Charles and Emma (16 page)

Authors: Deborah Heiligman

BOOK: Charles and Emma

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She was also a good dancer and a good artist. And unlike Emma, Annie liked to dress up and look nice. Charles remembered that one day she dressed up in some of Emma's clothesâa silk gown, cap, shawl, and gloves. Charles thought she looked like a little old woman, “but with her heightened colour, sparkling eyes & bridled smiles, she looked, as I thought, quite charming.”

Annie often climbed into Charles's lap or stood behind him and arranged his hair, making it “beautiful,” for half an hour at a time. She loved being with her mother, too, and
Emma adored her. When she was little she hated to part with her mother even for a short time. Once, when she was very young, she said, “Oh Mama, what should we do, if you were to die?” And when she was sick, she wanted to be near both of them. Charles said that when Annie was unwell, “her mother 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.”

In the summer of 1850, Annie was nine. Charles described her as very tall for her age, sturdy and strong. She had a firm step. She had long brown hair, dark gray eyes, good white teeth, and a slightly brown complexion. Sometimes when Charles looked at her he thought that in his dear Annie he would have a kind soul tending him in his old age. She would be his solace, his nurse.

Willy was off at boarding school now, for the first time, so Annie was the oldest child at home. They had cousins visiting, and normally Annie would organize games for the younger children. But it was very hot, and she clung to Emma and Charles. At night she cried herself to sleep. She was obviously sick, but she didn't have any clear symptoms that they could point to, and she did have some good days.

Annie and the two other girls, Etty and Elizabeth (nicknamed Betty), had had scarlet fever the year before, but they had all gotten better. Looking back, Charles and Emma realized that Annie had not been herself again after the scarlet fever. Later Emma went back and wrote in her diary on the day marked June 27, 1850, “Annie first failed about this time.”

As summer turned to fall, the house was bustling, as usual. In the midst of the bustle, Charles studied his barnacles, and the older girls, Annie and Etty, had their lessons together.
They took lessons from a drawing master and a writing master. Emma taught them, too, and wrote in her diary to keep track of their Latin grammar exercises. Etty, two and a half years younger, was a contrast to the easy-going, cheerful Annie. She was a willful child, with a sharp temper. But the sisters were close, though perhaps not as close as the Dovelies had been.

The other Darwin children were littleâGeorge was four, Betty was three, Frank was almost two, and there was, as usual, a baby. Leonard (Lenny) had been born that Januaryâthe fourth son and the seventh living child in the family. For the first time, during this, her eighth labor, Emma had had some pain relief for the birth. Chloroform, which had been discovered in 1831, had begun to be used to relieve labor pains a few years earlier. So Charles, who truly hated to see Emma go through the pain of childbirth, had arranged for some to be on hand for the doctor to use when he arrived.

But, as he later wrote to his old professor Henslow, Emma's pains were severe and fast, and he couldn't wait for the doctor to get there: “I was so bold during my wifes confinement which are always rapid, as to administer Chloroform, before the Dr. came & I kept her in a state of insensibility of 1 & Â½ hours & she knew nothing from first pain till she heard that the child was born.âIt is the grandest & most blessed of discoveries.”

It was nice to be able to relieve the pain of one you loved, and Charles and Emma wanted desperately to help Annie feel better.