The Making of Darwin’s Marital Happiness

Emma and Charles Darwin’s marriage lasted forty-three years and produced ten children. Though Charles Darwin wrote down his thoughts about the pros and cons of marriage, including his fear that he would become an impoverished “slave” to wife and family, and suffered anxiety about entering matrimony, he would have a happy marriage despite ill health, the death of three of the children, and differences over religion. The world-traveling Darwin spent most of his life in the bosom of his family in the small community of Down. This essay will explore the elements in Darwin’s life that led to his happy marriage, only touching on his marital life. These elements will include his relationship and attitude to women and marriage as well as his childhood and personality.

Much has been written and said about sexless or loveless Victorian marriages, especially in the wake of Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (NY: Vintage, 1983). The Darwins’ loving marriage was quite different than those depicted in Professor Rose’s interesting book. It is described in some detail in Edna Healey, Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius (London: Headline Books, 2001).

There are special problems in writing about Charles Darwin’s personality, interpersonal relations, and marriage that go well beyond Victorian censorship—including self-censorship. Darwin, while self-deprecating and even humble in many respects, was an extreme idealizer of his loved ones. This makes it more difficult for the psychobiographer to get past vague generalities. Furthermore, the historical biographer of nineteenth century individuals is much less inclined to put forth hypotheses than the psychoanalyst may be in working with a contemporary patient: after all, s/he is much less able to elicit new materials while testing hypotheses. However, a few such hypotheses merit further in-depth research and a more careful reading of existing autobiographies, letters, and other primary sources.

The example of his parents’ marriage was not a strong presence in Darwin’s life because his mother died shortly after his eighth birthday and he reports clearly remembering only three things about her, none of which are related to marriage. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on February 12, 1809 as the second son and fifth of seven children (five girls and two boys) of Dr. Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848) and his wife Susannah Wedgwood (1765-1817). The couple, from two accomplished families known for a strong interest in science, married in 1796 and appear to have had a happy union. “Owing to their great grief; and partly to her previous invalid state” his sisters “were never being able to speak about her [their mother] or mention her name,” thus Darwin really had little information about her and from her regarding her marriage (p. 22). An older sister zealously took over some of the parenting from their mother. Of his sisters he said they “all were extremely kind and affectionate towards me during their whole lives” (p. 43). Except where otherwise noted, all citations are to The Autobiography of Charles Darwin: 1809-1882, edited by Nora Barlow, his granddaughter (NY: W.W. Norton, 1958). For a valuable guide to Darwin’s autobiographical writing, see Ralph Colp, “Notes on Charles Darwin’s Autobiography,” Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 18 (3) [Fall, 1985], pp. 357-401.

Perhaps “mother nature” was the mother Charles Darwin knew best? While most of his memories of Susannah were shadowy, he had no inhibitions about observing, studying, and remembering nature. Indeed, the student who struggled to learn the classics which were the mainstay of his education, had a fine memory for natural phenomena and was distinguished by a love of collecting and comparing different [natural] objects. He credits his “success as a man of science” as most importantly being a result of his “love of science” (pp. 144-145), reporting that “my love of natural science has been steady and ardent” (p. 141). As a scientist Darwin was not experimental in his approach, indeed, the two rulers in his laboratory gave varying measurements. Rather, he was a marvelous observer of natural phenomena whose “mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of a large collection of facts” (p. 139). Whether or not this speculation

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that Darwin transferred his search for motherly love from his barely remembered, invalided, and then deceased mother to “mother nature,” his father’s character, ideas, experience with women, and advice are more accessible to the historian.

Based upon the description in Charles Darwin’s Autobiography, a view not contradicted by other sources, his father would have been considered a model husband for his era. Robert Darwin’s characteristics of being in “high spirits” most of the time (p. 39), having “unbounded” “kind-ness” (p. 40) “and to be always scheming to give pleasure to others” (p. 29), together with his sobriety and considerable economic success, are positive indications of a satisfying marriage. Dr. Darwin, who was widely respected and “deeply loved” (p. 40), made his living as a doctor who had a special ability to win the confidence of women. Since he hated the sight of blood, and bleeding was the primary treatment of his era, he practiced a type of psychological medicine “as a sort of Father-Confessor” to women especially those “suffering in their minds,” commonly from “family quarrels” (p. 31). The senior Darwin, referred to on this occasion as “The Governor” by his famous son, recommended marrying fairly young when “one’s character is more flexible” and to avoid missing out on “so much good pure happiness” stemming from a good marriage (p. 233). The influence of Robert on his son cannot be underestimated, especially in the light of Charles viewing his father, on whom he was economically dependent, as “the largest man whom I [have] ever saw” (pp. 28-29), a man with an extraordinary memory (p. 39) capable of “reading” people’s “characters” and even their “thoughts” (p. 32).

Not all of Darwin’s experience with and knowledge about women and marriage were positive. His nine-year-older sister Caroline was, during his boyhood, so overzealous to improve him that he remembers thinking when she entered the room, “what will she blame me for now?” (p. 22) Furthermore, his father “often remarked how many miserable wives he had known” (p. 32) which encouraged doubts as to the prospects of happiness in marriage. When planning to marry, Charles had a frightening dream of being executed (Ralph Colp, “Charles Darwin’s Dream of His Double Execution,” Journal of Psychohistory, Vol. 13, #3, pp. 277-292). Thus he had many fears and concerns about marriage—to be discussed below. First, we must examine the issue of his personality and the impact of living primarily in an all-male society from the death of his mother through age twenty-six.

Charles Darwin was a modest man who, even when hailed as a great scientist, saw his abilities as “moderate” (p. 145), focusing on his inadequate knowledge of dissection (p. 47), mathematics (pp. 58-59), and language—”during my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering [he in fact read French and German] any language” (p. 27). He had an especially low opinion of his own abilities as a boy. He saw himself as “in many way a naughty boy” (p. 22), “much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods,” (p. 23), and “a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect” (p. 28). Indeed, “as far as the academic studies were concerned,” he felt his time at school, Edinburgh, and Cambridge “was wasted” (p. 58). On a more positive note, Darwin thought he had a “very affectionate” disposition in his childhood (p. 45).

Charles’ great love and capabilities were not for academics, but for nature and collecting natural specimens. However, Dr. Robert Darwin disparaged these activities which he connected to his own father Erasmus’s speculative poetry of evolution, which resulted in the word “darwinising” (p. 150) being coined by Coleridge to mean wild speculation about nature before Charles was even born. (Because of his hatred of blood in an era when bleeding was the most common form of treatment, Robert had never wanted to be a doctor and he felt that his father Erasmus had wasted time on biological studies that he might have used to make money in his own medical practice, thus saving his blood-hating son from having to be a physician). In a rare moment of great anger Robert had declared to his second son that “you care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” This hurt Charles terribly, quite probably prompting him to work harder, to become “dogged” to prove himself in his unpaid profession of naturalist, just as he had in the face of his sister’s criticism (p. 22).

Though Darwin had five sisters, his contact

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with the opposite sex was limited after his mother died when he was eight. Charles spent most of his early life in the company of boys and men in an era of educational gender segregation. He went to a day school for a year, then spent ages nine through sixteen boarding at “Dr. Butler’s great school” in Shrewsbury (p. 25), the next two years studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, three happy years at Cambridge, and then five years aboard the Beagle with its all-male crew. Though fear of homosexuality could not be spoken about directly, Dr. Darwin’s objection as “disreputable to my [his] character as a clergyman” (p. 228) to Charles’ accepting the unpaid position of naturalist on the Beagle may have reflected this concern. (This was the first of eight objections Darwin successfully responded to with the help of his Uncle Josh Wedgwood.)

We know less than we would like about Charles Darwin’s thoughts and attitudes toward sexuality. Though many of his scientific papers focused on sexual questions in simpler forms of life in nature and he bred animals (p. 144), he says nothing about human sexuality in his Autobiography. Indeed, he wrote nothing in his log or letters home about the sexually uninhibited and nearly naked women of Polynesia. When he notes “the sight of a naked savage in his native land is an event which can never be forgotten,” it is the male he writes about (p. 80). In medical school “the subject [of human anatomy]… disgusted me” (p. 47). His hatred of the sight of blood was so intense that he ran out of the room while watching “two very bad operations” (p. 48)—this aversion and the sense that his father would leave him “property enough to subsist on with some comfort” (p. 46), would spell the end to his medical career. Given his feelings toward blood, one wonders how he felt about menstruating women or the messy process of childbirth?

In the period (1837-1838) before his marriage, Charles Darwin scribbled some fascinating notes under the headings of “This is the Question” with separate columns entitled, “Work Finished” and “Work Finished [stet],” and then “MARRY” and “Not MARRY” (pp. 231-234). In the first, duplicated category the left column focused on the reasons not to marry and the right on the possible costs of marriage to scientific achievement. In the “MARRY,” “Not MARRY” categories issues involved in marriage are the main emphasis. The reverse side of the page sums up with the conclusion, “There is many a happy slave.” Throughout the focus on not marrying is to achieve in science. He cites his desire to travel in Europe or perhaps America for geological research, take summer specimen-collecting tours, become more zoological, work on the “transmission of species,” and live in London systematizing his work. His thoughts on the downside of marriage were that it would lead to “limited means,” “obstacles to science and poverty,” feeling the “duty to work for money” (something he never in fact did), and perhaps teaching at Cambridge where he would be “a fish out of water.”

By the time Darwin gets to the “MARRY” “Not MARRY” columns he is clearly sold on matrimony. “Children—(if it please God) constant companion, (friend in old age)…[were to him] to be beloved and played with—better than a dog anyhow.” He thought the “charms of music and female chit-chat….[are] good for one’s health and decided that “it is intolerable to think of one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working…. By contrast he pictured “a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, and books and music…[and concluded] Marry—Marry—Marry….” Darwin’s “Not MARRY” and the notes scribbled on the back of the page, reflect both his decision to marry and fears about the result of marriage on his scientific work, especially the loss of time and his trepidation that he would be sentenced by marriage “to banishment and degradation with indolent idle fool.” Together with his fear of the loss of opportunity, of becoming a poor slave, “you will be worse than a negro” was the hope that his spouse would be “an angel.”

Emma would turn out to be the “angel” the great naturalist had hoped for. Like his mother she was a Wedgwood nine months older than her husband. She was also his first cousin, something which did not concern him at the time, but would later on when he worried the consanguinity might have a negative impact on their children, which indeed it probably had (James Moore, “Good Breeding,” Natural History Vol. 114, {9} [November 2005], pp. 45-46). How Emma and Charles came to wed is of interest. They knew

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each other from early childhood. Charles had “vivid pictures in my [his] mind” of “delightful” summer evenings sitting on steps of the porch of the Wedgwood’s home with the whole family (pp. 55-56). She knew of his love for nature and would support him in his scientific work throughout his lifetime. He was quite fond of her father—”Uncle Josh”—whose intervention on his behalf had made possible Robert Darwin’s acceptance of his son taking the position of naturalist on the Beagle. Several years after his famous voyage, Charles was finding life in London to be lonely and becoming more open to the idea of matrimony. These nuptials were welcomed by both families.

Despite Darwin, like a good Victorian, revealing little about his own sexuality in his Autobiography, I can reconstruct some sense of it in and before his marriage with the help of one of his most knowledgeable biographers (Dr. Ralph Colp, personal communications, January 16 & 29, 2006). He enjoyed the female body and appeared to have a positive attitude toward sexuality. In his twenties he spent time with Fanny Owen and perhaps had sex with her. Despite the issue of ill health, it appears the Darwins continued the sex life that resulted in the birth of their ten children. In his latter years Charles loved to have romantic novels read aloud to him, provided “they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed” and there is a loveable person—”if a pretty woman all the better” (pp. 138-139).

The focus of the marriage was Charles’ scientific work, their family, the health of all concerned, and the running of Down House with its servants. The great naturalist was an extraordinarily devoted husband and father. When his first son was born late in 1839 he assiduously observed the baby, taking notes to eventually be used in his best-selling book, The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals (1872). His concern for his children was intense, so when illness threatened their, or Emma’s health, he was profoundly affected. The death of ten-year-old Annie in 1851 was so devastating that he wrote a sketch of her and, even toward the end of his life, tears “come into my eyes at the mention of her sweet ways” (p. 98). Emma’s migraines and sixteen years of pregnancies upset him, nor could he bear her “pain in a difficult labour” (Healey, Emma Darwin, pp. 173-174). His wife found his “deep compassion for others” to be one of her husband’s most outstanding characteristics (p. 238).

What Charles writes about Emma reflects his love, appreciation, and idealization of her. In old age, he marveled that she “consented to be my wife” (p. 97). “He describes her as having been, “my greatest blessing…[who] in my whole life I have never heard her utter one word which I had rather have been unsaid.” He goes on to say that “she has never failed in the kindest sympathy towards me, and has borne with the utmost patience my frequent complaints from ill-health and discomfort” (p. 96). His isolation from the world for reasons of health meant that his world centered on his work, Emma, and the children to an amazing degree. For her part, Emma writes in an undated letter to her husband “how happy he makes me and how dearly I love him and thank him for all his affection which makes the happiness of my life more and more every day” (p. 237). Their mutual devotion and idealization of each other is striking in an era stressing marital propriety more than affection. Some hints as to what underlie the relationship are present in their correspondence and elsewhere. For example, Charles referred to his wife as “Mammy” on at least one occasion (Healey, Emma Darwin, p. 206), called himself her “Negro,” and she wrote to him as “my own dear nigger” (p. 237). Since they both abominated slavery, it is clear that this reflected both his devotion and need for her as a maternal figure (Colp, February 21, 2006).

Only one issue came between husband and wife: religion, or rather his growing disbelief in it as representing divine intervention (p. 86). Darwin, whose attendance at Cambridge University had been in preparation for the ministry, had come to join his father and brother in a quiet skepticism. His father had warned that one should not discuss theology with women, but he could not bring himself to keep something from his beloved. Emma was profoundly offended by the idea that they would not be sharing, in her view, an afterlife together (“that we did not belong to each other for ever” p. 237), as well as for theological reasons. Even though he went out of his way to declare himself a theist in his autobiography (p. 93), rather than as an agnostic which would be a better de-

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scription of his belief, after his death she censored it, eliminating certain theologically offensive materials. Fortunately, their granddaughter Nora Barlow restored these materials which seem quite innocuous to the modern reader.

In conclusion, this essay has explained what in Charles Darwin’s childhood, personality, and life experience prepared him for or stood in the way of the happy marriage he would have for forty-three years with his cousin Emma Wedgwood. It focuses on his fears of marriage and subsequent intense love and appreciation of his wife, which was reciprocated. At Down House the health of everyone in the family, but especially Charles, was a central focal point (See Ralph Colp, To Be an Invalid: The Illness of Charles Darwin [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977]). Since the excitement of going out into society or receiving friends “almost always” resulted “in his suffering from violent shivering and vomiting attacks” (p. 115), Darwin mostly limited his contacts to his family. The man who had circumnavigated the world and who dreamed of traveling to additional parts of the world and going “up in a Balloon” (p. 234), could not even tolerate the excitement of going to London or having visitors. But what need did Darwin have of travel, or even other people, when he had his “angel” and children by his side? The Darwins’ marriage was quite fulfilling for both parties.

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