Charles and Emma (6 page)

Uncharacteristically, Emma took precise notes of what happened. “On Monday 13th August 1832,” she wrote, “my dear Fanny
complained of uneasiness in the bowels. Eliz gave her calomel and jalap but she would come and sit at the dinner table to save appearances as she said. The pain continued all night.”

They didn't know what was wrong with her—she may have had cholera, or it may have been another kind of intestinal illness. There were cholera outbreaks all over England—from Liverpool in the north down to Oxford and even into East London. People throughout the country were scared it would spread, including the Wedgwoods' neighbors in Staffordshire. The symptoms of cholera were severe vomiting and diarrhea, leading to dehydration, weakness, and often death.

In the nineteenth century, the treatment of an intestinal disease focused on purging the system through vomiting and moving the bowels. Those nursing the sick also tried to keep the patient comfortable, which wasn't very easy, with all of that purging. They also gave fluids, although the dire effect of dehydration was not well known.

Elizabeth “fomented her” (applied hot packs) and tried to give an injection, but it didn't work. The injection was probably liquid ammonia or saline. Concerned that Fanny was not improving, Emma and Elizabeth sent for the apothecary, a Mr. B., who “ordered fomentation with poppy heads,” Emma noted. The heat from the compress, probably more than the traces of opium from the poppy seeds, helped and “the pain gradually went off.” Then Emma put twenty leeches on Fanny, which they hoped would suck the disease out with the blood.

Soon Fanny seemed to be getting better. Emma wrote, “Saturday…she had a peaceful day and slept a good deal. She asked to have Charlotte's letter read to her. I slept in the room with her and only had to help her up once or twice. Early on Sunday morning she was low and Eliz gave her some hot drink. She revived during the day.”

The next evening, she “took an injection which gave her violent pain and after that she was restless and uneasy; told Elizabeth to sponge her face twice and her back and chest. At 4 o'clock sent for Mr. B. He found her sinking when he came and gave her brandy and she was thoroughly warmed.”

Months later, while on his voyage, Charles received a letter from his sister Caroline. Charles read that his cousin Fanny Wedgwood, who had been suggested as a possible wife for him, had

 

seemed very ill for two days with vomitings and pain and then appeared to get better, so much so that not one of the family had an idea she was in danger. 7 days after she became unwell, Elizabeth sat up with her at night as she (Fanny) was too restless to sleep; towards morning she seemed cold and more uncomfortable & they sent for the apothecary…from some misunderstanding none of the family had an idea her danger was so immediate.

 

No doubt in hindsight Caroline wondered why they hadn't sent for a doctor, perhaps their father, Dr. Darwin? An apothecary was the least-skilled medical person; why not go for the best? They could afford to pay a doctor. But they just did not realize how seriously ill Fanny was. Even Dr. Darwin, or any doctor, might not have been able to help much.

At Maer Emma recorded in her notes, “At 9 came the fatal attack and in 5 minutes we lost our gentle, sweet Fanny, the most without selfishness of anybody I ever saw and her loss has left a blank which will never be filled up.”

Emma's other half was gone.

In Caroline's letter, Charles read about the family's grief. “Uncle Jos was terribly over come & Aunt Bessy it was some
time before Elizabeth could make her understand what had happened,” Caroline wrote. “Father says mortification must have taken place in her bowels.” And Caroline saw, as everyone did, how terrible Fanny's death would be for Emma, the other Dovely. She wrote, “The loss to Emma will be very great, hardly ever having been separated, all her associations of her pleasures & youth so intimately connected with her.”

For Emma it was a terrible, wrenching loss, and one that she had not anticipated at all. It had come so quickly that it was, in a profound sense, unbelievable. But Emma found a way to cope. In Jane Austen novels, a death often precipitates the loss of a fortune, which propels the heroine to seek a husband. In this case the death propelled our heroine to seek something else. She wrote a note to herself, on a scrap of paper that she never showed anyone (her daughter Henrietta found it after her death). “Oh Lord,” Emma wrote, “help me to become more like her, and grant that I may join with Thee never to part again. I trust that my Fanny's sweet image will never pass from my mind. Let me always keep it in my mind as a motive for holiness. What exquisite happiness it will be to be with her again, to tell her how I loved her who has joined with me in almost every enjoyment of my life.”

Emma resolved to become good like Fanny and religious like Fanny so that she would join her in heaven. To Aunt Jessie, Emma wrote, “I feel a sad blank at the thoughts of having lost my sweet, gentle companion who has been so closely joined with me ever since we were born, but I try to keep my mind fixed upon the hope of being with her again, never to part again.”

Emma needed to believe that she would see Fanny again one day. She told Aunt Jessie, “Such a separation as this seems to make the next world feel such a reality—it seems to bring
it so much nearer to one's mind and gives one such a desire to be found worthy of being with her.”

Charles Darwin would later say, looking back at his own childhood and at the great differences between him and his brother, Erasmus, that he was inclined to agree with a cousin of his that “education and environment produce only a small effect on the mind of anyone, and that most of our qualities are innate.” Even so, it is unquestionable that Fanny's life and then her death affected Emma profoundly. It cemented a faith in God and eternity that could have dwindled otherwise. Emma Wedgwood now firmly believed in a heaven and a hell. She believed that if you were a good Christian you would go to heaven. And if you weren't you would go to hell.

 

Chapter 7

The Sensation of Fear

 

My experience of English lovers is that if they mean
anything, they come straight to the point and make it evident.
But if not, they are as friendly as they can be, without
the least idea of anything more.

–M
AUD DU
P
uy
D
ARWIN, WIFE OF
G
EORGE
D
ARWIN
, J
UNE
1887

 

O
n the voyage, Charles had been vigorous and brave. He withstood horrible seasickness, weathered harsh conditions, witnessed a battle in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, and experienced an earthquake in Valdivia, Chile. “There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy,” he wrote about the earthquake. But now, back in London in 1838, he truly was scared. The thought of marriage and of Emma terrified him and gave him serious headaches. He knew she was religious, and he was consumed by the fear that his secret idea would go against her beliefs.

Charles had been spending hours at the London Zoo watching Jenny, an orangutan. The zoo had recently acquired her; she was the first orangutan the zoo had, and was one of
the first apes in England. On an unseasonably warm March day, Charles had observed Jenny in her cage in the giraffe house. The keeper showed Jenny an apple but, teasing, didn't give it to her. Then, Charles wrote to one of his sisters, Jenny “threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child.”

Watching Jenny, Charles asked himself questions: How much was an ape like a child? How similar were people and animals? Does an orangutan have the same emotions we do? If so, how closely are we humans related to animals? He kept going back to the zoo to watch Jenny. That autumn he wrote in a new notebook, one marked “Expression” and labeled “N,” that “children understand before they can talk, so do many animals.—analogy probably false, may lead to something.”

He was careful not to jump to conclusions, but he saw what he saw: “Jenny was amusing herself—, by getting out ears of corn with her teeth from the straw, & just like child not knowing what to do with them, came several times & opened my hand, & put them in—like child.”

Like a child. What would it mean about God's creation if apes and humans were related? In the religious worldview, there was a hierarchy of living things, from the lowliest of the low, animals like lice or slugs, to fish and birds and cats and apes, up to human beings, who were at the top—but not as high up as angels. Charles was beginning to think that people were more closely related to orangutans than to angels, if angels existed at all.
Like a child.
People and apes must be related, and if so, they must have a common ancestor. But how did the common ancestor change to create humans and apes? If species do change, as Charles felt certain they did, how was that happening? What was the mechanism that drove this change?

Charles, like Emma, was a voracious reader, and as he read in a wide range of subjects, from philosophy and theology to history and political theory, he was reading with a purpose—to understand the natural world and, most specifically, the origin of species.

On September 28, 1838, two months after his visit to Maer, Charles opened another notebook (he wrote in many at once). This one was red leather, with a “D” on the front. In gray ink, on pages edged in green, he wrote about something he'd read.
An Essay on the Principle of Population
was written by the economist Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798. Malthus's essay was about society, and about people, most especially about how poor people succumb in an environment where there are limited resources. He argued that without disease, famine, and poverty, the human population would grow too fast. People need food; people need sex. If there is more population growth than the food supply can accommodate, something must and will happen to reduce the population.

People still discussed and argued about what Malthus had to say, especially about the problems of poverty. Were workhouses the answer, as Malthus said? Should the poor be given charity, or should they be left to fend for themselves? The novelist Charles Dickens felt Malthus depicted poor people as less than human; in novels such as
Oliver Twist,
he sought to remedy that, making poor people well-rounded main characters. Charles, Erasmus, and their London friends discussed these problems over dinner. What might Malthus's ideas mean—for better or for worse—to society?

But Charles was even more interested in what Malthus's theory might mean for nature and for the origin of species. As Charles read the essay, he thought more about animals and plants than about people. He believed there was a direct
analogy, a way into the species problem. Reading Malthus and thinking about the natural world, Charles realized that nature was not happy and peaceful, as Paley had described in his natural theology books. The lion did not lie down with the lamb. Life in nature was a struggle, just as in the crowded, poverty-ridden neighborhoods of London. In human society there were not enough jobs for the growing numbers of people; in nature—on a desert island or on top of a mountain—there was also a struggle for existence when there was not enough food for the growing number of birds, beasts, or bugs. Charles reasoned that if too many individuals of a species are born in the same place and try to live off a limited supply of food, there is a fight for survival. The weaker ones die. The ones that are strongest, best adapted to the conditions of the area and most able to get the food, survive. Those who survive pass on their traits to their offspring. This was true of cockroaches, sheep, bees, and beetles.

And birds.

While on his voyage, Charles had usually been careful to label every bird, every fossil, every plant. He would write down where he found it and what he thought (or knew) it was. But leaving the Galapagos Islands, he uncharacteristically had thrown birds from different islands into one bag. He regretted this later when he realized that the mockingbirds and the finches would have been wonderful evidence for his theory. On the journey home, he thought about how the mockingbirds from the Galapagos Islands of San Cristóbal and Isabela looked the same, but the ones from Floreana and Santiago seemed different. And each kind was found only on its own island. Were they just varieties, or were they evidence of new species? Had the birds been blown over from the coast of South America and then diverged as they lived and died,
generation after generation, on the islands? he wondered. And if they had, what did that mean about the creation of new species?

When he got back to England, he had given his mockingbird and finch specimens to John Gould, an ornithologist. Gould was especially excited about the finches: There seemed to be more than a dozen species of finches never seen anywhere else before. Gould told Charles that he had brought back birds that seemed to live only in the Galapagos. Charles's inkling was confirmed: Species were not stable. They were not created in one fell swoop by God, never to change, as the Bible said and most people believed.

As Charles looked at the beaks of the finches, he began to see evidence of the fight for survival that precipitated the change. He began to see that beaks adapted to the kinds of seeds available on the island. Big beaks could crack open big, hard seeds; small beaks were better for hard-to-get-at seeds. This was not God's design; it was design brought about by the need for food. His birds and Malthus's theory had given him the mechanism for the transmutation of species.

In his notebooks, Charles began to write about his idea of how it all happened. He thought about how traits get passed down, over and over again. He surmised that traits that are passed on change and adapt according to what is needed for survival. These changes—very small ones—add up over time to make bigger changes. These bigger changes result in the creation of new species. He called his idea “modification by natural selection.” He knew he had to study his idea in minute and exacting detail, in an organized and disciplined way. But he now had “a theory by which to work.” Observing Jenny, reading Malthus, thinking about the finches, he put it all together.