Emma Darwin: The inspirational wife of a genius by Edna Healey, Headline,
拢20, ISBN 0747275793
ALL workaholics should give Emma Darwin to their partners in the hope that
Emma鈥檚 example might inspire them. Charles Darwin worked and worried
incessantly, so much so that he made himself ill. Edna Healey tells us that
Emma, meanwhile, was intelligent, liked literature and 鈥渘ot only did she dance
gracefully, she spoke French, German and Italian well, and played the piano
产谤颈濒濒颈补苍迟濒测鈥︹赌�
Emma coped well in society, Charles did not. He was self-confessedly
cloth-eared when it came to music and did not have time to read anything but
science. Nevertheless, Emma, n茅e Wedgwood, one of eight children of the
well-to-do pottery family, made a very successful and happy career out of the
marriage and bore him 10 children between 1839 and 1856.
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Healey encapsulates the social details of Emma鈥檚 life and times wonderfully
with plenty of quotes from their letters. She lays bare some of the marriage鈥檚
problems: for instance, Darwin鈥檚 concern over Emma鈥檚 religiosity may have
contributed to his illness and delay over publishing his theory of evolution.
And what of the scientists they knew? Emma was an acute observer, but we are
given only tantalising glimpses of her views, such as her remark that the famous
geologist Charles Lyell 鈥溾�s enough to flatten a party as he never speaks
above his breath.鈥� There鈥檚 another book waiting to be written about Emma Darwin
and what she thought of her husband鈥檚 science.