Creation: Darwin, His Daughter & Human Evolution by Randal Keynes

Author:Randal Keynes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Autobiography, Evolution, England, SCIENCE, Evolution (Biology), Life Sciences, Naturalists, General, Gardeners, Environmentalists, Biography, Mathematics, Biography & Autobiography, Life Sciences - Evolution, Scientists - General, Science & Technology, Darwin family, History
ISBN: 9781594484742
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2009-11-25T21:03:15.500000+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

LOSS AND REMEMBERING

Funeral—Consolation—Charles and Emma’s thinking—

Emma’s keepsakes—Charles’s memorial of Annie

THE NEXT DAY EMMA BORE her grief in her own way. Her sister Elizabeth had come to be with her, and wrote to Charles: “The only comfort I can try to give you is telling you how gently and sweetly Emma takes this bitter affliction. She cries at times, but without violence, comes to our meals with the children and is as sweetly ready as ever to attend to all their little requirements. I do not fear, taking it as she does, that she will be made ill. It will be the greatest comfort to her to see you home very soon, and to have the additional anxiety of absence from you no longer. It is very happy that Willy is here now, and I felt quite glad last night to hear his voice talking to her out of his bed after she was in hers.”

After a few hours of uncertainty, Charles had accepted Fanny Wedgwood’s suggestion that he should return at once to Emma. He set off back to London for Down early on Thursday morning, leaving a note for Fanny to tell Miss Thorley he had taken some books, and to ask Brodie to look round his bedroom and bring some clothes he had left. He arrived home at half past six and spent the evening alone with Emma. The next day he wrote to Erasmus: “Poor Emma is well bodily and very firm, but feels bitterly and God knows, we can neither see on any side a gleam of comfort.” Emma wrote to Fanny: “We have done little else but cry together and talk about our darling . . . I think everybody loved her. Hers was such a transparent character, so open to kindness and a little thing made her so happy . . . From her having filled our minds so much for the last nine months it leaves such an emptiness . . . I suppose this painful longing will diminish before long. It seems as if nothing in this life could satisfy it.”

Charles played with the little ones; he talked calmly about Annie, and was even able to read for a short time, which was “a rest from bitter thoughts, even for a few minutes.” Elizabeth thought he would be longer getting over it than Emma. “She escapes the last painful impressions of the utter change, though I do not know whether the bitter longing to have seen her again is not worse . . . She is able to read a little too, and goes about as usual amongst the children, with even a cheerful smile for them.” Charles and she both talked “of indifferent things.”

Charles’s decision to leave Malvern before the funeral preyed on his mind. Fanny was to take his place at the service, and he wrote to her on Friday with an assurance that hinted at uncertainty. “I cannot resist writing one line to thank you for having so tenderly advised me to return to home.

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