Free Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman Page A

him, than of any one of his own sex.” Here was a difference with his animal cousins: Animals do not blush. But “sensitive people apt to blush.”
    He wrote, “Blushing is intimately concerned with thinking of ones appearance,—does the thought drive blood to surface exposed, face of man, face, neck—upper bosom in woman: like erection.” The women Charles had seen in England had little exposed, but gowns, especially dressy ones, could have low-cut necklines, exposing the upper bosom.
    He talked to his father the doctor. Dr. Darwin might have told him that when the time arrived he could extinguish thelamps because, Charles wrote, “No surer way to blush, than particularly to wish not to do so. How directly personal remark will make any one blush.—Is there not some saying about a person even blushing in the dark…A person who blushes in the dark is proverbially a most modest person.”
    Charles thought about Emma all the time. He read and reread her letters, three, four, five times.
    Meanwhile back at Maer, referring to all the scientific work she thought her future husband was doing, Emma had written to Aunt Jessie, “I am so glad he is a busy man.”

 
    Chapter 10
    Melancholy Thoughts
    Â 
    My reason tells me that honest & conscientious
doubts cannot be a sin, but I feel it would be
a painful void between us.
    â€”E MMA TO C HARLES , N OVEMBER 1838
    Â 
    A s he prepared for their upcoming marriage, Charles had certain things on his mind. Emma had others. She was back at Maer getting new clothes because her aunts told her she had to present herself better once she was married. Aunt Jessie wrote that Emma should always be “dressed in good taste; do not despise those little cares which give everyone more pleasing looks, because you know you have married a man who is above caring for such little things. No man is above caring for them.”
    So Emma thought about and prepared a new wardrobe for her new life. And she relished the time with her family; it would be hard for her to leave them. “I bless the railroad every day of my life, and Charles is so fond of Maer that I am sure hewill always be ready to steam down whenever he can. So that we shall always be within reach of home,” she wrote, reassuring herself. During this time before the wedding, she visited with her friends, wrote letters to Charles, and looked forward to letters from him.
    She expressed no regret about her decision to marry him, and when Charles visited Maer, she felt happy and in love. Yet when he left, she felt depressed. She worried about the big subject that was in the way of their happiness. For in those talks by the fire he had not concealed his doubts about God, miracles, and creation. He had told her at least part of what he was thinking about the origin of species, and he admitted that he was not a believer as she was.
    At Maer without Charles, his charm, his wit, his very presence to remind her of all she loved about him, the problem of their religious differences loomed large. Emma wrote to him, “When I am with you I think all melancholy thoughts keep out of my head but since you are gone some sad ones have forced themselves in, of fear that our opinions on the most important subject should differ widely.”
    She was glad he had told her of his doubts, even though his father had advised him not to say anything. (He had confessed that, too.) The fact that he was open with her gave her hope for their future. She wrote, “I thank you from my heart for your openness with me & I should dread the feeling that you were concealing your opinions from the fear of giving me pain.”
    But as she contemplated leaving her home to start a life with him, she was scared. In fact, she was more than scared; she was in pain. Although she knew that honest and conscientious doubts could not be a sin, and she told him so, she had to be honest with him about her fears, too. She wrote,