Creation (Movie Tie-In)

by Randal Keynes

  Miss Thorley arrived by the next day, and Etty wrote to George: “My dear Georgy—we went a donkey ride. When Miss Thorley and Annie rode on before, my donkey would not go on, and I was obliged to get off. Brodie and I had to drag it along. I have got some little ladybirds, and I keep them in a little box, and I feed them milk, some sugar. There is a shop at St Anne’s Well. Brodie sends her love to Frankey and Lizzie. I remain your affec. Etty. Brodie sends her love to you.”

  There was a service in the village church on Sunday morning. The vicar, John Rashdall, was a young high churchman, recently arrived from London where people had admired his sermons in a fashionable Knightsbridge church. That day in Malvern, he preached to a large congregation on a text from Hebrews: “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”

  The next day Annie had a sudden and sharp attack of vomiting. She had been receiving the water treatment from Dr. Gully and had been “going on very well” as Charles wrote later to Fox. The attack “was first thought of the smallest importance, but it rapidly assumed the form of a low and dreadful fever,” and by the following Sunday, Annie was very weak. Dr. Gully was seriously concerned about her condition, and Miss Thorley reported everything she could gather from him to Emma. Miss Thorley was desperate to talk to another woman about Annie, and hastened through the village to see Mrs. Scott for reassurance.

  On Monday, Miss Thorley wrote to Emma: “Dr Gully’s opinion is that Annie is very slowly progressing; this has much relieved my mind. He came early today . . . and I again asked if he thought there was danger. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is a smart bilious gastric fever, but she has turned the corner.’ These are the words he said. He has many similar cases on hand now, and he said it is quite an epidemic; hers has not been brought on by her treatment with him, but it is always more or less general at this season.” Now that the fever was passing, they saw Annie’s “extreme weakness.” Brodie had been ill with distress the previous day and Miss Thorley had thought of sending for Charles, but she was now in much better spirits and had taken Etty out for a walk. “Dear Annie sends her love; how I long for the time to be able to say she is strong enough to get up. Adieu, ever yours, my dear Mrs D.”

  By suggesting that Annie was suffering from a “smart bilious gastric fever” which was affecting others in the neighbourhood, Dr. Gully hoped that the illness was a normal ailment which would be cured by the healing power of nature, the vis medicatrix naturae as the textbooks called it. It was believed that if the patient survived fourteen days after the onset of a fever, he or she would throw it off. The epidemic that Dr. Gully referred to was probably not serious; it was not mentioned in the local newspapers, nor was there any pattern of deaths in the parish records.

  When Dr. Gully came to see Annie on Tuesday, he was alarmed by her condition. He felt her life was in danger and wrote at once to Charles suggesting that he should come immediately. He told Miss Thorley about his fears and she “gave way sadly.” Charles received the letter at Down at midday on Wednesday and left at once for Malvern. As he was on his way, Miss Thorley wrote again to Emma. Annie was “a shade better” but Dr. Gully said she was not out of danger. There had been crises in the early morning and the afternoon, but she had got through both well. Dr. Gully had come to see her three times, and saw many good signs. “We are giving her now a dessert spoon of white wine every hour, and a medicine he prescribed last night . . . I have just enjoyed feeding her with some orange juice which the dear child thoroughly relished.” Annie had been dozing and her mind wandered at times, but that may have been the effect of the wine. “All fever is removed which is a great thing.” Her “excitable temperament” was Dr. Gully’s only reason for fear. Miss Thorley longed for Charles to arrive. She gave Emma a glimpse of Etty who was “amusing herself with her new doll, beads &c. She is very anxious about the dear child Annie.”

  Charles reached Montreal House the next afternoon. Etty later remembered her shock and bewilderment as a small child at “his coming in, and after Miss Thorley saying something, his flinging himself down on the sofa on his face, and Miss Thorley sending me out of the room in a frightened way.” By four o’clock, he had composed himself, seen Annie in her bedroom and talked to Miss Thorley. He wrote to Emma: “I am assured that Annie is several degrees better. I have in vain tried to see Dr Gully as yet. She looks very ill: her face lighted up and she certainly knew me.” They had stopped giving her wine but had given “several spoon-fulls of broth, and ordinary physic of camphor and ammonia. Dr Gully is most confident there is strong hope. Thank God she does not suffer at all—half dozes all day long.” Camphor and ammonia were used as stimulants and to suppress vomiting.

  When Dr. Gully came in the evening, Annie’s pulse was irregular and for a time he feared she was dying. He stayed in the house through the night to give what help he could. The next day was Good Friday. Charles wrote to Emma that Dr. Gully had been “most kind.” Annie had a bad vomiting attack at six o’clock in the morning which showed nevertheless that she had more “vital force” than before. She was very quiet for the rest of the morning but her pulse was firmer. Charles and Brodie gave her spoonfuls of gruel with brandy every half hour. “She does not suffer, thank God,” but “It is much bitterer, and harder to bear than I had expected.”

  A letter had come from Emma, and Charles replied: “Your note made me cry much, but I must not give way, and can avoid doing so by not thinking about her. It is now from hour to hour a struggle between life and death. God only knows the issue.” With the treatments then available, there was nothing Dr. Gully could do to cure Annie’s illness, but as an experienced physician he was accustomed to reading the signs of deterioration and improvement. Charles looked to him for that intuitive sense, and hung on every word. “Sometimes Dr G. exclaims she will get through the struggle; then, I see, he doubts. Oh my own, it is very bitter indeed.”

  During the afternoon, Annie vomited green fluid, bile from her liver. Thinking back to his long sickness in the summer and autumn of 1840 before Annie was born, Charles wrote to Emma: “Her case seems to me an exaggerated one of my Maer illness. We must hope against hope. My own poor dear unhappy wife.” In the evening, Charles scrawled a note to Emma. “Dr Gully not come. She appears dreadfully exhausted, and I thought for some time she was sinking, but she has now rallied a little. The two symptoms Dr G. dreads most have not come on—restlessness and coldness. If her three awful fits of vomiting were not of the nature of a crisis, I look at the case as hopeless. I cannot realise our position, God help us.” Dr. Gully came some minutes later; he examined Annie and told Charles that she was weakening, but he understood Charles’s desperate need for hope and gave him the few straws he could offer. Charles continued his note, picking up more and more ink on the quill and writing more urgently. “Dr Gully has been and thank God he says though the appearances are so bad, positively no one important symptom is worse, and that he yet has hopes—positively he has Hopes. Oh my dear be thankful.”

  After that, Annie fell asleep and had a restful night. When Dr. Gully came and saw her sleeping, he told Charles: “She is turning the corner.” When the morning came, Charles could not wait for the post to let Emma know. He sent a message to Worcester for an “electric telegraph” to be sent along the railway line to London. It was delivered to Erasmus.

  From: Gentleman Montreal House Malvern

  To: E. Darwin Esquire 7 Park St Grosvenor Sq

  Please send man to Sydenham station thence in fly to Down to say that Annie has rallied—has passed good night—danger much less imminent.

  Erasmus sent his manservant, John Griffiths, to take the message to Down, hiring a fly, a light carriage, for the last stage of the journey.

  Annie was calm but emaciated by the dehydration from her vomiting
. Charles wrote to Emma: “This morning she is a shade too hot; but the Doctor . . . thinks her going on very well. You must not suppose her out of great danger. She keeps the same;just this minute she opened her mouth quite distinctly for gruel, and said ‘that is enough.’ You would not in the least recognise her with her poor hard, sharp, pinched features; I could only bear to look at her by forgetting our former dear Annie. There is nothing in common between the two . . . Poor Annie has just said ‘Papa’ quite distinctly.” He told Emma what Dr. Gully had said in the late evening. “I cannot express how it felt to have hopes last night . . . I then dared to picture to myself my own former Annie with her dear affectionate radiant face . . . My dear dear mammy, let us hope and be patient over this dreadful illness.”

  Emma had asked Fanny Wedgwood to go from London to Malvern to be with Charles. She was desperately afraid that Charles’s anxiety might injure his health, and also believed that Fanny, as a mother, had her own “eye for illness,” an eye that might see things Charles and the physician would miss. Fanny arrived in Malvern with her lady’s maid, who then returned to London, taking Etty back with her.

  Emma had also arranged for her Aunt Fanny Allen to come to Down to be with her, as she was now due to give birth in four weeks. When Fanny Allen arrived, she found her niece looking well “as to health” but “very much overcome at times.” “Poor Emma is very low, but her health is not injured . . . Pray Heaven their child may be preserved to them!”

  The room in which Annie lay was probably one of those looking east out over the Severn Vale. In her Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale wrote about caring for seriously ill patients in a sickroom at home. “It is a curious thing to observe how almost all patients lie with their faces turned to the light, exactly as plants always make their way towards the light; a patient will even complain that it gives him pain ‘lying on that side.’ ‘Then why do you lie on that side?’ He does not know—but we do. It is because it is the side towards the window.” Florence Nightingale also wrote about sounds in the sickroom, noises that Annie would have heard as Brodie, Miss Thorley and Fanny Wedgwood were all wearing the very full skirts of the time. “Compelled by her dress, every woman now either shuffles or waddles . . . The fidget of silk and crinoline, the rattling of keys, the creaking of stays and shoes, will do a patient more harm than all the medicines in the world will do him good . . . The noiseless step of woman, the noiseless drapery of woman, are mere figures of speech in this day. Her skirts (and well if they do not throw down some piece of furniture) will at least brush against every article in the room as she moves.”

  Throughout the rest of Saturday, Charles wrote to Emma hour by hour. At two o’clock, “We expect Dr Gully every minute; but he is fearfully overworked . . . Annie has kept just in same tranquil, too tranquil state: she takes a table-spoonful of gruel every hour and no physic. All trace of fever is now gone and yet she is not chilly. She begins to drink a little more this afternoon and I think that is good.” At three o’clock, “The Doctor has been. He says she makes no progress, but no bad symptoms have appeared. But I am disappointed.” At four o’clock, “She has taken two spoonfuls of tea with evident relish. And no sickness, thank God. I find Fanny an infinite comfort.”

  Fanny wrote to Emma in the evening with her “eye for illness.” “My dearest Emma—Charles tells you everything of your darling child, but you will like to hear any other impressions . . . She has been sick again since four o’clock when Charles closed his letter, but is looking more comfortable and has seemed quite to like being turned on the other side . . . I do not think her so emaciated as I expected . . . She has looked about more today and her face has to my eyes a more natural expression—extreme languor and prostration but no oppression about the head or eyes. She has just asked Miss Thorley quite loud something about her watch, but much of what she says we cannot make out from the roughness of her poor mouth—but I do generally make out the ‘thank you’ almost always . . . Dearest Emma, how thankful I am to be able to be of the least use to Charles. He looks really not ill, though sometimes of course most sadly overcome and shaken. He has been two little walks today. I do not try to prevent him doing a good deal about dear Annie. It seems as if it was some relief to be doing something, though occasionally it may be too much . . . May God grant you both the life of your child.”

  Charles’s two letters on Friday had reached Emma on Saturday, some time before the telegraph message came. She replied to them at once. “Now dear Fanny is with you, you must let her experienced eye do some of the watching, though I know what an effort it must be to leave her for a moment, but you will be quite exhausted. Aunt F. helps me through the long hours of suspense, and I feel quite unnatural sometimes in being able to talk of other things. Poor little sweet child. I often think of the precious look she gave you, the only one I suppose. No wonder she would brighten up at your sight. You were always the tenderest of human beings to her and comforted her so on all occasions.”

  Emma then went out of the house thinking of Annie, and was in the garden when John Griffiths came along the road from the village with Charles’s message. She read his words and wrote a note for John Griffiths to take back with him. “The message is just arrived. What happiness! How I do thank God! But I will not feel too hopeful. I was in the garden looking at my poor darling’s little garden to find a flower of hers when John Griffiths drove up . . . We shall hear nothing more now till Monday, but I shall wait very well now . . . I hardly dare think of such happiness. I hope you will sleep tonight, my own.”

  The next day was Easter Sunday. Emma wrote to Fanny Wedgwood: “I cannot express the happiness of yesterday’s message though I know how much there is still to fear. I feel very anxious about Charles for fear he should quite break down, but your being with him is such a comfort. I don’t know what I should have done without Aunt Fanny. By oneself one’s thoughts lose all control . . . The waiting for post time is the worst, but one gets used to every thing in a degree and now I have so much more hope, I feel greedy to hear your impression also of my poor dear’s looks. God grant that dreadful sickness may keep off.”

  Charles wrote to Emma: “I do not know, but think it is best for you to know how every hour passes. It is a relief to me to tell you, for whilst writing to you, I can cry tranquilly.” He carried on with his account. They had called the surgeon, Mr. Coates, to draw Annie’s water off. “This was done well and did not hurt her, but she struggled with surprising strength against being uncovered &c. Soon it evidently relieved her.” During the night, she “slept tranquilly except for about ten minutes when she wandered in slightly excited manner.” She was “fearfully prostrated.” “Yet when Brodie sponged her face, she asked to have her hands done and then thanked Brodie and put her arms round her neck, my poor child, and kissed her.” Dr. Gully said what he could to encourage Charles, but spoke with extreme caution. “You must not trust me, for I can give no reason for my intuition, but yet I think she will recover.”

  Fanny sat with Annie until two o’clock in the morning. Charles commented to Emma that “poor dear devoted Miss Thorley” was able to have a full night’s rest. When Charles took his turn by Annie’s bedside, he did not sit calmly but was constantly up and down. “I cannot sit still.”

  Annie had vomited early in the morning. Each bout must have racked her body but Charles wrote: “It is certain she suffers very little—dozing nearly all the time. Occasionally she says she is very weak.” At ten o’clock, “I grieve to say she has vomited rather much again; but Mr Coates has been and drawn off again much water, and this he says is a very good symptom. Last night he seemed astonished at her ‘fearful illness’ and he made me very low; so this morning I asked nothing and he then felt her pulse of his own accord and at once said ‘I declare I almost think she will recover.’ Oh my dear, was not this joyous to hear!”

  Annie was drifting in and out of delirium. Charles remembered clearly from his own childhood “the wretched feeling of being delirious” when he had had sca
rlet fever at nine. Annie’s senses were clear, and Charles felt that was good “as showing head not affected.” “She called ‘Papa,’ when I was out of room unfortunately, and then added ‘Is he out?’ ” Thinking of the hope of recovery if she survived for two weeks after the first attack, he now wished fervently for the critical fortnight to be over. “But I must not hope too much. These alternatives of no hope and hope sicken one’s soul: I cannot help getting so sanguine every now and then to be disappointed.”

  At midday, Annie was sick again and said she felt tired. “She is very sensible; I was moving her, when she said ‘Don’t do that please,’ and when I stopped, ‘Thank you.’ ” “We have put mustard poultice on stomach, and that has smarted her a good deal, which shows more sensibility than I expected.” The mustard poultice was a paste of mustard and vinegar applied as a stimulant in low fevers. In the afternoon, Charles wrote: “She is a little chilly and we have given her a little Brandy and hope she is asleep and I trust will warm. I never saw anything so pathetic as her patience and thankfulness; when I gave her some water, she said ‘I quite thank you.’ Poor dear darling child.” An hour later, “The chilliness has pretty well gone off and no more sickness, refreshing sleep.”