Even when he was engaged, his love for Emma Wedgwood does not seem to have been of the kind that stings and burns. His letters to her that have been printed are gentle, considerate, and sympathetic: they exhibit none of the torments that self-doubting and self-spurring and ardently exultant passion are inclined to. In the most attractive of them he writes: ‘Excuse this much egotism—I give it you because I think you will humanize me, and soon teach me there is greater happiness than building theories and accumulating facts in silence and solitude. My own dearest Emma, I earnestly pray, you may never regret the great, and I will add very good deed, you are to perform on the Tuesday.’[111] And he adds playfully: ‘I want practice in ill-treating the female sex—I did not observe Lyell had any compunction; I hope to harden my conscience in time: few husbands seem to find it difficult to effect this.’[112] Everything is right and as it should be. But the tone is not that of some love-letters I have seen, and this is the more notable, considering the extraordinary frankness and directness of Darwin’s correspondence generally.
But if Darwin’s conjugal attachment did not begin with violence and high-wrought passion, it continued and deepened and strengthened with broad sunny richness to the end of his life. And this was just as true, although Mrs. Darwin had no particular affection for his scientific pursuits. I have said elsewhere that she assisted him, and in his work as in everything else she was eager to do her wifely duty and help where she could. But she had no love for the work in itself, and her daughter remarks that though in the beginning she had resolved to enter into her husband’s tastes, she found it impossible. ‘He used to tell how during some lecture at the British Association he said to her, “I am afraid this is very wearisome to you,” to which she quietly answered, “Not more than all the rest,”’[113] And in writing to Lubbock he makes gentle fun of her indifference: ‘Of course you will publish an account of [your discovery]. You will then say whether the insect can fly well through the air. My wife asked, “How did he find that it stayed four hours under water without breathing?” I answered at once: “Mrs. Lubbock sat four hours watching.” I wonder whether I am right.’[114]
But Darwin did not demand that the woman he loved should share all his professional ardor. He loved her for other things, which he found in her sufficingly and inexhaustibly, for her patience, her thoughtfulness, her quick and vivacious sympathy and understanding, and the general charm of her character. In a passage of his Autobiography not published till after Mrs. Darwin’s death he said of her: ‘She has been my greatest blessing.... I do not believe she has ever missed an opportunity of doing a kind action to any one near her. I marvel at my good fortune that she, so infinitely my superior in every moral quality, consented to be my wife.’[115] And in the ardor of indiscriminating affection he adds a note of eulogy which could not perhaps be justly written by any one of any one: ‘I can declare that in my whole life I have never heard her utter one word I would rather have been unsaid.’[116]
Darwin’s constant ill-health gave a peculiar quality of intimate dependence to his relation to her whose care did most to make the ill-health tolerable, and Darwin’s son bears emphatic witness to the unfailing devotion, thoughtfulness, and efficacy of that care. ‘For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her.’[117] Only those who have known the situation can fully appreciate the restraint and constraint involved in such chronic invalidism, not only for the one who bears, but perhaps still more for the one who must watch, and sympathize, and shield, and protect, and as far as possible keep off the pressure and strain of the crowding, noisy, bustling, indifferent world.
It is true that Mrs. Darwin was spared some of the more trying elements of such invalidism. It too often carries with it impatience, irritability, ill-temper, complaint, or at any rate a moody depression which refuses to be comforted or dissipated. We have seen that Darwin confessed to some quickness of temper in youth, but there appears to have been no sign of it whatever during the years of illness. He was not only gentle and considerate, he was almost always cheerful, even gay, and relished having love and cheerfulness and gayety about him. As Mrs. Darwin charmingly puts it: ‘It is a great happiness to me when Charles is most unwell that he continues just as sociable as ever, and is not like the rest of the Darwins, who will not say how they really are; but he always tells me how he feels and never wants to be alone, but continues just as warmly affectionate as ever, so that I feel I am a comfort to him.’[118] Nor is there any sign of growing selfishness. An invalid must in a measure protect himself, he must make certain demands, and in many cases these necessary demands tend to grow into the inconsiderate and the morbidly engrossing. It does not seem to have been so with Darwin. He thought of others before himself, and kept his own needs and his own discomforts as much in the background as possible.
Nevertheless, he was an invalid, and his wife was well and vigorous, and could have mingled largely and freely with the world, and would doubtless have enjoyed it. Instead, she gave her life to him, and he fully appreciated the beauty and the constancy of her devotion. As his son says: ‘In her presence he found his happiness, and through her his life—which might have been overshadowed by gloom—became one of content and quiet gladness.’[119] But I think I feel most the human depth of the broken notes which Mrs. Darwin herself entered, recording the very last hours and words of her husband’s life: ‘I will only put down his words afterwards—“I am not the least afraid of death.” “Remember what a good wife you have been to me.” “Tell all my children to remember how good they have been to me.” After the worst of the distress he said, “I was so sorry for you, but I could not help you.” Then, “I am glad of it,” when told I was lying down. “Don’t call her; I don’t want her.” Said often, “It’s almost worth while to be sick to be nursed by you.”’[120]
In his relations with his children Darwin is quite as winning as in that with his wife. He had a huge household of them, ten in all, boys and girls. His home-keeping habits brought him closely into contact with them, and he loved them, and they loved him. It is true that he appreciates the conflict of family cares with the one all-absorbing pursuit of life, appreciates it and states it with almost tragic force and compactness: ‘Children are one’s greatest happiness, but often and often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none—perhaps not a wife; for then there would be nothing in this wide world worth caring for, and a man might (whether he could is another question) work away like a Trojan.’[121] With which it is interesting to compare the similar complaint of an equally devoted father, Thomas Moore: ‘My anxiety about these children almost embitters all my enjoyment of them.’[122]
But the anxiety arose simply from an excess of thought and care and fondness, and assuredly few fathers have been more devoted than Darwin was. There is no sign whatever that he was severe or harsh in his discipline. His son says that he never spoke an angry word to one of his children in his life. Yet he somehow managed to get things done as he wished: ‘I am certain that it never entered our heads to disobey him.’[123] The ease and comradeship with which he worked appear in one anecdote told by Francis: ‘He came into the drawing-room and found Leonard dancing about on the sofa, which was forbidden, for the sake of the springs, and said, “Oh, Lenny, Lenny, that’s against all rules,” and received for answer, “Then, I think you’d better go out of the room.”’[124] But I do not imagine that Leonard did any more dancing.
The basis of all discipline was sympathy and understanding, just as these were the basis of Darwin’s dealings with his fellow-scientists; and in his respect for his children’s personality and individuality he seems to have anticipated the ideas of a later age. His daughter says: ‘Another characteristic of his treatment of his children was his respect for their liberty, and for their personality.... Our father and mother would not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to tell. He always made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose opinions and thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was best in us came out in the sunshine of his presence.’[125]
We have already seen what care Darwin took at all times in regard to his childrens’ comfort in money matters. There was the same solicitude in all their affairs, as to their education, their conduct, and especially their prospects and their pursuits and occupations in life. He was always ready with advice and counsel when they were wanted. But he did not intrude them unduly, and above all things he did not insist upon their acceptance, or urge that his opinion and maxims should be made the rule of procedure. How admirably characteristic is his saying that ‘he hoped none of his sons would ever believe anything because he said it, unless they were themselves convinced of its truth.’[126]