NARRATOR: And then again…
CHARLES: Terrible loss of time.
NARRATOR: But…
CHARLES: My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do. Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House.
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps…
NARRATOR: The lists on the left and right side of the page looked about the same length. But Charles felt that he had found more reasons to marry than not. He wrote on the left side, squeezed at the bottom, the answer to his question:
CHARLES: Marry, Marry, Marry. Q.E.D.
NARRATOR: But he had one fear that was too big to even write down. To confront that fear he would have to talk to his father, Dr. Robert Darwin. His father had strong opinions and felt he was always right. When Charles was a boy his father had said to him:
DR. DARWIN: You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all of your family.
NARRATOR: OK, so Charles’s father wasn’t always right. But Charles respected him and knew that in his father had seen a lot in his medical practice. He felt certain he could go to his father with his big worry: God. For as Charles worked out his theory of evolution by natural selection, he knew he was taking God out of creation. And he knew that most women in England in 1838 would not be happy about that. So he went home, told his father, and asked him what to do.
DR. DARWIN: CONCEAL YOUR DOUBTS! You should get married! Just don’t tell her you’re doing away with—
NARRATOR: Charles did not listen.
EMMA WEDGWOOD: He is the most open, transparent man I ever saw, and every word expresses his real thoughts.
NARRATOR: That is what his first cousin Emma Wedgwood said about Charles Darwin. Charles and Emma had started spending time together. Emma herself was a very sincere person, and also very much a straight shooter. And so she prized what she called Charles’s “transparency.” She liked him. A lot. So when Charles asked her to marry him, she said:
EMMA: Yes.
CHARLES: I was shocked.
EMMA: We both got headaches!
CHARLES AND EMMA: But once we told everyone, we were very happy.
NARRATOR: Their families were thrilled! Charles and Emma had grown up together and were well suited in many ways.
EMMA: But not all—
CHARLES: I am very neat.
EMMA: I am a slob! My nickname as a child was “Little Miss Slip Slop.”
NARRATOR: This difference could be overcome. But it was in the area of religion that they strongly disagreed. Emma’s sister Fanny had died a few years earlier while Charles was on his voyage…
EMMA: Oh Lord, help me to become more like her, and grant that I may join with Thee never to part again…I try to keep my mind fixed upon the hope of being with her again in heaven.
CHARLES: At the same time Emma got more religious, I was becoming less so.
EMMA: What if Charles does not believe in God? Would he go to hell and I to heaven after we die?
NARRATOR: Emma could not stand the thought of being separated from him for all eternity. After proposing to Emma in the house she grew up in, Charles went back to London. Without his charm, his wit, and his very presence to remind her of all she loved about him, the problem of their religious differences loomed large. So Emma wrote Charles a letter.
EMMA: Dear Charles, When I am with you I think all melancholy thoughts keep out of my head, but since you are gone some sad ones have forced themselves in, of fear that our opinions on the most important subject should differ widely.
I thank you from my heart for your openness with me & I should dread the feeling that you were concealing your opinions from the fear of giving me pain.
NARRATOR: Emma asked Charles to read her favorite part of the New Testament, which he did. And although his letter back to her does not survive, we know that something reassured her.
EMMA: On January 29, 1839, we made a leap of faith and got married.
NARRATOR: They were immediately happy, settling into a routine, which included Emma playing the piano and reading to Charles in the evenings.
CHARLES: I often bless all novelists. A surprising number of novels have been read aloud to me…by Emma! And I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if it be a pretty woman all the better.
NARRATOR: Soon Emma was pregnant. And although they were both happy about that, Emma grew even more worried. Childbirth was dangerous. What if she died? Would she ever see Charles again? Emma wrote him another letter. This was the continuation of a conversation they would have their entire lives—about the role of religion and science. Charles treasured each of the letters Emma wrote to him, as painful as he found them. He kept the letters with him always. On one he wrote:
CHARLES: When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed and cried over this.
NARRATOR: Although they could never quite see eye-to-eye on religion, they did understand each other’s point of view.
CHARLES AND EMMA: Because we talked about it!
NARRATOR: This conversation lasted throughout their marriage, through joys and through tragedy. They had a close and loving marriage.
EMMA: I gave birth to ten children.
CHARLES: Three of our children died.
NARRATOR: The death of their beloved ten-year-old daughter, Annie, on April 23, 1851, was heartbreaking, and could have wrecked their marriage forever.
EMMA: She pass’d away, like morning dew
Before the sun was high
So brief her time, she scarcely knew
The meaning of a sigh.
Charles: We have lost the joy of our household.
NARRATOR: The religious gulf between Charles and Emma could have opened up so wide as to separate them forever. Each looked at Annie’s death differently: Emma knew she would see Annie again, in heaven; Charles knew he would not. But right after Annie died, Charles wrote to Emma:
CHARLES: We must be more and more to each other, my dear wife.
EMMA: You must remember that you are my prime treasure (and always have been).
NARRATOR: Their marriage survived.
EMMA: And being married to me was a big influence on his writing!
CHARLES: As I wrote The Origin of Species, I kept in mind Emma and other religious people. I did not want to offend anyone.
EMMA: He is very polite in that book.
CHARLES: She was my best editor.
EMMA: I made sure he was clear in his arguments. I fixed his spelling and commas, too.
NARRATOR: In the last paragraph, he wrote about a spot near their home, Down House, where he and Emma often walked together.
CHARLES: It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us….
NARRATOR: So different from each other, but dependent on each other in so complex a manner. He could have been writing about his marriage.
CHARLES AND EMMA: The End.
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Charles and Emma Page 26
