Charles and Emma by Deborah Heiligman Read Free Book Online

have been said about Emma Wedgwood:
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    Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress and vex her.
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    Emma Wedgwood had lived until she was twenty
-four
with nothing at all to distress her. But in the summer of 1832, everything changed for the Dovelies.

 
    Chapter 6
    The Next World
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    The sorrows and distresses of life…soften and humanize
the heart, to awaken social sympathy, to generate
all the Christian virtues.
    â€”T HOMAS R OBERT M ALTHUS ,
A N E SSAY on
    THE P RINCIPLE OF P OPULATION ,
1798
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    A t twenty-four and twenty-six, Emma and Fanny lived at home with their parents and their older sister Elizabeth. That August, in 1832, while Jos and Bessy were away, Fanny got sick.
    At first nobody at Maer thought it was anything to be worried about. And Elizabeth and Emma were both experienced at taking care of sick people. Elizabeth was thirty-six. She had spent years nursing the poor in the village. Emma was often her assistant. So they thought nothing of caring for Fanny themselves, even though it could not have been easy with no running water or flush toilets.
    Uncharacteristically, Emma took precise notes of what happened. “On Monday 13th August 1832,” she wrote, “my dear Fannycomplained of uneasiness in the bowels. Eliz gave her calomel and jalap but she would come and sit at the dinner table to save appearances as she said. The pain continued all night.”
    They didn’t know what was wrong with her—she may have had cholera, or it may have been another kind of intestinal illness. There were cholera outbreaks all over England—from Liverpool in the north down to Oxford and even into East London. People throughout the country were scared it would spread, including the Wedgwoods’ neighbors in Staffordshire. The symptoms of cholera were severe vomiting and diarrhea, leading to dehydration, weakness, and often death.
    In the nineteenth century, the treatment of an intestinal disease focused on purging the system through vomiting and moving the bowels. Those nursing the sick also tried to keep the patient comfortable, which wasn’t very easy, with all of that purging. They also gave fluids, although the dire effect of dehydration was not well known.
    Elizabeth “fomented her” (applied hot packs) and tried to give an injection, but it didn’t work. The injection was probably liquid ammonia or saline. Concerned that Fanny was not improving, Emma and Elizabeth sent for the apothecary, a Mr. B., who “ordered fomentation with poppy heads,” Emma noted. The heat from the compress, probably more than the traces of opium from the poppy seeds, helped and “the pain gradually went off.” Then Emma put twenty leeches on Fanny, which they hoped would suck the disease out with the blood.
    Soon Fanny seemed to be getting better. Emma wrote, “Saturday…she had a peaceful day and slept a good deal. She asked to have Charlotte’s letter read to her. I slept in the room with her and only had to help her up once or twice. Early on Sunday morning she was low and Eliz gave her some hot drink. She revived during the day.”
    The next evening, she “took an injection which gave her violent pain and after that she was restless and uneasy; told Elizabeth to sponge her face twice and her back and chest. At 4 o’clock sent for Mr. B. He found her sinking when he came and gave her brandy and she was thoroughly warmed.”
    Months later, while on his voyage, Charles received a letter from his sister Caroline. Charles read that his cousin Fanny Wedgwood, who had been suggested as a possible wife for him, had
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    seemed very ill for two days with vomitings and pain and then appeared to get better, so much so that not one of the family had an idea she was in