Part 5

Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution
by Randal Keynes

(Page 5 of 5)

The Darwins and Wedgwoods all looked to Charles's father, Robert, a wealthy and successful physician in Shrewsbury, for medical judgements and prescriptions. Dr. Darwin gave Charles robust advice about his own ailments, and provided "receipts" for Willy and Annie. "In all inflammatory ailments of very young children, three drops of Antimonial wine repeated twice a day, is usually sufficient, but in decided fever a grain of Calomel with a little Chalk may be safely given." "A drop of Sal volatile will sometimes compose an infant to sleep, given at night." For a baby with a constant cough and soreness in the mouth, he suggested "one grain of chalk with Opium, with three drops of Antimonial wine to be dropped on brown sugar." Antimonial wine was a solution of tartar emetic and sherry wine. Calomel was mercurous chloride. Sal volatile was carbonate of ammonia. These compounds had almost no value in treating the conditions for which they were used, and some could be very harmful.

With one in five infants dying in their first year, most children were baptised within a few weeks after their birth. But Charles and Emma were in no hurry, and took Annie to Maer in late May to be christened with her cousin Sophy, daughter of Caroline and Josiah Wedgwood. As it happened, the government's new General Register Office took its first National Census while they were there. Enumerators visited every household in the country and listed every person present on the census night. There were twenty-one people in the return for Maer Hall-Emma's father Josiah and her mother Bessy, her brother Josiah, Caroline, Charles, Emma, Willy and Annie, and thirteen servants.

The house was a Jacobean mansion in a small park with a lake. Dr. Holland's wife described the Wedgwood family's life there. "They have freedom in their actions in this house as in their principles. Doors and windows stand open. You are nowhere confined. You may do what 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."

The parish church was in the grounds, and Emma's father had appointed his lame and eccentric nephew Allen Wedgwood as vicar. Charles privately considered Allen "half idiotic in some respects," though "with a store of accurate and even profound knowledge." Allen baptised the two children Anne Elizabeth and Ann Sophy. Annie's names were, like Willy's, "proper family names." Charles's great-great-grandmother had been Anne Waring; she had brought an estate in Nottinghamshire into the family, and her tablet in the parish church of Elston commemorated her as "daughter, wife, mother, mistress, neighbour answering Solomon's character of a good woman." The name Elizabeth was chosen for Emma's mother in her sad and slowly deepening dementia.

After the baptism, Charles went to stay with his father and sisters in Shrewsbury while Emma stayed with Annie at Maer. Bessy the nursemaid had taken Willy ahead and Charles was touched by his pleasure at seeing him. "He sat on my knee for nearly a quarter of an hour...and looked at my face and pointing, told everyone I was Pappa...When I had had him for about five minutes, I asked him where was Mama, and he repeated your name twice in so low and plaintive a tone, I declare it almost made me burst out crying. He is full of admiration at this new house and is friends with everyone and sits on Grandpapa's knees. He shows me the different things in the house. Dear old Doddy-one could write for ever about him." Charles looked forward to hearing from Emma about herself and Annie who, "as I have several times remarked to myself, is not so bad a girl, as might be expected of Doddy's rival." But Charles feared his son was a coward. "A frog jumped near him and he danced and screamed with horror at the dangerous monster, and I had a deal of kissing at his open bellowing mouth to comfort him. He threw my stick over the terrace wall, looked at it as it went, and cried 'Tatta' with the greatest sangfroid and walked away."

A few days later, Charles warned Emma: "A thunder storm is preparing to break on your head, and which has already deluged me, about Bessy not having a cap." Emma was not particular about their maid's appearance, but Charles's sisters said that she looked "like a grocer's maidservant," and his father added angrily: "The men will take liberties with her, if she is dressed differently from every other lady's maid!" Charles told Emma that he had taken half the blame on himself, and "never betrayed that I had beseeched you several times on that score. If they open on you, pray do not defend yourself, for they are very hot on the subject."

When the family was back in Macaw Cottage, Charles wrote to his cousin Fox: "We are all well here...our two babies are, I think, strong healthy ones, and it is an unspeakable comfort, this." At the end of the year, Emma was breastfeeding Annie, but she had little milk and the doctor told her it would not matter if she stopped. When Annie was nine months old, Emma felt she was "very ugly, poor body, with a broken out ear just like mine."

Charles was a doting father to Willy and Annie, and was eager for their attention. Willy, just two in January 1842, sat with his parents at table and behaved "with great decorum." But Annie was "very naughty" about her father and would not go to him. So, Emma wrote one day, "he has given her up and devoted himself to Doddy." That month, Emma became pregnant with her third child. She numbered the weeks ahead to forty-one, writing at the sixth week, "Taken ill at this stage last time," and at the tenth week, "I got better at about this time last time."

A few weeks later, William Darwin Fox's wife died giving birth to their sixth child. With Emma now expecting her third, Charles must have had the dangers of her forthcoming confinement in mind when he wrote to his cousin: "What a comfort it must be to you; that is, I think I should find it the greatest, the having children. It must make the separation appear less entire. The unspeakable tenderness of young children must soothe the heart and recall the tenderest, however mournful remembrances." He told Fox that Emma was "uncomfortable enough all day long and seldom leaves the house, this being her usual state before her babies come into the world." But, he wrote, "my two dear little children are very well and very fat."

Emma was more frank in a letter to her aunt. "My little Annie has taken to walking and talking for the last fortnight. She is thirteen months old and very healthy, fat and round, but no beauty."

Copyright © January 2002, Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. Used by permission.

About the Author

Randal Keynes is a great-great grandson of Charles Darwin. He is also a descendant of the economist John Maynard Keynes.