Charles and Emma (4 page)

Although Charles graduated from Cambridge with no great academic distinction, because of his connection to Henslow he was offered the position of naturalist on the
Beagle.
He really wanted to go. He would spend two years as a companion to the captain, a man named Robert FitzRoy. And he would be able to see the world—collecting specimens along the way. It was a dream come true. But since it was not a paid position (in fact, he would have to pay his own way), he needed not only his father's permission, he needed his money.

Dr. Darwin thought the trip was a bad idea. He told Charles it was “a wild scheme,” one that would be disreputable to his future career as a clergyman. The doctor did not think the trip would be useful in any way for his son's future. Furthermore, his father said, settling down after such an adventure would be too difficult. Dr. Darwin told Charles to say no to the voyage. But he also said that if Charles could find a respectable person who disagreed, he would reconsider.

After that conversation, Charles had gone to visit his mother's brother, Josiah Wedgwood, at his house, Maer Hall.
Maer was only a day's carriage ride from the Mount, and when he was a child, Charles and his Wedgwood cousins visited back and forth often. Charles was especially close to his uncle Josiah, whom he found to be a good contrast to his father. Although Uncle Jos was quiet and reserved, not animated and talkative like Dr. Darwin, he was much more open-minded. On this visit Charles told Uncle Jos, Aunt Bessy, and his cousins about the possibility of the voyage and about his father's objections. They all thought he should definitely go. Uncle Jos agreed to try to convince Dr. Darwin that Charles should be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Charles wrote to his father, “I have given Uncle Jos what I fervently trust is an accurate and full list of your objections, and he is kind enough to give his opinions on all.” Charles asked his father to look at the list and Uncle Josiah's answers and then to please give him a yes or a no. If it were to remain a no, Charles assured him, “I will never mention the subject again.”

Uncle Jos found he could answer most of Dr. Darwin's objections easily. He wrote, “I should not think it would be in any degree disreputable to his character as a Clergyman. I should on the contrary think the offer honourable to him; and the pursuit of Natural History, though certainly not professional, is very suitable to a clergyman.” He did not think it would be a wild scheme, as Charles “would have definite objects upon which to employ himself, and might acquire and strengthen habits of application, and I should think would be as likely to do so as in any way in which he is likely to pass the next two years at home.”

Uncle Jos agreed that the voyage would probably not directly prepare him for a career as a clergyman, but argued that it would help him grow as a man, affording him “such an opportunity of seeing men and things as happens to few.”

Uncle Jos and Charles sent the letter to Dr. Darwin early in the morning, and then Charles went out shooting in the woods near Maer Hall. After a few hours, Uncle Jos sent Charles a message saying that he was going to the Mount to talk to the doctor directly. Charles put down his gun and went with him. When they arrived at Shrewsbury, Dr. Darwin told them that he had been convinced. He gave Charles his consent. He also gave him a generous purse and the assurance that he could always write home and ask for more money. Charles needed to, and did. Often. The voyage that was meant to be two years lasted almost five.

As Dr. Darwin had predicted, the voyage did not prepare him for a life as a vicar. While he traveled, however, Charles did go to church quite regularly, both to the services that his captain led and on shore whenever he got the chance. Some of the crew made fun of him for how religious he seemed. And his first publication, in 1836—with his captain—was a letter in the
South African Christian Recorder
arguing for increased funding for Christian missionaries.

But natural history became his true passion and now, after the voyage, in 1838, Charles was having serious doubts about God and Jesus, about the Revelation, about heaven and hell. He wasn't an atheist, but he had begun to reject God's role in creation. At the same time that he was making his
Marry, Not Marry
list and writing in his notebooks about transmutation of species, he was reading and writing about religion and talking to his friends about his beliefs. He did not believe that God created the earth and all its creatures in six days. He felt certain just as the earth's geography was changing, so were new species being created all the time, and God did not have a role in that creation.

He also began to have doubts that Christianity was
the
religion.
Why should he believe it was the only right way? He felt that the Hebrew scripture's history of the world was false, that there was no Tower of Babel, no rainbow as a sign from God after a big flood. The Bible was no more to be trusted than any other religion's holy book. He also began to disbelieve the Old Testament idea of a wrathful God, a revengeful tyrant. He found it hard to believe anything in the Bible was literally true—including the Gospels. If the Gospels were not true, then where did that leave belief in Jesus as savior? How could Christianity be Divine Revelation? How could Christianity be the one true religion? He was not dismissing God altogether, nor was he dismissing Christianity. But his doubts were strong, and growing.

He knew that these doubts and his revolutionary thoughts about transmutation and the creation of species would stand in his way of finding a wife. Most women were believers and wanted their husbands to be believers, too.

On this visit home, Charles confessed all to his father and asked for his counsel. Dr. Darwin had no problem with his son's religious doubts. He shared them. But he did have very strong advice for him: When you find the woman you want to marry, don't tell her! The doctor had seen many marriages in his medical practice, and he told Charles that he had known “extreme misery thus caused with married persons. Things went on pretty well until the wife or husband became out of health, and then some women suffered miserably by doubting about the salvation of their husbands.” And then, Dr. Darwin concluded, the husbands suffered, too.

The doctor encouraged his son to take the plunge. He thought Charles would be happy being married. He also told him that children were healthier if they were born to younger
parents and Charles wasn't getting any younger; he was nearing thirty. So the doctor gave Charles another piece of advice: hurry up.

But don't forget, Dr. Darwin warned his son, “Conceal your doubts!”

 

Chapter 4

Where Doors and Windows Stand Open

 

Emma's handwriting…was, like herself, firm,
calm, and transparently clear.

—H
ENRIETTA
D
ARWIN
L
ITCHFIELD

 

Excuse this scrawl but I have such a Pen and besides
never could write like any thing but what I am…Burn
this as soon as read—or tremble at my fury and revenge.

—F
ANNY
O
WEN IN A LETTER TO
C
HARLES
, J
ANUARY
1828

 

A
few weeks later, in the summer of 1838, Charles decided to make another trip. He wanted to visit Uncle Josiah and Aunt Bessy and his cousins at Maer Hall. Late July was a good time to get out of murky, hot, dirty London, and Charles loved the Staffordshire countryside around Maer, which “was very pleasant for walking or riding.” He also loved the atmosphere of peaceful hospitality at the Wedgwoods' home. At Maer “life was perfectly free.” He looked forward to the summer evenings when “there was much very agreeable conversation…the
whole family used often to sit on the steps of the old portico with the flower-garden in front, and with the steep wooded bank opposite the house reflected in the lake, with here and there a fish rising or a water-bird paddling about.”

Charles's Wedgwood cousins had been brought up with few, if any, rules and the encouragement to think freely. Whereas Uncle Jos could seem stern, he was a much more accepting person than Charles's father, and a more relaxed parent. Both Uncle Jos and his wife, Bessy, thought everyone—boys and girls, men and women—should have their own opinions and be able to express them. Back in 1819, a family friend who had visited Maer wrote in her journal “I never saw anything pleasanter than the ways of going on of this family, and one reason is the freedom of speech upon every subject; there is no difference in politics or principles of any kind that makes it treason to speak one's mind openly, and they all do it. There is a simplicity of good sense about them, that no one ever dreams of not differing upon any subject where they feel inclined…There is no bitterness in discussing opinions.” The children “have freedom in their actions in this house as well as in their principles. Doors and windows stand open, you are nowhere in confinement; you may do as you like; you are surrounded by books that all look most tempting to read; you will always find some pleasant topic of conversation, or may start one, as all things are talked of in the general family. All this sounds and is delightful.”

Charles was already good friends with one of the Wedgwood children, Hensleigh, the juggler of children and boxes. And a few months earlier, Charles had spent some time with another cousin, Emma, who was just nine months older than he was. He had seen her late that spring when she and his sister Catherine stopped in London on their way to and from a
trip they took together to Paris. On their way back, Hensleigh and his wife had a dinner party for them and invited Charles, Erasmus, and Thomas and Jane Carlyle.

As her daughter later described her, Emma was pretty, with gray eyes, a clear complexion, a nice high forehead, a firm chin, a straight nose, and beautiful long, thick brown hair. She wore gold spectacles. She was of medium height, had nice shoulders and pretty hands and arms. She didn't care much for fashion or dressing up (her aunts often chided her about her clothes), but she was graceful and carried herself well. Like her father, she could be reserved; she was unflappable and good-natured. She was very smart, and extremely well-read, but she wasn't after intellectual pursuits in the same way the Horner girls were. She was content to stay home and help her sister Elizabeth take care of their aging parents.

Perhaps Charles would find his “constant companion” at Maer. He had decided he wasn't that interested in marrying any of the Horner girls. They were too much for him—too literary and intellectual, too clever in spades. It made sense to stay in the family, anyway. And maybe a woman who had grown up in such a free and liberal household as the Wedgwoods' would be understanding about his religious doubts, if he could not manage to conceal them. Of the five Wedgwood girls, there were only two single ones left living at Maer Hall. One was Elizabeth, a tiny woman with a curved spine. She was sixteen years older than Charles. The other was Emma. Was she the right wife for him?

Emma had definitely noticed Charles on that London visit. At dinner in her brother Hensleigh's dining room, she thought Charles lively, funny, and smart. Although she had already turned down a handful of marriage proposals and was
not looking for a husband, Charles made an impression on her. But she didn't think he liked her especially. “I was not the least sure of his feelings,” she later said, “as he is so affectionate, and so fond of Maer and all of us, and demonstrative in his manners, that I did not think it meant anything.”

A few years back there had been talk about matching up Charles with another Wedgwood cousin, Emma's sister Fanny. Caroline Darwin thought Fanny would be a good wife. She was neat and orderly, just like Charles. She was also a good contrast to another Fanny who had all but broken Charles's heart—Fanny Owen.

Fanny Owen had grown up near Charles's home—a few hours away by galloping horse. Charles visited her often during his college years, when he came home from Cambridge during school holidays. Fanny Owen was petite and dark-haired; she was engaging, flirtatious, passionate, and maybe a bit wild. As his sisters Catherine and Caroline wrote Charles about her in 1826, “Fanny Owen has quite the preference to Sarah [her sister] among all the gentlemen, as she must have every where; there is something so very engaging and delightful about her.”

Both Charles and Fanny Owen loved to go shooting, and they spent many happy hours in the woods near her house. Charles was impressed with how charming she looked when she fired one of his guns. He loved it that she showed no sign of pain even though the kick of the gun made her shoulder black and blue. The two of them walked through the gardens in the summer sun, picking and eating strawberries. Though it seemed unlikely that they would marry—she was much more interested in society and dancing than he was, and she had many other suitors—Charles was definitely in love.

One vacation Charles spent a whole week with her.
Afterward his lips were so sore, presumably from kissing, that when he got home Dr. Darwin gave him small doses of arsenic to relieve the pain. But Fanny spent time with her other beaux, and Charles had another love, too—beetles. Over the next few years Charles struggled with which love came first—beetles or Fanny. Fanny was not pleased with the competition.

And it was serious competition, for Charles was passionate about those beetles.

By the time he had graduated from Cambridge, he realized that like the beetle that burnt his tongue, Fanny might not want to be caught either. Her letters had grown much cooler; she was pulling away from him. Then right before he left for Falmouth, where he was to depart for his voyage around the world, Charles and Fanny Owen saw each other again and rekindled their romance. As Charles suffered through a two-month-long delay of the
Beagle
's launch, he wondered if he should have proposed to her. When she heard that he was waiting around in Falmouth for the boat to sail, she sent him a letter asking him to “write me one last adieu if you have a spare half hour before you sail…you cannot imagine how I have
missed
you already at the Forest.” Charles folded her letter nice and small and took it with him on the voyage. He did not propose.