Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman Page B

novels from the library, starting a lifelong tradition of reading together—usually Emma read to Charles while he rested from his work. Charles liked novels with happy endings, and he once wrote, “I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me…and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily—against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if it be a pretty woman all the better.”
    Charles and Emma both took setting up house seriously. For once, Charles did not mind spending money. But he did start recording every pound he spent in a pocket account book and would continue that practice for the rest of his life. He wrote that they started with £573 in the bank and £36 cash in hand. They spent money on medicine, a coffeepot, a pickle pot, stationery with their new address (12 Upper Gower Street) printed on it, a haircut for Charles, shaving soap, beer, biscuits, a table for the pantry, wages for the servants, fares for hackney coaches, and tickets for the opera. Charles also bought a going-away present for Syms Covington.
    Soon they ventured out and “went slopping through the melted snow,” as Emma wrote to Elizabeth, to pick out a pianoforte that was to be a present from Emma’s father. Both Emma and Charles were so thrilled at the prospect of having the beautiful mahogany grand—Emma for herself, Charles because he knew it would make her happy—that when they were walking on Gower Street a few days later and saw a pianoforte van, Charles shouted out to see if it was going to number 12. It was. They put the piano in the small back room, where, even though it was cramped, they spent most of their time, for it looked out on their garden. This room seemed more like the country and therefore more like home than any other part of the house.
    Emma gave Charles “a large dose of music every evening,” as she said, and even though he could never remember a tune and was probably tone deaf, he enjoyed her playing very much. (“Charms of music and female chit-chat,” as he had written on the
Marry
side of his list.) In that first week they also gave their first dinner party, as sort of practice, for Hensleigh and Fanny and Erasmus. Erasmus was condescending at first; he said the dinner was just like those he gave. But, asEmma reported home, “when the plum-pudding appeared he knocked under, and confessed himself conquered very humbly.”
    Charles had written in one of his notebooks, “Definition of happiness the number of pleasant ideas passing through mind in given time.” Now he found happiness not just in his mind; he found it in real life.
    But sad news arrived during this happy time. Caroline and Jos’s baby had died. Emma was quite shocked, though Charles had known it was coming from the way his sister described the baby’s appearance and symptoms. At that time many infants died—as many as one in four or five, depending on social class and living conditions. To lose a baby was not unusual, but it was, of course, very sad. Caroline, who had married late, was devastated. Elizabeth wrote to an aunt, “the thoughts of this precious child and the preparations for it have occupied her in an intense way.” The death had an effect on everyone in the family, including Charles and Emma, who were hoping to have their own baby soon.
    For the newlyweds there was much to absorb and to get used to, going from single to married, and without a honeymoon for a transition. (Neither one of them wanted to take a trip.) Emma wrote to her mother that Charles wasn’t quite used to her “honours yet.” He picked up a letter addressed to her and “could not conceive who Mrs. C. Darwin could mean.”
    But time and shared experiences got them used to being husband and wife.