183 A medical encyclopaedia—Robert Hooper, Lexicon Medicum; or Medical Dictionary (London, 1839), p. 243.
184 “one of the most elegant resorts”—Davidson’s Ramsgate and Margate Guide (London, n.d.), pp. 50-51.
184 “As most of the company prefer the morning”—Picture of Margate, Being a Complete Guide to All Persons Visiting Margate, Ramsgate, and Broadstairs (London, 1809), pp. 50-51, 52-3.
186 A booklet of the time—The Shells of Margate, Ramsgate, and Broadstairs (Margate, n.d.).
186 “Now ’tis high water”—Charles Williams, Pickings on the Sea-shore; or Cliffs, Sands, Plants and Animals (London, 1857), p. 46.
187 “a subject which makes me more wrath”—CCD, 4.354.
188 “It is my misfortune to be not of an affectionate disposition”—CFL (1915), 1.108.
189 Annie and Etty arranged their shells—The shells are now in a child’s box which belonged to Annie and was given to Etty after Annie’s death. Etty added to the collection and made labels using pieces of paper cut from her father’s notes on barnacles. Solene Morris, former curator of Down House, and her husband Noel kindly identified all the shells which could have been found at Ramsgate and on neighbouring beaches. Kathie Way of the Natural History Museum kindly identified the foreign shells for me and pointed out those which corresponded with entries in Syms Covington’s list for Charles of the shells in the Beagle collection (CUL DAR 39, ii).
191 Dr. Gully explained the methods—James Gully, The Water Cure in Chronic Disease (London, 1846), pp. 564-660. John Harcup pointed out to me that Dr. Gully first described the spinal wash in print in the ninth edition of 1863 (p. 386), but wrote then that he had been using it in his practice since 1846.
192 “For two or three minutes”—Joseph Leech, Three Weeks in Wet Sheets (London, 1851), pp. 42-3.
192 “The youngest nurse or nursery maid”—Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant (London, 1825), p. 255.
193 In his daily notes on the treatment—Family papers, on deposit in Cambridge University Library, CUL DAR 185:125.
193 some books to read—London Library Issue Book no. 3 for February 1850 to January 1851.
194 “No, I have no pity”—William Howitt, The Boy’s Country Book: Being the Real Life of a Country Boy, Written by Himself (London, 1841), pp. 112-13.
194 Phases of Faith—Francis Newman, Phases of Faith; or Passages from the History of my Creed (London, 1851).
194 “excellent”—CCD, 4.479.
194 “the fretfulness of a child”—Newman, Phases of Faith, p. 78.
195 snow fell that night—J. H. Belville’s journal of weather at Blackheath, National Meteorological Archive, Bracknell.
195 “lying on the bed with me”—CUL DAR 210.13.
Chapter Nine: The Last Weeks in Malvern
197 Wombwell’s Royal Menagerie—Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 March 1851.
199 an eight-year-old watercress girl—Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 64-5.
200 Letters on the Laws—Henry Atkinson and Harriet Martineau, Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development (London, 1851), p. 173. In her will, Harriet Martineau left her head to Atkinson for further phrenological research.
200 phrenology and mesmerism—Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 207-17.
200 Charlotte Brontë wrote to a friend—Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (Harmondsworth, 1997), p. 353.
200 “Man has his place in natural history”—Atkinson and Martineau, Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, pp. 16, 28.
201 “Safety of Dr Hooker”—Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 April 1851.
203 That day in Malvern—John Rashdall’s diary, Bodleian Library MS Eng. Misc. e. 356.
203 The next day—Charles and Emma’s letters to each other and others during Annie’s illness are in CCD, 5.13-24. Other letters are in CFL (1915), pp. 132-40, the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library and the Wedgwood/Mosley Collection in Keele University Library.
207 “It is a curious thing to observe”—Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing (London, 1859), p. 35.
208 “Compelled by her dress”—Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing, p. 26.
216 a jonquil—The fold of paper with the fragments of the flower is in DAR 210.13 in the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library. The flower was identified with expert advice from Dr. Chris Preston of the Institute for Terrestrial Ecology at Monkswood, and Sally Kington, the Royal Horticultural Society’s Daffodil Registrar.
Chapter Ten: Loss and Remembering
219 Cox & Co.—Charles’s accounts, English Heritage Darwin Collection at Down House.
220 “Seated on one of the wooden benches”—Joseph Leech, Three Weeks in Wet Sheets; Being the Diary and Doings of a Moist Visitor to Malvern (London, 1851), p. 10.
220 The details of a funeral—Julien Litten, The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral since 1450 (London, 1991).
220 Charles found the ceremony—CFL (1915), 2.161. Charles was writing to Willy about the funeral of Aunt Sarah at Downe. “We walked down to Petleys, and there put on black cloaks and crape to our hats, and followed the [coffin], which was carried by six men.”
223 Fanny returned to her life with Hensleigh—CFL (1915), 2.143.
224 For parents in the 1850s—Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996). Jalland has a chapter on agnostics which deals with Darwin, Hooker and Huxley. Lau rence Lerner, Angels and Absences (Nashville, 1997) deals with child deaths in Victorian literature.
224 “Being troubled with continued retchings”—“The dying experiences of Mrs Carter, wife of Mr Carter, Baptist minister, Down, Kent,” in The Earthen Vessel, vol. 7, no. 83 (December 1851), pp. 295-6.
225 “I consider children so entirely from Heaven”—Diary of Harriet, Lady Lubbock, Lubbock family papers.
225 Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty—John James Tayler, Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty (London, 1851), pp. 216, 214.
226 “It was, I must own, a heavy trial”—Gladstone papers in the British Library.
226 Dean Tait of Chester—A. C. Tait’s journal in Lambeth Palace Library, quoted by Jalland in Death in the Victorian Family, p. 138.
226 “the brief, dry, unpretending, uncircumstantial manner”—Richard Whately, A View of the Scripture Revelations Concerning a Future State (London, 1830), pp. 211-12.
227 “where my living soul would go”—“Upon Death,” in Ann and Jane Taylor, Hymns for Infant Minds (London, 1852), p. 119.
227 the “venerable and consolatory” belief—James Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh (London, 1835), 2.12.
227 “Talk as we will of immortality”—Frederick W. Robertson, Sermons Preached at Brighton (London, 1868), pp. 215-16, 223, 228.
228 People took their wish for a life after death—Henry Atkinson and Harriet Martineau, Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development (London, 1851), p. 164.
228 “I did not know the parting would be such a pang”—Elizabeth Birks quoted by Pat Jalland in Death in the Victorian Family, pp. 119-20.
230 “the great roll of the organ”—Letter to Edmund Lushington in Alfred Tennyson, The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Lang and Edgar Shannon (Oxford, 1987), 2.14.
230 “Little bosom not yet cold”—Alfred Tennyson, The Poems of Tennyson in Three Volumes, ed. Christopher Ricks (London, 1987), 2.464-5.
232 “amidst tears, punishments, threats, and slavery”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile or On Education (Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 79.
233 “There is something strangely pathetic”—CFL (1904), 1.81-2.
233 “She passed away, like morning dew”—Hartley Coleridge, Poems, 1833, ed. Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford, 1990), pp. 93-6. In the second of the verses Emma copied, the original “Admired” was changed to “Beloved.”
2
35 chose instead to write a piece about her—Ralph Colp, “Charles Darwin’s ‘insufferable grief,’ ” Free Associations 9 (London, 1987), pp. 7-44.
236 “If I could have been left alone”—Life and Letters, 1.11.
236 “I remember the faces of persons formerly well-known”—Life and Letters, 3.239.
236 its “most sweet expression”—letter to Caroline Darwin of 20 September 1881, CUL DAR 153.
237 “Our poor child, Annie”—CCD, 5.540-42.
Chapter Eleven: The Destroying Angel
241 In the medical language of the time—Ordinary people’s understanding of the medical terms is shown in Elizabeth Gaskell’s account of Ben Davenport’s fever in Mary Barton, her “tale of Manchester life” in the “hungry forties” published in 1848. “ ‘The fever’ was . . . of a low, putrid, typhoid kind.” Davenport was delirious, and when John Barton described the symptoms to the druggist, he “concluded it was typhus fever.” Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, ed. Stephen Gill (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 99, 102.
241 no one in the Darwin family said anything more—In her letter to her daughter Effie about Annie’s death (Wedgwood/Mosley Collection 310), Fanny Wedgwood wrote: “It was at last a bad fever that she died of. Typhous it is called, and there are more children ill of it here.” As noted on p. 204, there is no trace of any other deaths from any kind of fever in the parish records or local newspapers for the month.
242 “We can scarcely indeed touch on this subject of fever”—Henry Holland, Medical Notes and Reflections (London, 1840), p. 101.
242 I gave all the clues—My thanks to Dr. Denis Gibbs, Dr. John Ford, Dr. Gordon Cook and Dr. John Brown for their opinions.
243 Tuberculosis is caused by a slow-working bacillus—René and Jean Dubos, The White Plague: Tuberculosis, Man and Society (London, 1953), gave a detailed medical and social history of the disease in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many other books have been published since; among the most recent is Thomas Dormandy, The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis (London, 1999).
243 “Consumption, Decline or Phthisis”—Thomas Yeoman, Consumption of the Lungs, or Decline: The Causes, Symptoms and Rational Treatment (London, 1848), pp. i, 8.
243 Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption—James Clark, A Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (London, 1835).
244 “so obscure or doubtful”—Yeoman, Consumption of the Lungs, pp. 19-20.
244 “In childhood . . . the child is peevish”—Richard Cotton, The Nature, Symptoms, and Treatment of Consumption (London, 1852), p. 102.
244 “Many persons acquire a predisposition”—Yeoman, Consumption of the Lungs, p. 6.
245 “No physician acquainted with the morbid anatomy”—Clark, A Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, p. 6.
245 “I romanced internally about early death”—Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography (London, 1877), 2.435.
245 “From some cause”—Cotton, The Nature, Symptoms, and Treatment of Consumption, p. 100.
246 “The extreme prevalence of consumption”—Henry Hillier, “Preface” in A Popular Treatise on Diseases Resembling Consumption (London, 1854).
246 Royal Brompton Hospital—Charles noted a contribution in his accounts for 1841. The history of the setting up and early years of the hospital is told by Maurice Davidson and F. G. Rouvray in The Brompton Hospital: The Story of a Great Adventure (London, 1954).
246 “Pain and suffering must be alleviated”—W. H. Howard, Introductory Sermon Preached in the Chapel of the Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest (London, 1842), p. 11.
247 “There is a dread disease”—Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, ed. Michael Slater (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 731-2.
247 “We have great doubts about the propriety”—Review article on novels by Charles Dickens and Captain Marryat, The Christian Remembrancer, December 1842, pp. 581-611.
249 “To her mind it seemed an evil”—Elizabeth Wetherell, The Wide, Wide World (London, 1880), pp. 412, 450.
250 the child’s mind was “quick, forward, intelligent”—Herbert Mayo, The Philosophy of Living (London, 1837), p. 26.
250 “Water is one of the best prophylactics”—Yeoman, Consumption of the Lungs, p. 50.
250 he was “convinced, that the judicious use”—James Gully, The Water Cure in Chronic Disease (London, 1846), pp. 260-61.
250 “proof of common origin of man”—Notebooks, p. 293 (C 174).
251 he “fully recognised the truth”—Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin (London, 1879), p. 110.
251 “excellent observations of sickly offspring”—Notebooks, p. 279 (C 133).
251 “rearing up of every hereditary tendency”—Notebooks, p. 415 (E 67).
252 he wrote to Fox about his surviving children—CCD, 5.84, 100.
252 he revealed his worries indirectly—CCD, 5.194.
252 “It is only by convincing the public”—Clark, A Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, pp. vi-vii.
253 William Farr—John Eyler, Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore, 1979). Farr’s writings can be surveyed most easily in the memorial volume, Vital Statistics: A Memorial Volume of Selections from the Reports and Writings of W. F. Farr, ed. N. A. Humphreys (London, 1885).
253 “Diseases are more easily prevented than cured”—1st Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England, 1839, p. 89, quoted in Farr, Vital Statistics, pp. 213-15.
253 “The great source of the misery of mankind”—Farr, Vital Statistics, p. 136.
254 In 1851, five children died—14th Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England, 1852.
254 they might be dwarfish or ill-formed—John Hogg, London as It is (London, 1837), pp. 352-3.
254 “for the most part . . . the parent’s gift”—Thomas Bull, The Maternal Management of Children in Health and Disease (London, 1848), pp. 386-99.
255 “ignorant members of our legislature”—Descent, 2.438-9.
255 “natural history of infectious disease”—Macfarlane Burnet and David White, Natural History of Infectious Disease (Cambridge, 1972).
255 mistletoe as a parasite—Origin, pp. 114, 122.
256 a copy of his periodical—CUL DAR 161.2:205.
256 “I well remember saying to myself”—Life and Letters, 3.234.
Chapter Twelve: The Origin of Species
257 “The only chance of forgetting”—CUL DAR 211.11.
258 “I suggest not halfway”—CUL DAR 205.5: 130-31.
259 a boy’s visit to the Polytechnic—Mary Howitt, The Children’s Year (London, 1847), p. 47.
259 “Etty nearly 8 years old”—Family papers, CCD, 5.542-3.
260 Stories for Sunday Afternoons—Susan Crompton, Stories for Sunday Afternoons. From the Creation to the Advent of the Messiah (London, 1845), p. 3.
262 “the sense of loss was always there unhealed”—CFL (1915), 2.137.
262 “Why sorrow should make us shy”—CFL (1915), 2.85.
262 “my very dear coadjutor”—CFL (1915), 2.203.
263 “The Darwin family are a nice family”—Family papers.
263 Chapters on Mental Physiology—Henry Holland, Chapters on Mental Physiology (London, 1852), pp. 185, 189.
263 a matter of “deep interest”—Henry Holland, Review of James Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (London, 1836-47), Quarterly Review, vol. 86, no. 171 (December 1849), p. 16.
264 “Sobbing in child”—Marginalia, p. 385.
264 Confessions of an English Opium Eater—Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 104, 108, 52-3, 64-5, 112.
266 “very poor”—CCD, 4.481, 491.
267 “One instance . . . has fallen under my own observation”—Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (London, 1888), 1.450-51.
267 “I thank you sincerely”—CCD, 5.151.
; 268 “Poor dear happy little thing”—CCD, 6.238.
268 “I went up to my father”—Leonard Darwin, “Memories of Down House,” The Nineteenth Century and After, vol. 106 (July 1929), p. 120.
268 “I was indeed grieved”—CCD, 8.365-6.
269 He did not attend church services—George Foote, Darwin on God (London, 1889), p. 20. The constable who told Foote about his conversations with Mr. Darwin may have been William Soper, who served at Downe between 1858 and the mid-1860s.
Creation (Movie Tie-In) Page 40
