Chapter 5
Little Miss Slip-Slop
I love Maer much too well not to be glad
always when I come home.
—FANNY WEDGWOOD, FROM GENEVA,
TO HER MOTHER, JANUARY 1827
When he got back to London, Charles received a note from Emma, reporting on the success of the bazaar. He answered her, “My dear Emma, Many thanks for the news of the Bazaar, and for Elizabeth’s purchases…I am glad to hear there were some few uglier things at the Bazaar than those you took.” In newly industrialized England, riding the trains was an adventure and an unpredictable thing, so he reported on his trip. “I was altogether disappointed with the railroad—it was so rough and so much plague with the many changes.”
And then he let his heart show a little. “This Marlborough St is a forlorn place.—We have no ducks here, much less geese, and as for that sentimental fat goose we ate over the Library fire,—the like of it seldom turns up.—I feel the same spiteful joy at hearing you have had no other geese.”
He continued, “Pray remember I consider myself invited to Maer, the next time I come down into the country.—in fact, I think I have been so often that I have a kind of vested right, so see me you will, and we will have another goose.”
But what did he mean when he said that their “goose” was so nice, of the kind that seldom turn up? Was he telling her something? Emma didn’t think so. She figured she and Charles would go on for years, having geese by the fire and staying friends. That was fine with her. She was content to stay at Maer Hall with Elizabeth, playing the piano, reading, doing needlework, and taking care of their beloved mother, who was bed-ridden and very ill.
Emma had been born into the carefree, happy, supportive Wedgwood family on May 2, 1808. She was the youngest. She had four brothers and three sisters (a fourth older sister had died as a baby)—Elizabeth, Josiah, Charlotte, Harry, Frank, Hensleigh, and Fanny. She was closest to Fanny, who was only two years older than she was. They were inseparable, spending almost every moment together from the time Emma was born. The family often spoke of them as if they were one person. They called them the Dovelies or Miss Salt and Miss Pepper.
But Emma and Fanny were quite different. Fanny was short and not thought to be as pretty as Emma, though she was “most radiant in her person and brilliant in her colouring,” according to their Aunt Jessie. We can imagine rosy cheeks and bright eyes. She was a quiet, gentle, and good person, organized and industrious. She made lists all the time: lists of temperatures, words in different languages, sights seen on travels, chores to be done. Her father called her his little secretary; her mother’s nickname for her was Mrs. Pedigree. As she got older, people in the family thought she’d be a good match for her cousin Charles, also an organizer, a collector, and a list maker.
On the other hand, Emma’s nickname was Little Miss Slip-Slop. She was disorganized, and a slob. But she was brilliant, learned easily, and when she liked something, she put her all into it. At only five, she started reading a favorite classic of the day, John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. Telling the story later, some relatives said she read the whole thing, others said she started it and asked her mother to finish reading it to her. Either way, it certainly was not typical reading material for so young a child.
Paradise Lost begins:
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden…
Paradise Lost is the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It explores fate, sin, heaven, and hell. (Charles also loved Paradise Lost—when he was older. He took a pocket-sized edition with him on his voyage and carried it in his jacket whenever he went ashore.)
Emma’s large extended family loved both of “the little girls” (as they were called into their twenties), but Emma was a favorite. She was lively and high-spirited, yet had a serenity and a good nature that never seemed to get ruffled. She did not put up with nonsense, though, and she called things as she saw them. At ten, Emma wrote to her brother about a family she and Fanny were staying with: “I like the Coloes very except the youngest Louis who bothers one very much.”
Both girls read voraciously, pulling book after book off the Maer library shelves. And, in the few hours of the morning set aside for lessons, they learned French, Italian, and German. Emma was good at everything she took up—languages, archery, skating, needlework, horseback riding—but her great talent was music. She played the piano, and although she didn’t work very hard at it—she played for only about an hour a day—she was so good that when she was older, she took lessons from the famous pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin. Her daughter Etty later said that Emma’s piano playing clearly reflected her character: She played with a fine, crisp touch, with intelligence and simplicity. She put vigor and spirit into her playing, but not sentimental passion. Emma didn’t like sentimentality.
When they were little, Emma was sure that Fanny was a better person than she. Fanny was inherently Good. Emma brooded over her own flaws, in contrast to what she considered Fanny’s moral superiority. One time an older cousin brought three brooches for Fanny, Emma, and another young cousin. Fanny had first choice, and Emma watched as she chose the least pretty pin. Emma’s turn came next, and rather than leave the prettiest pin for her cousin, as her older sister had done, she took it for herself. She felt badly about this and regretted it her whole life.
But Fanny adored Emma, too. After taking care of the Dovelies for a while, one of their great-aunts wrote to their mother:
I marvel at the strength of the girls’ spirits as much as I do at the perfection of their tempers. I feel now very sure that not only not a cross word ever passes between them, but that an irritable feeling never arises. Fanny, to be sure, is calmness itself, but the vivacity of Emma’s feelings, without perfectly knowing her, would make me expect that Fanny’s reproofs, which she often gives with an elder sister air, would ruffle her a little; but I have never seen that expressive face take the shadow of an angry look, and I do think her love for Fanny is the prettiest thing I ever saw.
The aunt went on to say that Emma’s character was shaped by her closeness to Fanny.
I ascribe much of Emma’s joyous nature to have been secured, if not caused, by Fanny’s yielding disposition; had the other met with a cross or an opposing sister there was every chance that with her ardent feelings, her temper had become irritable. Now she is made the happiest being that ever was looked on, and so much affection in her nature as will secure her from selfishness.
Fanny was not only generous, she was also more religious than Emma. Although both girls taught in the little village Sunday school, Fanny took it more seriously, as she did her confirmation at sixteen. Emma was more interested in parties and plays. Right after her confirmation, Emma and her Darwin cousins celebrated with a party at Maer. They put on a play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and had so much fun that Emma’s mother complained they kept her “in such a whirl of noise, and ins and outs, that I have not found any leisure.”
The sisters enjoyed traveling, and when they were nineteen and twenty-one, they went to Geneva, Switzerland, and spent eight months with their favorite aunt, Jessie, and her eccentric Italian husband, J. C. de Sismondi. Aunt Jessie and Sismondi were deeply in love and had no children, so they showered their love and attention on the Dovelies. They introduced them into society and took them to fancy parties. After one ball, Emma wrote home to Elizabeth:
The whole Theatre was quite full and it looked very pretty. We were to dance with whoever asked us. The first man I danced with was very disagreeable and vulgar, which put me rather in despair for the rest of the ball; however the rest of my partners were very tidy, so I liked it very well. I had the good luck to dance with one or two Englishmen…When I was afraid any particularly horrid-looking man was going to ask me to dance I began such a very earnest conversa
tion with Fanny that they could not interrupt me…
When it was time for the girls to leave Geneva, their father arrived to escort them home, bringing along Caroline Darwin for company. Afterward, Caroline wrote them a letter that she began “My dear Fanny and Emma,” and then she added in parentheses, “I know you like being classed together, and as Charlotte and Eliz. to this day speak of you both as if you were but one, I shall follow their example.” The sisters, different as could be, were as one, and happily so.
All in all, what Jane Austen says about Emma Woodhouse in the opening paragraph of her novel Emma could have been said about Emma Wedgwood:
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress and vex her.
Emma Wedgwood had lived until she was twenty-four with nothing at all to distress her. But in the summer of 1832, everything changed for the Dovelies.
Chapter 6
The Next World
The sorrows and distresses of life…soften and humanize
the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate
all the Christian virtues.
—THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS, AN ESSAY on
THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, 1798
At twenty-four and twenty-six, Emma and Fanny lived at home with their parents and their older sister Elizabeth. That August, in 1832, while Jos and Bessy were away, Fanny got sick.
At first nobody at Maer thought it was anything to be worried about. And Elizabeth and Emma were both experienced at taking care of sick people. Elizabeth was thirty-six. She had spent years nursing the poor in the village. Emma was often her assistant. So they thought nothing of caring for Fanny themselves, even though it could not have been easy with no running water or flush toilets.
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 the
y can be, without
the least idea of anything more.
–MAUD DU Puy DARWIN, WIFE OF GEORGE DARWIN, JUNE 1887
On 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.”
Charles and Emma Page 4