Creation (Movie Tie-In)

by Randal Keynes

  Dr. Gully came early in the evening, and while he was in the room Fanny wrote to Emma: “Dr G. is now here. There is a decided improvement in the tongue—a most important point. Pulse quick and sharp still, but perhaps from a little brandy. Dr G. thinks the vomiting not so unfavourable—it is better under the circumstances than the matters being absorbed.” After Dr. Gully left, Charles and the others bathed Annie with vinegar and water, and he wrote to Emma that “it was delicious to see how it soothed her.”

  On Monday morning, Charles wrote: “To go on with the sick life . . .” During the previous evening Annie had “rambled for two hours and became considerably excited.” Mr. Coates had failed to draw her waters, but her bladder and bowels acted of themselves during the night. When Dr. Gully came in the morning, he was discouraging. Charles told Emma all, “for it will prevent the too strong and ultimately wretched alternations of spirits. An hour ago I was foolish with delight and pictured her to myself making custards (whirling round), as I think she called them. I told her I thought she would be better, and she so meekly said ‘Thank you.’ Her gentleness is inexpressibly touching.” Annie had called her whirling round “making custards” because when Daydy the cook or she prepared a custard in the kitchen at home, they had to stir the mixture well until it thickened.

  Charles was frank about her condition. “Poor Annie is in a fearful mess, but we keep her sweet with Chloride of Lime; the Doctor said we might change the under-sheet if we could, but I dare not attempt it yet. We have again this morning sponged her with vinegar, again with excellent effect. She asked for orange this morning, the first time she has asked for anything except water. Our poor child has been fearfully ill; as ill as a human being could be . . . If diarrhea will but not come on, I trust in God we are nearly safe.” He thought back to Emma’s last letter. “My own dear, how it did make me cry to read of your going to Annie’s garden for a flower. I wish you could see her now, the perfection of gentleness, patience and gratitude—thankful till it is truly painful to hear her. Poor dear little soul.”

  At midday, Annie appeared “rather more prostrated with knees and feet chilly and breathing laboured, but with some trouble we have got these right, and she is now asleep and breathing well. She certainly relishes her gruel flavoured with orange juice, and has taken table-spoon every hour . . . She wanders—and talks—more today a good deal.” At three o’clock, Charles added: “She is going on very nicely and sleeping capitally with breathing quite slow. We have changed the lower sheet and cut off the tail of her Chemy [chemise] and she looks quite nice and got her bed flat and a little pillow between her two bony knees.” In the evening, Fanny gave her a spoonful of tea and asked her whether it was good. “She cried out quite audibly ‘It is beautifully good.’ She asked, so says Brodie, ‘Where is poor Etty?’ ”

  Emma received Charles and Fanny’s letters of Saturday and Sunday on Monday morning, and wrote to Charles while the postman waited. “Your account of every hour is most precious. Poor darling, she takes much more notice than I expected. I am confused now and hardly know what my impression is, but I have considerable hope. I suppose a dose of opening physic has never been thought of. One must trust entirely to Dr. Gully.” After the next day’s post, she wrote: “Your two letters of Monday are certainly better. Poor sweet little thing! I felt more wretched today than any day, but now I do think looking at the accounts of the last four days that there has been progressive improvement from that time . . . I shall write a few lines in the afternoon, but I always feel bewildered at first, but my impression is considerably better.” She thanked Fanny for writing so fully and telling her about Charles. “Your impression of our poor child’s looks was a comfort. Your being there is an immense comfort for Charles and I think you are quite right to let him do as much as he can, as it must be the greatest relief he has . . . I feel today very awful, being the end of the fortnight.”

  Monday night was quiet for Annie and she was less delirious than the night before, but her bowels were loose. On Tuesday morning Charles started the day’s letter to Emma in hope, but when he came back to Annie’s bedside, he saw small signs that she might be failing; his hope broke and he could not write any more. Fanny wrote to Emma at the end of the day: “I am thankful that you felt there was much to fear in your note yesterday for I grieve to write you a worse report this evening. There has been a change today and signs of sinking. I tell you everything just as it is, my dearest Emma, and thankful also for the mercy that is given us of there being not the least appearance of any suffering in your sweet patient darling . . . The effort of the fever throwing itself off from the bowels is more than her strength seems able to bear and she has lost strength every time. We are now giving brandy and ammonia every quarter of an hour, which she takes well with no difficulty.” Fanny had persuaded Charles to lie down because he had “gone through much fatigue.”

  In the late afternoon, Dr. Gully came and found that Annie had not gained ground. Fanny wrote to Emma: “He thinks her in imminent danger.” If there was any change for the better “you shall have a message—But I have told you the worst. Oh that I should have to send you such sad, sad news . . .”

  On Wednesday morning, Emma wrote to Charles: “The oftener I read over your letter of Monday, the more hopeful it made me. Your minute accounts are such a comfort and I enjoyed the sponging our dear one with vinegar as much as you did.” Emma had been thinking about meals that might suit Annie when she could take a little food, “but it is more for the pleasure of fancying I have something to do for her or think of for her.” Rice gruel might be flavoured with cinnamon or currant jelly. “Whey from milk is another harmless drink and very digestible, I believe . . . Aunt F. says it is slightly opening, so that I am doubtful about it.”

  Emma left the letter unsigned until the post came at midday. When she read Fanny’s letter to her, she added at the bottom: “After post. Alas, my own, how shall we bear it. It is very bitter but I shall not be ill. Thank dear F.” Aunt Fanny Allen wrote to Fanny in Malvern: “Your letter is come, and poor dear Emma bears the destruction of her hope, which was stronger, I fear, than was quite reasonable, with great sweetness, crying much, but gently. I hope and think it will not shake her frame so as to cause her confinement before her natural time. Poor Charles must now think only of his own weight of suffering. Emma suffers, but is not ill . . . I fear, after your letter today, there is but one account to expect tomorrow.”

  During Tuesday night, Annie had been delirious. Fanny sat with her and wrote later to her daughter Effie: “I heard her twice trying to sing, so I think her wandering could not have been distressing to her. She talked a great deal but we could seldom make out anything.”

  On Wednesday morning, there was thunder in the air, but the end came quietly. Charles wrote: “My dear dearest Emma, I pray God Fanny’s note may have prepared you. She went to her final sleep most tranquilly, most sweetly at twelve o’clock today. Our poor dear dear child has had a very short life but I trust happy, and God only knows what miseries might have been in store for her. She expired without a sigh. How desolate it makes one to think of her frank cordial manners. I am so thankful for the daguerreotype. I cannot remember ever seeing the dear child naughty. God bless her. We must be more and more to each other, my dear wife.”

  Fanny wrote to Effie that it was “just at twelve o’clock that we heard her breathe for the last time, while the peals of thunder were sounding. Poor Miss Thorley was very ill after, and Brodie too. I never saw anyone suffer as she did, but they are both going tomorrow, Brodie to Down and Miss Thorley to her own home. She wants rest.”

  In the evening, Fanny wrote to Emma that she had been sitting with Charles for half an hour. “He is able to find relief in crying much, and at first I am sure it is best for him. And next, I think, to go to you which he may possibly do tomorrow if able, and you may trust to Dr Gully who is full of care for him, that he will not set out if not . . . He will have told you, doubtless, of the soft and gentle departure of your d
ear child. It was only ceasing to breathe, and no change was perceptible in her face which, ill as she has looked, has never shewed a shade of pain, hardly of discomfort, since Friday night . . . Dearest Emma, I trust that I have not given you any additional pain in these few words. I can never forget the comfort of having been able to be here for you . . . most tenderly, F.E.W.”

  She wrote to Hensleigh that the funeral had been arranged for Friday. It was a comfort that it would be so soon, but Charles had not yet decided whether he could go and Fanny had suggested that he should go home to Emma on Thursday. “Poor Brodie and Miss Thorley are quite knocked up and useless—Miss T. had one of her attacks just after Annie died, and I had to look after and manage her and Brodie; so after my four nights you will expect to hear I am a good deal knocked up, and cannot do much writing.”

  The postman had no letter for Emma on Wednesday. At some time during the day, she walked out into the garden and picked a small daffodil—a jonquil, bright yellow and sweetly scented. She wrapped it in a fold of paper and wrote on the paper, “Gathered Ap. 23. 1851.” It was perhaps from Annie’s garden. Dried fragments of the flower remain in the fold.

  On Thursday morning before Charles’s letter arrived from Malvern, Emma wrote: “My dearest, I know too well what receiving no message yesterday means. Till four o’clock I sometimes had a thought of hope, but when I went to bed, I felt as if it had all happened long ago. Don’t think it made any difference my being so hopeful the last day. When the blow comes, it wipes out all that preceded it and I don’t think it makes it any worse to bear. I hope you have not burnt your letter. I shall like to see it sometime. My feeling of longing after our lost treasure makes me feel painfully indifferent to the other children, but I shall get right in my feelings to them before long. You must remember that you are my prime treasure (and always have been). My only hope of consolation is to have you safe home to weep together. I feel so full of fears about you. They are not reasonable fears, but any power of hoping seems gone. I hope you will let dearest Fanny . . . stay with you till the end. I can’t bear to think of you by yourself.”

  Emma wrote to Fanny: “I do feel very grateful to God that our dear darling was apparently spared all suffering, and I hope I shall be able to attain some feeling of submission to the will of Heaven.”

  When the postman brought Charles’s letter, Emma wrote simply on her diary page for Wednesday, “12 o’clock.” She wrote to Charles: “I feel less miserable a good deal in the hopes of seeing you sooner than I expected, but do not be in a hurry to set off. I am perfectly well. You do give me the only comfort I can take in thinking of her happy innocent life. She never concealed a thought, and so affectionate, so forgiving. What a blank it is. Don’t think of coming in one day. We shall be much less miserable together.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  LOSS AND REMEMBERING

  Funeral—Consolation—Charles and Emma’s thinking—

  Emma’s keepsakes—Charles’s memorial of Annie

  THE NEXT DAY EMMA BORE her grief in her own way. Her sister Elizabeth had come to be with her, and wrote to Charles: “The only comfort I can try to give you is telling you how gently and sweetly Emma takes this bitter affliction. She cries at times, but without violence, comes to our meals with the children and is as sweetly ready as ever to attend to all their little requirements. I do not fear, taking it as she does, that she will be made ill. It will be the greatest comfort to her to see you home very soon, and to have the additional anxiety of absence from you no longer. It is very happy that Willy is here now, and I felt quite glad last night to hear his voice talking to her out of his bed after she was in hers.”

  After a few hours of uncertainty, Charles had accepted Fanny Wedgwood’s suggestion that he should return at once to Emma. He set off back to London for Down early on Thursday morning, leaving a note for Fanny to tell Miss Thorley he had taken some books, and to ask Brodie to look round his bedroom and bring some clothes he had left. He arrived home at half past six and spent the evening alone with Emma. The next day he wrote to Erasmus: “Poor Emma is well bodily and very firm, but feels bitterly and God knows, we can neither see on any side a gleam of comfort.” Emma wrote to Fanny: “We have done little else but cry together and talk about our darling . . . I think everybody loved her. Hers was such a transparent character, so open to kindness and a little thing made her so happy . . . From her having filled our minds so much for the last nine months it leaves such an emptiness . . . I suppose this painful longing will diminish before long. It seems as if nothing in this life could satisfy it.”

  Charles played with the little ones; he talked calmly about Annie, and was even able to read for a short time, which was “a rest from bitter thoughts, even for a few minutes.” Elizabeth thought he would be longer getting over it than Emma. “She escapes the last painful impressions of the utter change, though I do not know whether the bitter longing to have seen her again is not worse . . . She is able to read a little too, and goes about as usual amongst the children, with even a cheerful smile for them.” Charles and she both talked “of indifferent things.”

  Charles’s decision to leave Malvern before the funeral preyed on his mind. Fanny was to take his place at the service, and he wrote to her on Friday with an assurance that hinted at uncertainty. “I cannot resist writing one line to thank you for having so tenderly advised me to return to home. I am sure I have acted best for Emma’s sake. It is some sort of consolation to weep bitterly together.” He was comforted to know that Fanny would follow Annie’s coffin to the grave. “I know of no other human being whom I could have asked to have undertaken so painful a task.” He ended with painful diffidence, “Sometime I should wish to know on which side and part of the Church-yard, as far as you can describe it, the body of our once joyous child rests.”

  Annie was to be buried in the graveyard of the village church, and Cox & Co., linen drapers, silk mercers and undertakers, managed the arrangements. The graveyard with its yews, cypresses and cedars around the grey and brown stonework of the church was a place which drew many visitors. The journalist Joseph Leech forgot his cynicism about the water cure when he remembered it. He had become very fond of the “beautiful and tranquil burial-ground.” “Seated on one of the wooden benches that stood by the broad gravel walk or its grassy slope, and overlooking the quiet landscape, while the noble old building—choir, nave, tower and transept—flung out their deep shadows and sheltered me from the warm sun, I passed many and many a dreamy hour in its quiet sanctuary.”

  It was the duty of the church sexton,William Whiting, to make and fill up the graves for the dead. Fanny chose the place for Annie. It was on sparsely covered ground under a cedar of Lebanon facing the north side of the chancel. Two paces away was another fresh grave which Mr. Whiting had dug for his own twenty-two-year-old daughter Frances a month beforehand after she had died of tuberculosis.

  The details of a funeral were usually left to the undertaker. He would be instructed simply to “provide what is customary,” and the price would be agreed. Charles paid £57 12s 6d to Cox & Co.; a large sum for the 1850s which bought a funeral with full pomp for a child of the gentry—a hearse, a coach for the family mourners, black horses with ostrich-feather plumes, and two “mutes,” paid mourners with black gowns, kid gloves, silk hatbands and standards of crape, the black fabric of mourning. Charles found the ceremony of the Anglican burial service “very impressive.” He appreciated the form that would be followed for Annie, and the familiar words that would be spoken over her grave.

  The coffin was placed in the hearse in the driveway of Montreal House; Fanny, Hensleigh, Miss Thorley and Brodie sat in the carriage, and the procession made its way slowly along the cobbled road into the village past the stucco villas, the Foley Arms and Lamb’s Bazaar. They came to the church at nine o’clock; the tolling bell fell silent and Mr. Rashdall conducted the service as villagers and visitors went about their business in the streets around. As the Book of Common Prayer ordained, “The p
riest and clerks meeting the corpse at the entrance of the churchyard, and going before it, shall say or sing ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die . . . We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ” At the graveside, as the bearers prepared the coffin to be laid in the earth, Mr. Rashdall said: “Man that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death.” And as the earth was cast on the coffin by the bearers, “We therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”

  When Fanny and Hensleigh returned to their lodgings, she wrote to Charles and Emma: “I think everything was rightly arranged as you would have wished. I feared for Miss Thorley and still more for poor Brodie, and she has suffered, poor thing, most sadly, and had to be lifted into the carriage. But since she has been relieved by a long fit of crying, and is lying down now. Miss Thorley was more composed than I expected, only now and then with bursts of grief—poor thing. There never could have been a child laid in the ground with truer sorrow round her than your sweet and happy Annie.” Fanny had suggested to Brodie that she should go straight back to Down House the next day. “She longs to be there, and when she finds you want her, I hope she will be able to put restraint on herself.” Fanny and Hensleigh had taken Miss Thorley for a drive in their carriage. She was better, and was to go home to her mother in London. “We all leave this sad place together at nine tomorrow morning. Dr. Gully has been to inquire if I had heard how you and Charles were. He is full of kindness.”