Charles and Emma (24 page)

The audience cheered. And word went out that Darwin's champion, Huxley, would rather have an ape for a grandfather
than a bishop. Also at the meeting was Robert FitzRoy, Charles's captain from the
Beagle.
He had brought his Bible with him and waved it around furiously, trying to get attention. He shouted that Charles was wrong; he shouted that he was sorry that he had given him the opportunity to collect the specimens that led to his theory. He begged all assembled to believe the Bible as God's holy word, as the truth about creation, not Charles Darwin. Not that many people heard FitzRoy over the crowd, but those who did found him pathetic and desperate. He was; he had financial problems, and mental ones as well. He killed himself five years later.

 

The meeting in Oxford did not do much to further serious discussion about science and religion. That subject stayed heated and contentious. Huxley was ready to continue the fight. But as Huxley and the others battled on, Charles stayed home at Down, working on a new edition of the book, with some revisions, and arranging for foreign publication as well. For the second edition, Charles made one significant change in reaction to some of the criticism. He put God back in—in the last sentence of the book.

In the first edition, Charles had ended the book: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.” In the second edition, he added three new words, “by the Creator.” The last sentence now read, “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.”

He later said he regretted it. But he never took God back out.

 

Chapter 28

Feeling, Not Reasoning

 

I wish you knew how I value you; and what an inexpressible
blessing it is to have one whom one can always trust, one always
the same, always ready to give comfort, sympathy and the best
advice. God bless you, my dear, you are too good for me.

—C
HARLES TO
E
MMA
, 1859

 

E
very day the postman brought bundles of letters to Down House—letters in reaction to the book. There were five hundred a year, every year, after
The Origin of Species
was published. Charles answered all of them—even the ones from quacks. He had lifelong correspondents, he had fans, he had critics, he had people who wrote asking to meet him, to give him gifts, to take his photograph. He took each letter seriously and gave it the time he felt it needed. During his lifetime he had two thousand correspondents. He wrote at least seven thousand letters and received as many.

But whenever he could, he did experiments, just as he had when he was in high school. Only now they weren't chemical explosions; they were studies of plants, mostly orchids and a
flower called
Drosera. Drosera,
also called sundew, fascinated Charles for its carnivorous eating habits. He was so enthralled, he wanted to write a poem about it. Sadly for history, he didn't. Charles was always one to anthropomorphize creatures, seeds, rocks even, and could be overheard talking to them as if they understood.

Emma wrote to Charles Lyell's wife (the former Mary Horner, now Lady Lyell) that Charles was given to anxiety but that “his various experiments this summer have been a great blessing to him…at present he is treating
Drosera
just like a living creature, and I suppose he hopes to end in proving it to be an animal.”

He was also obsessed with orchids and was working on a book about them. He studied orchids because they were so beautiful and people used them as an argument for God's hand in nature. Why would something be so beautiful for no apparent reason? they argued. But Charles felt if he could see the evidence for the evolution of orchids by his process of natural selection, then that would be a good argument against God as the designer of every single species. Most importantly, it would be another example to illustrate his theory. The book was eventually published in 1862 with the title
On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing.

Charles's American friend Asa Gray was one of those people who wanted to see God's hand in the design of flowers, but he also thought that Charles's argument for natural selection was right. Gray wanted both to be true—a God-directed evolution. Because Charles valued Gray's friendship and needed his help in promoting natural selection, he did not rule out the possibility. He also could not seem to rule out the possibility for himself. Over the course of many letters back and forth across
the ocean, the two friends discussed God and design. Charles argued that “there seems too much misery in the world.” He could not persuade himself that a “beneficent & omnipotent God” would have created parasites and would have cats play with and torture mice. He listened to Gray, and also to Lyell, and was, as always, aware of Emma's feelings. In the end, he could not believe that the world was all God's design. And yet he did not think everything happened by chance. He wrote to Gray, “I am conscious that I am in an utterly hopeless muddle. I cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the result of chance; & yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design.”

Although Charles discussed religion and science with Gray and other close friends, he demurred when strangers wrote to him asking what he believed about God. He said that theologians should answer questions about religion, scientists about science.

 

In 1861, illness was still a big part of life at Down. Etty kept getting sick; she was, at seventeen, an invalid, very weak and at times close to death. An infection—probably typhoid fever—had left her so debilitated the year before that she had needed twenty-four-hour nursing care for months. The youngest Darwin, Horace, was ten, Annie's age when she died, bringing back bad memories, along with fear and anxiety for Charles. Horace was a sickly child, and around this time he started having shaking and crying fits. It seemed to be his stomach—another Darwin with Charles's bad digestion. Or perhaps it was love; every time he had a fit, he was comforted and held by the children's new, pretty governess. When she was sent away for a time, Horace got much better.

But scarlet fever epidemics still raged, and with seven children, there was always something to worry about. Charles
was especially concerned about Etty, but he also worried about Lenny, who, funny as he was, seemed backward in his lessons. And when George, the scholar, came home for some dental work on his horribly rotting teeth, Charles watched him lose consciousness from the chloroform. It looked so much like death that Charles got sick to his stomach.

Yet Emma, even with most of her time spent taking care of Charles and nursing whatever child was sick, even with the bouts of sadness and anxiety that she had since Annie's death, maintained an equanimity and serenity in the midst of it all. As one of her great-aunts had written about her when she was a little girl, she possessed “so much affection in her nature as will secure her from selfishness.” In March 1861, with her house and hands already full of needy people, in the busy aftermath of the publication of
The Origin,
Emma had a heart big enough to take on even more duties, and more sorrow. At Charles's suggestion, she encouraged Thomas Henry Huxley's wife, Henrietta, and their three small children to come to Down for two weeks to rest. The Huxleys had just lost their oldest child, a little boy, Noel, at age four. Mrs. Huxley was devastated, and as she told it later, even though they barely knew each other, Emma “begged me to come to her and bring the three children and nurse, and I should have the old nurseries at Down.”

Henrietta Huxley wrote back that she was too weak. She was so ill and depressed she could not even get downstairs until one o'clock. Emma replied that “that was the usual state of the family at Down,” and they should come because they would fit in perfectly well.

Mrs. Huxley and the children arrived on March 9, which Emma noted in her diary along with “good day,” for Etty. They did stay for two weeks, in the old nursery, where they had a view of the beautiful mulberry tree growing outside the
window. Mr. Huxley stopped in a few times while they were there, to take breaks from his bulldogging and to get more direction and advice from Charles.

The visit did Mrs. Huxley good. Emma, of course, knew just how the bereaved mother was feeling. She made her feel at home and at ease. Emma always made sure Down House was a tranquil place; she was said to keep the peace among the servants with a sledgehammer if necessary. Years later Mrs. Huxley wrote to Etty, “Towards your mother I always had a sort of nestling feeling. More than any woman I ever knew, she comforted.”

But Charles was not doing well. He spent many days in a row vomiting hour after hour. His nights were sleepless and filled with anxiety, giddiness, heart palpitations, and agony, even with Emma by his side. His old friend and Cambridge professor John Stevens Henslow was dying and he could not bring himself to go to Henslow's deathbed. They had remained close, even though they had not always seen eye to eye. Henslow did not accept natural selection. He just could not see creation without God. Charles was disappointed and upset that his mentor could not see the merits of his theory. He often said that Henslow was the man who made him what he was. He would miss him.

Emma knew that it took work to keep things calm and tranquil, both outside and inside. Although she was serene by nature, life had dealt her enough blows and she had suffered enough tragedy that sometimes she had to work to stave off the anxiety she felt. She worried about Charles's and the children's illnesses. She never knew when another one of her loved ones would die. And she was still concerned about Charles's lack of faith. She was able to relieve her anxiety—or at least bear it—through prayer.

Knowing how much her husband was suffering both physically and emotionally, she recommended to Charles—with hesitation, but also strong feeling—what worked for her. In the spring of 1861 she sat down and wrote him another letter about faith. She told him that, even if she didn't always say so, she knew how sick he felt and that she was grateful for “the cheerful and affectionate looks you have given me when I know you have been miserably uncomfortable.” She confessed, “My heart has often been too full to speak.”

She assured him that she minded his sufferings almost as much as her own and that the only way she could get through either was “to take it as from God's hand, and to try to believe that all suffering and illness is meant to help us to exalt our minds and look forward with hope to a future state.” Ten years after losing her Annie, Emma still held on to the promise of an afterlife. There were so many people she had lost: Annie and the two babies, her dear sister Fanny, her parents. She hoped to see them all in heaven. But what about Charles? She could not bear to think that they would not be together always.

Once again, she reassured Charles—and herself—that he was a good man, a moral man, and should get into heaven. But she still felt that it would only happen, that they would only be able to love each other into eternity, if he were to offer his prayers to God. Quoting from Isaiah, she continued, “I often think of the words, ‘Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee'.”

And to the scientist she knew so well, she once again implored him to stop thinking of faith the same way he thought about science: “It is feeling and not reasoning that drives one to prayer.”

After more than twenty years she still felt sad about the
differences in their religious belief, and yet she also felt as though she should not, really, be telling him what to do. She felt “presumptuous in writing this to you.” But she could not help it—their eternal life together, as well as his current happiness—depended on it.

Emma held on to this letter until she felt less upset and resolved to give it to him when “I feel cheerful and comfortable again about you.” She knew she wrote it partly to help him and partly “to relieve my own mind.”

When she did give him the letter, Charles read it. There was so much to say, but also nothing to say. He would not pray, he would not accept the Revelation. Although Charles knew what pain it gave Emma to believe he would burn in hell, he couldn't lie to her. He knew later, after he was gone—for certainly he would go first—she would see this letter. Like the others she had written him, he kept it always.

He wrote on it, simply:

God bless you. C.D.

June, 1861.

 

Chapter 29

Such a Noise

 

I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego,
thinking…that I could not employ my life better than in adding
a little to natural science. This I have done to the best
of my abilities, and critics may say what they like,
but they cannot destroy this conviction.

—C
HARLES, IN HIS
A
UTOBIOGRAPHY

 

O
ne day Charles walked into the drawing room and found Lenny sitting on the sofa—not jumping on it—and reading a copy of
The Origin of Species.
It was the first time Lenny was home from boarding school. He was about thirteen. Being out in the world by himself, he had discovered that everyone was talking about his father's book—even boys his own age. When Charles saw Lenny reading it, he said, “I bet you half a crown that you do not get to the end of that book.” Charles was right; but Lenny never paid up.

George, about five years older and a better student, was reading his father's book on orchids and had convinced the
headmaster at school to read part of it with him and do some of the experiments at school.

Soon Horace, the youngest boy, would go to school, too, and then it would be just the two girls at home. The girls did not go to school, but learned at home and, according to Etty, had a spotty education. But that was how it was done in many upper-class Victorian families: the boys went to school, and the girls stayed home. Charles and Emma remained involved and loving parents—to the boys in person on school holidays and through the mail the rest of the year. “Your last letter was not interesting, but very well spelt, which I care more about,” Emma wrote to Lenny. She tried gallantly to produce a generation of Darwins who could spell, unlike their famous father.