would do Annie good.
So in October, Miss Thorley, their young governess, took Annie and Etty to Ramsgate, which was on the easternmost point of the Kent coast. Ramsgate was a popular seaside town; Queen Victoria had spent holidays there as a child. Being so close to mainland Europe—a short sail to France—it had been a point of embarkation for British troops during the Napoleonic wars earlier in the century. In 1850, as Annie and her entourage arrived, the construction of the Royal Harbour was just being completed.
Two weeks later, Emma and Charles joined them. When they arrived at the train station, Annie greeted them with a bright face and happy step. The family walked on the pier together, and they went into the water twice. It was a nice holiday.
But two days later, Annie developed a fever and a headache. Charles and Emma dragged a mattress into their room so she could sleep with them. A storm hit the next morning, and Charles and the others left for home, while Emma stayed with Annie until she was well enough to travel a few days later.
Back at home, Charles and Emma thought about consulting Dr. Gully, Charles’s water cure doctor. Although Charles now was having some success with the treatments, he didn’t entirely trust Gully. He was a traditionally trained doctor, but he also believed in things Charles thought were nonsense, such as diagnostic clairvoyance and spiritualism. So they decided to consult Dr. Henry Holland, in London, who had attended Annie’s birth and had become their family doctor since Charles’s father died. Emma took Annie to London to see Dr. Holland a few times. But he couldn’t be of much help.
So Annie spent most of her days with Emma or tucked up on the sofa in her father’s study, away from the hustle and bustle of the household: six other children (when Willy was home), their nannies and governesses, all the maids, gardeners, cooks, and other household help. Parslow the butler was kept busy clonking the mud off shoes as the children ran into the house from playing in the Sandwalk, riding ponies from the stable, having games of croquet and ball. There were cats and dogs going in and out, too. But Emma and Charles kept Annie quiet and protected. In the afternoons Charles played backgammon with her, and Emma read aloud to her.
Charles looked through his boxes and found some shells for Annie and Etty to play with—shells he had gathered on his Beagle voyage about twenty years earlier. He hadn’t managed to interest any experts in them. At least they would go to good use now.
Soon Annie had a bad cough in addition to her lethargy. On December 8, Emma wrote in her diary, “Annie began bark.” Since Dr. Holland was not able to help them, Charles relented and wrote to Dr. Gully. Gully prescribed a regime for Annie at home, with plans that she would come to Malvern in the spring if she hadn’t gotten better. From January on, she was wrapped in a wet sheet and rubbed vigorously for five minutes every morning, which was supposed to stimulate her nervous system and circulation. Then she was given a “spinal wash,” in which a cold, wet towel was rubbed up and down the length of her spine. This was supposed to clear her head and get rid of her lethargy. Every three or four days, she was packed in a damp towel. From February on, she also had a shallow bath and a footbath every morning.
Charles kept careful notes. Some days Annie was “well not quite.” Other days she was “well very” or “well almost very” or just “well.” And some days she was “poorly.” He noted her cries, her coughs, the strength of her pulse, and how well she slept. Ever the good scientist, ever the good parent.
Meanwhile Charles continued to think about religion and faith. He and Emma read and discussed books about theology. They made notations in their family Bible, indicating places where biblical scholars deemed passages inauthentic, added later by unknown authors. For both of them, the question of faith was an ongoing one. Emma took the children to church, though during the Trinity prayer, which proclaimed God as three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—she turned away from the altar in disagreement. The children followed her lead.
Charles did not go into church with them. He often walked them there, and then strolled around the village while they prayed. He was friendly with the vicar, and over the years counted a number of vicars as his close friends.
Sometimes he stayed home to read one of his books about theology. A current favorite author was Francis Newman, a Latin professor at University College London. In his books, Newman looked for a new theology that could include science. Working through his doubts, he found ways to believe in God and in an afterlife. Like Charles, he had stopped believing in the literalness of the Bible. But like Emma, Newman believed that you could get to heaven only through accepting Jesus’s teachings, by achieving a full sympathy of spirit with God’s spirit.
Charles still needed proof. He could not be spiritual based on instinct. He did like much of what Newman had to say, though, a
nd felt some security knowing that someone else not only had doubts but also wrote about them publicly.
Annie turned ten on March 2; Emma gave her a book. She felt well enough to play outside with Willy, who was home from school. They romped around the Sandwalk, and she rode Willy’s pony for the first time, with Parslow’s guiding hand.
But the respite did not last. A couple of weeks later, the family was hit with influenza. Getting the flu on top of whatever she already had was not good for poor Annie. She stayed in bed with Emma, sick and miserable. Charles lay on the sofa reading another book by Newman, one Erasmus had recommended, Phases of Faith or Passages from the History of My Creed. It was a sort of themed autobiography—an account of Newman’s own loss of faith and the quest for a new one. To Charles it was powerful and in some ways inspiring. But also upsetting: Christianity decreed that people deserve punishment for offending God, Newman said. He concluded, therefore, that in Christian belief, “the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil!” Newman wrote, “I was aghast that I could have believed it.” As Charles read, how could he not think of his sick daughter? Annie, pleasant and brave during the day, cried herself to sleep at night. How could that be offensive to the Infinite Being? How could his little girl, or her fretfulness, be evil? How could he ascribe to a religion with that belief?
Charles and Emma Page 12
