After Annie’s death, he wrote to his cousin Fox, who was an Anglican clergyman, “Thank God she suffered hardly at all, and expired as tranquilly as a little angel. Our only consolation is that she passed a short though joyous life . . . Poor dear little soul. Well, it is all over.”
Emma hoped that Annie would go to Heaven and that she would join her there, but she could not fathom God’s purpose in taking her child from her. Charles, on the other hand, had no belief that there was any Divine purpose behind such events. For Emma as a devout Christian, death was inextricably bound up with sin, but for Charles there was no connection. Since writing his essay on evolution in 1844, he had held to the view he had reached then. Death was a purely natural process. Medicine might eventually find natural causes and work out treatments, but there were no explanations in religion for the loss of a loved child.
Charles found one consolation in an idea which Rousseau had mentioned in Émile. For too many, Rousseau suggested, childhood passed “amidst tears, punishments, threats, and slavery.” He asked fathers, “Do you know the moment when death awaits your children? Do not prepare regrets for yourself in depriving them of the few instants nature gives them. As soon as they can sense the pleasure of being, arrange it so that they can enjoy it; arrange it so that at whatever hour God summons them they do not die without having tasted life.” Charles thanked God that he hardly ever cast a look of displeasure on Annie, and wrote many years later that it was his “greatest comfort” that he had never spoken a harsh word to her.
As for the hope that time would heal the wound, Charles and Emma both knew it would be a balance of remembering and forgetting. Each wanted to keep certain memories, purged of pain, but they dealt with them in different ways. Emma was as reticent in her recollections as she was about any deep feelings, but she kept precious letters and objects, and used them to help her remember the people she cared for. When her sister Fanny had died in 1832, Emma did not write about her as some would have done, but made a small packet of her housekeeping memoranda and lists. When Etty saw them many years later, she was struck by the triviality of the scraps, and yet knew how her mother had cared for them. “There is something strangely pathetic in finding these simple records thus carefully kept for sixty years or more after they were written.”
After Annie’s death, Emma made a few notes about her recollections of her, but they were only brief prompts for her memory. She found words for her feelings in two poems by Hartley Coleridge, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, about the death of a young woman. The first asked “Where dwells she now?” and suggested that she no longer had any part in this life. The second poem in reply argued that the world was a “record sad of ceaseless change.” Emma copied out three stanzas.She passed away, like morning dew
Before the sun was high;
So brief her time, she scarcely knew
The meaning of a sigh.
As round the rose its soft perfume,
Sweet love around her floated;
Beloved she grew—while mortal doom
Crept on, unfeared, unnoted.
Love was her guardian angel here,
But love to death resigned her;
Though love was kind, why should we fear?
But holy death is kinder.
The poem made no reference to the afterlife or reunion with loved ones, only the kindness of “holy death.”
Emma gave Annie’s small embroidery case to Effie. She wrote to Fanny Wedgwood that she thought Effie would “like to possess some little keepsake out of poor Annie’s treasures. She was always the one Annie loved best.” Emma gave some other playthings of Annie’s to Etty, but took her writing case for herself. She gathered some of Annie’s letters, a piece of her embroidery and one or two of her trinkets. As she placed the things together in the box, their simple meanings added to each other.
The quills, steel nibs, paper, sealing wax and seals had all been kept in the writing case, and called Annie to mind as she had sat writing letters to cousins and sealing the envelopes for Emma to send. Of the other things that Emma put in the box, the silk needle case, the thimble and the needlework also reflected Annie’s neatness and concentration. The ribbon, the glass beads and the pendant were small reminders of her love of trinkets and treasures. Annie’s pocketbook for 1848 recalled her seventh birthday. Emma had inscribed it, “Anne Elizabeth Darwin March 1848 From her Mamma.”
Annie’s letter to Sarah Thorley brought to mind one of the friendships outside the family circle which Annie had been learning how to take forward as a polite young lady. The notebook Brodie had made and embroidered for Annie spoke of the nurse’s devotion to her during the last months. Emma found the piece of paper with Charles’s daily notes on his care of Annie and her condition. Charles’s words, brief and frank, showed his private understanding of Annie’s distress, unsoftened by the glossings of hope for recovery with which he would have spoken to her and others. Putting the folded paper in the box with Annie’s “childish things,” Emma kept the memory of her and Charles’s hidden concern and anxieties during Annie’s lingering sickness.
Etty’s letters to Emma and George in the first days at Malvern pictured Annie buying oranges in the village and riding a donkey on the hills above. She had been up and about then, and the letters were a sharp reminder of how sudden and unexpected was the final crisis. The lock of Annie’s hair had been cut in the hours after her death. Emma wrote the date on the paper, closed up the writing case and put it away in a private place.
Charles kept nothing of Annie’s for himself, but chose instead to write a piece about her. It was a common practice at the time for a bereaved father or mother to write a private “memorial” of a loved child. Most wanted to bring their experience of loss into key with the comforting idea of the “good death.” They would describe the child’s moral state and approach to death; they would explain the consolation that had been found, and look forward to the next life. Charles, by contrast, had no wish to dwell on Annie’s illness and nothing to say about the meaning of her death or a life beyond. His aim was to preserve his memories of the living child and what she had meant to him and Emma when she was happy and well.
Charles had always had clear recollections of things he loved, and liked to dwell on them. During the Beagle voyage he had found that cherished memories rose “the more vividly in my imagination” because of his remoteness from the people and places remembered. Etty once saw him reaching for a memory of his father when they visited the family home in Shrewsbury some years after his father’s death. The occupant showed them round, and as they were leaving, Charles said regretfully: “If I could have been left alone in that greenhouse for five minutes, I know I should have been able to see my father in his wheel-chair as vividly as if he had been there before me.” When Charles’s cousin, the anthropologist Francis Galton, asked him about his visual memory some time later, he explained with a telling detail: “I remember the faces of persons formerly well-known vividly, and can make them do anything I like.”
Charles was, though, unhappy about one missing figure. His mother had died when he was eight, after a painful illness. She had been confined to her bedroom for some time beforehand; Charles had been looked after by his elder sisters, and was kept away from her room during the last days. When he came to write about his childhood memories in 1838 and again in his last years, he mentioned that he could scarcely recall anything of her except being sent for when she died, going into her room, and “my Father meeting us crying afterwards.” Almost at the end of his life, after his brother Erasmus’s death, he discovered a miniature of her among Erasmus’s possessions and wrote to his sister Caroline about it. He was glad to learn from her that the picture, with its “most sweet expression,” was a good likeness. He was clearly concerned about his inability to remember his mother, and suggested that his “forgetfulness” might be partly accounted for “by none of you being able to endure speaking about so dreadful a loss.” When Annie died, Charles may well have recognise
d the possibility that he and Emma would find it difficult to talk about her with the children. They might then all lose their memories of her in the silence.
A week to the day after Annie’s death, Charles took a gathering of special black-bordered mourning paper and prepared a quill. He started to write with a degree of detachment, but as the memories came, he wrote more and more freely, dwelling on glimpses of Annie, words and gestures that brought out his deepest feelings. He ended with a direct but unanswerable plea.
Our poor child, Annie, was born in Gower St on March 2nd 1841 and expired at Malvern at Midday on the 23rd of April 1851. I write these few pages as I think in after years, if we live, the impressions now put down will recall more vividly her chief characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main feature in her disposition which at once rises before me is her buoyant joyousness, tempered by two other characteristics, namely her sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger, and her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance and rendered every movement elastic and full of life and vigour. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running down stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even when playing with her cousins when her joyousness almost passed into boisterousness, a single glance of my eye, not of displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast one on her), but of want of sympathy would for some minutes alter her whole countenance. This sensitiveness to the least blame, made her most easy to manage and very good; she hardly ever required to be found fault with, and was never punished in any way whatever. Her sensitiveness appeared extremely early in life; and showed itself in crying bitterly over any story at all melancholy, or on parting with Emma even for the shortest interval. Once when she was very young she exclaimed “Oh Mamma, what should we do, if you were to die?”
The other point in her character, which made her joyousness and spirits so delightful, was her strong affection, which was of a most clinging, fondling nature. When quite a Baby, this showed itself in never being easy without touching Emma, when in bed with her, and quite lately she would, when poorly, fondle for any length of time one of Emma’s arms. When very unwell, Emma 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. So again, she would at almost any time spend half-an-hour in arranging my hair, “making it” as she called it “beautiful,” or in smoothing, the poor dear darling, my collar or cuffs, in short in fondling me. She liked being kissed; indeed every expression in her countenance beamed with affection and kindness, and all her habits were influenced by her loving disposition.
Besides her joyousness thus tempered, she was in her manners remarkably cordial, frank, open, straightforward, natural and without any shade of reserve. Her whole mind was pure and transparent. One felt one knew her thoroughly and could trust her: I always thought, that come what might, we should have had in our old age, at least one loving soul, which nothing could have changed. She was generous, handsome and unsuspicious in all her conduct; free from envy and jealousy; good-tempered and never passionate. Hence she was very popular in the whole household, and strangers liked her and soon appreciated her. The very manner in which she shook hands with acquaintances showed her cordiality.
Her figure and appearance were clearly influenced by her character: her eyes sparkled brightly; she often smiled; her step was elastic and firm; she held herself upright, and often threw her head a little backwards, as if she defied the world in her joyousness. For her age she was very tall, not thin, and strong. Her hair was a nice brown and long; her complexion slightly brown; eyes dark grey; her teeth large and white. The daguerreotype is very like her, but fails entirely in expression: having been made two years since, her face had become lengthened and better looking. All her movements were vigorous, active and usually graceful; when going round the Sand-walk with me, although I walked fast, yet she often used to go before pirouetting in the most elegant way, her dear face bright all the time, with the sweetest smiles.
Occasionally she had a pretty coquettish manner towards me, the memory of which is charming: she often used exaggerated language, and when I quizzed her by exaggerating what she had said, how clearly can I now see the little toss of the head and exclamation of “Oh Papa, what a shame of you.” She had a truly feminine interest in dress, and was always neat: such undisguised satisfaction, escaping somehow all tinge of conceit and vanity, beamed from her face, when she had got hold of some ribbon or gay handkerchief of her Mamma’s. One day she dressed herself up in a silk gown, cap, shawl and gloves of Emma, appearing in figure like a little old woman, but with her heightened colour, sparkling eyes and bridled smiles, she looked, as I thought, quite charming.
She cordially admired the younger children; how often have I heard her emphatically declare “What a little duck Betty is, is not she?”
She was very handy, doing everything neatly with her hands: she learnt music readily, and I am sure from watching her countenance, when listening to others playing, that she had a strong taste for it. She had some turn for drawing, and could copy faces very nicely. She danced well, and was extremely fond of it. She liked reading, but evinced no particular line of taste. She had one singular habit, which, I presume, would ultimately have turned into some pursuit; namely a strong pleasure in looking out words or names in dictionaries, directories, gazetteers, and in this latter case finding out the places in the Map: so also she would take a strange interest in comparing word by word two editions of the same book; and again she would spend hours in comparing the colours of any objects with a book of mine, in which all colours are arranged and named.
Her health failed in a slight degree for about nine months before her last illness; but it only occasionally gave her a day of discomfort: at such times, she was never in the least degree cross, peevish or impatient; and it was wonderful to see, as the discomfort passed, how quickly her elastic spirits brought back her joyousness and happiness. In the last short illness, her conduct in simple truth was angelic; she never once complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others; and was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, and said some tea “was beautifully good.” When I gave her some water, she said “I quite thank you”; and these, I believe were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me.
But looking back, always the spirit of joyousness rises before me as her emblem and characteristic: she seemed formed to live a life of happiness: her spirits were always held in check by her sensitiveness lest she should displease those she loved, and her tender love was never weary of displaying itself by fondling and all the other little acts of affection.
We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age: she must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face. Blessings on her.
April 30. 1851.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE DESTROYING ANGEL
Cause of death—Tuberculosis—Fear of the disease—Charles’s understanding—Child mortality—Bacteria
IT HAD BEEN LEFT TO THE LANDLADY in Malvern to report Annie’s death for the official record. Eliza Partington took a note from Dr. Gully to Mr. Dancocks, the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages for the neighbourhood, and he entered the details in his ledger. He recorded the cause of death as “bilious fever with typhoid character, certified.” The last word, a touch of procedure, formally acknowledged Dr. Gully’s note as the judgement of a qualified physician.
Dr. Gully did not mean typhoid as we know it now. The disease of that name, caught from contaminated water, was recognised as a specific illness only in the 1860s and 1870s. Dr. Gully had not even identified a disease as the cause of de
ath in the way a doctor would now; he was only describing Annie’s symptoms. Her “bilious fever” was the vomiting and fever in the days before her death. The fever’s “typhoid character” was the delirium she had drifted in and out of as Charles and the others sat beside her. In the medical language of the time, “typhoid” simply meant “like typhus,” a separate and well-recognised disease of which delirium was one of the main symptoms.
As far as is known, no one in the Darwin family said anything more than Dr. Gully about the cause of Annie’s death. It was enough to be told that she had died of a fever. So little was understood about the many different conditions of which fever was a symptom, and so little could be done to treat any of them, that there was no reason to say more. Dr. Holland had written in 1839: “We can scarcely indeed touch upon this subject of fever . . . without finding in it a bond by which to associate together numerous forms of disease; but withal a knot so intricate, that no research has hitherto succeeded in unravelling it.”
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