Charles and Emma (18 page)

So Annie spent most of her days with Emma or tucked up on the sofa in her father's study, away from the hustle and bustle of the household: six other children (when Willy was home), their nannies and governesses, all the maids, gardeners, cooks, and other household help. Parslow the butler was kept busy clonking the mud off shoes as the children ran into the house from playing in the Sandwalk, riding ponies from the stable, having games of croquet and ball. There were cats and dogs going in and out, too. But Emma and Charles kept Annie quiet and protected. In the afternoons Charles played backgammon with her, and Emma read aloud to her.

Charles looked through his boxes and found some shells for Annie and Etty to play with—shells he had gathered on his
Beagle
voyage about twenty years earlier. He hadn't
managed to interest any experts in them. At least they would go to good use now.

Soon Annie had a bad cough in addition to her lethargy. On December 8, Emma wrote in her diary, “Annie began bark.” Since Dr. Holland was not able to help them, Charles relented and wrote to Dr. Gully. Gully prescribed a regime for Annie at home, with plans that she would come to Malvern in the spring if she hadn't gotten better. From January on, she was wrapped in a wet sheet and rubbed vigorously for five minutes every morning, which was supposed to stimulate her nervous system and circulation. Then she was given a “spinal wash,” in which a cold, wet towel was rubbed up and down the length of her spine. This was supposed to clear her head and get rid of her lethargy. Every three or four days, she was packed in a damp towel. From February on, she also had a shallow bath and a footbath every morning.

Charles kept careful notes. Some days Annie was “well not quite.” Other days she was “well very” or “well almost very” or just “well.” And some days she was “poorly.” He noted her cries, her coughs, the strength of her pulse, and how well she slept. Ever the good scientist, ever the good parent.

Meanwhile Charles continued to think about religion and faith. He and Emma read and discussed books about theology. They made notations in their family Bible, indicating places where biblical scholars deemed passages inauthentic, added later by unknown authors. For both of them, the question of faith was an ongoing one. Emma took the children to church, though during the Trinity prayer, which proclaimed God as three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—she turned away from the altar in disagreement. The children followed her lead.

Charles did not go into church with them. He often
walked them there, and then strolled around the village while they prayed. He was friendly with the vicar, and over the years counted a number of vicars as his close friends.

Sometimes he stayed home to read one of his books about theology. A current favorite author was Francis Newman, a Latin professor at University College London. In his books, Newman looked for a new theology that could include science. Working through his doubts, he found ways to believe in God and in an afterlife. Like Charles, he had stopped believing in the literalness of the Bible. But like Emma, Newman believed that you could get to heaven only through accepting Jesus's teachings, by achieving a full sympathy of spirit with God's spirit.

Charles still needed proof. He could not be spiritual based on instinct. He did like much of what Newman had to say, though, and felt some security knowing that someone else not only had doubts but also wrote about them publicly.

Annie turned ten on March 2; Emma gave her a book. She felt well enough to play outside with Willy, who was home from school. They romped around the Sandwalk, and she rode Willy's pony for the first time, with Parslow's guiding hand.

But the respite did not last. A couple of weeks later, the family was hit with influenza. Getting the flu on top of whatever she already had was not good for poor Annie. She stayed in bed with Emma, sick and miserable. Charles lay on the sofa reading another book by Newman, one Erasmus had recommended,
Phases of Faith or Passages from the History of My Creed.
It was a sort of themed autobiography—an account of Newman's own loss of faith and the quest for a new one. To Charles it was powerful and in some ways inspiring. But also upsetting: Christianity decreed that people deserve punishment
for offending God, Newman said. He concluded, therefore, that in Christian belief, “the fretfulness of a child is an infinite evil!” Newman wrote, “I was aghast that I could have believed it.” As Charles read, how could he not think of his sick daughter? Annie, pleasant and brave during the day, cried herself to sleep at night. How could that be offensive to the Infinite Being? How could his little girl, or her fretfulness, be evil? How could he ascribe to a religion with that belief?

When Annie was recovered enough from the flu to travel, Charles and Emma decided it was time to take her for the water cure. Emma was pregnant again; she was seven months along, and they decided she should not make the trip. So Emma and Annie would be parted for a month at least. None of them was happy about that. But Charles would take Annie and Etty (for company), along with their nurse, Brodie, to Malvern. He would stay a few days, get them settled, and then come home. Miss Thorley, the governess, would join them there, too.

Annie and Emma sat on the sofa together as the bags were being loaded into the carriage. Annie cried and cried; she did not want to leave her mother.

 

Chapter 21

God Only Knows the Issue

 

Without you when sick I feel most desolate…I do
long to be with you and under your protection
for then I feel safe. God bless you.

—C
HARLES TO
E
MMA
, M
AY
27, 1848

 

I
f Annie hadn't been so sick, the trip would have been exciting. The girls loved Brodie, and going to Malvern was an adventure. They went by train to London, and the four of them—Charles, Annie, Etty, and Brodie—stayed overnight with Erasmus, which was always a treat. Erasmus was a kind, funny, charming man, and an indulgent uncle. From his house they took a Growler—a horse-drawn carriage with two seats facing each other, big enough to fit all of them and their luggage—to Euston Station for the train. They had to take a train north to Birmingham, which they reached by lunch-time, and then go south to Worcester, where they arrived in late afternoon. From Worcester, they took a stagecoach to Montreal House, one of the main hotels in Malvern.

Charles got them settled in Malvern and then he left to go back home to Emma. Annie would be in good hands—Miss Thorley would be arriving soon to help Brodie—but still it was hard for Charles to leave. He'd come back in a month to collect them—including, he hoped, a cured Annie.

Charles stopped again in London for a longer visit with Erasmus and other family before heading home. The relatives in London thought he looked “uncommonly well and stout,” though that was often misleading. Even when he was feeling his worst physically, Charles's ruddy complexion made him look well. Inside he was sick with worry about Annie.

At first, all went according to plan at Malvern, and the letters home to Emma were happy. Etty reported that she and Annie bought oranges, that “yesterday I fell down twice,” and that they were going to buy combs. They were doing art and looking forward to playing with the children of one of the doctors. Miss Thorley arrived, and they went on a donkey ride. Annie started getting the water treatment, and soon she was doing well. Charles, once home again, went back to work, and even started to return some of the barnacles he had borrowed from other collectors. One phase of his barnacles work was done.

But then things at Malvern took a terrible turn. Annie started vomiting. At first the doctor did not seem concerned. But then Annie got a fever that wouldn't go away. Within a week, she was very frail. Not willing to admit defeat, Dr. Gully assured Miss Thorley that Annie was progressing slowly and that there was no need to call Charles back.

Soon, though, Gully changed his mind. When he examined her on Tuesday evening, April 15, the doctor felt certain that Annie was dying. He wrote to Charles immediately, asking him to come to Malvern. The postman brought the terrible news to Down House at midday on Wednesday. Reading the
doctor's letter, Charles and Emma decided he should leave right away. Emma achingly wanted to be with Annie, but since she couldn't take care of her daughter, she took care of everyone else. She arranged for Etty to come home as soon as possible and for their sister-in-law Fanny to go to Malvern and help Charles. She also prepared for her upcoming confinement. She asked one of her aunts to come stay with her. And she asked Elizabeth to get her some chloroform.

 

When Charles arrived at the hotel in Malvern the next afternoon, Miss Thorley took him aside. Quietly, in an outer room, she told him how bad it was. Charles flung himself facedown upon the sofa. Poor Etty watched in horror; she had had no idea how sick Annie really was.

Dr. Gully had diagnosed Annie with a bilious fever, which meant that along with a fever and stomach upset, she was vomiting bile. What this also meant, as Charles knew, was that Annie was in mortal danger. Unless there was a miracle, she was likely to die.

Miss Thorley took Etty out of the room so she didn't have to see Charles so upset. Now Charles could cry alone.

After he gathered himself, Charles went in to see Annie. “She looks very ill: her face lighted up and she certainly knew me,” he wrote to Emma. He told her the doctor said that Annie was doing a little better. They were giving her camphor and ammonia to stimulate her and to stop her vomiting. Medicine had not advanced much in the twenty years since Emma's sister Fanny had died; all that could be done was to treat Annie's symptoms. There was nothing to directly attack a bacterial infection. (Antibiotics, such as penicillin, would not be discovered for almost eighty years.) Dr. Gully came in the evening and felt Annie's pulse. It was irregular, and he was
afraid she would die that night. Gully stayed there to help however he could, and Charles wrote the next day to Emma that he had been “most kind.”

On April 18, Good Friday, Annie had another bad vomiting attack, which this time they chose to interpret as a somewhat hopeful sign. At least she had the strength to vomit. And her pulse was regular again.

Charles reported all to Emma and responded to a letter of hers. “Your note made me cry much,” he wrote, “but I must not give way, and can avoid doing so by not thinking about her. It is now from hour to hour a struggle between life and death.”

And he added, “God only knows the issue.”

When she vomited more green fluid, bile from her liver, they all knew it was very, very bad. But Charles kept up hope. “She appears dreadfully exhausted,” he wrote to Emma again, “and I thought for some time she was sinking, but she has now rallied a little. The two symptoms Dr. G. dreads most have not come on—restlessness and coldness.” While Charles was writing this letter, Dr. Gully came in and examined Annie. He felt sure she was dying, but he gave Charles something to hold on to. Charles continued his letter. “Dr Gully has been and thank God he says though the appearances are so bad, positively no one important symptom is worse, and that he yet has hopes—positively he has Hopes. Oh my dear be thankful.” But he knew the situation was dire.

Charles wrote to Emma every day, even twice a day, and she wrote back to him. He told her what they were feeding Annie when she could eat (gruel with some brandy), what fluids they gave her (“Fanny gave her a spoonful of tea”), and what the doctor said at each visit. If Charles put a letter in the post by six thirty in the evening, it would get to Down around
noon the next day. And if Emma gave the postman a letter in Down, it would get to Malvern by the next morning. On some days, Charles wrote every hour. It was the best release for him (he could cry while he wrote to her) and also for Emma. She wanted to know every single thing that transpired with her darling girl. As a result, Emma experienced the illness as much as Charles did—almost. He was bereft without her. She was in agony not to be there. She thought of Annie constantly.

Charles, Fanny, and Miss Thorley took turns sitting by Annie's bed with Brodie. Charles found the company a great comfort, especially Fanny, but when it was his turn to be with Annie, he just couldn't sit still.

When Annie had a peaceful night's sleep and Dr. Gully told Charles that she was turning the corner, Charles was so happy he sent an electronic telegram to Erasmus and asked him to send a servant to Down House so Emma would get the good news before she became distraught over the last letters. Emma was in the yard “looking at my poor darling's little garden to find a flower of hers” when the messenger drove up. Emma read the telegraph: “Annie has rallied—has passed good night—danger much less imminent.”

Yet Charles wrote that Emma “would not in the least recognize her with her poor hard sharp pinched features.” She looked nothing like “our former dear Annie.” No wonder he couldn't sit still by her bed and just stare at her.

Annie drifted in and out of consciousness, often delirious. Even in her discomfort and illness, she was polite. When Charles moved her and it hurt, she said, “Don't do that please.” When he stopped, she thanked him. “I never saw anything so pathetic as her patience and her thankfulness,” Charles wrote to Emma. “When I gave her some water, she said, ‘I quite thank you.' Poor dear darling child.”

On Monday morning, the day after Easter Sunday, Emma received the letters from the weekend, which told a very different story from the telegram. She wrote back to Charles while the postman waited. “I am confused now and hardly know what my impression is, but I have considerable hopes…Every word about her is precious…Except at post-time my sufferings are nothing to yours,” she told her husband.

Although she didn't know what to think, Emma kept hope alive. And she so appreciated Charles's letters: “Your minute accounts are such a comfort and I enjoyed sponging our dear one with vinegar as much as you did.” Planning for Annie's recovery, she thought of what food they should give her first when she was up to eating more. She told them to try rice gruel flavored with cinnamon or currant jelly.