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to their engagement. It was afterward that things began to heat up.
    It was that day, by the fire, that their story really began. In the library at Maer, they had made a leap, though not over class lines or parental objections. They had made a leap to marry even though they had one big difference between them that could stand in the way of their happiness. For Charles had not heeded his father’s advice: He had not concealed his religious doubts.

 
    Chapter 9
    A Busy Man
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    I hardly expected such good fortune would turn up for me.
    â€”C HARLES D ARWIN TO C harles L yell , N ovember 12, 1838
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    You will be forming theories about me & if I am cross or
out of temper you will only consider ‘What does
that prove.’ Which will be a very grand &
philosophical way of considering it.
    â€”E MMA TO C HARLES , J ANUARY 23, 1839
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    A s soon as Charles got to Shrewsbury, he wrote to his friend Charles Lyell, the geologist, in London. Lyell probably read the letter the next day, for the mail in England was quite efficient. The post was picked up and delivered more than once a day—a few times, in fact, depending on where you were—and it arrived at its destination later that day or the next. Sometimes the mailman would wait until you wrote a response to a letter just received. In two years, the British post would become the penny post, which meant that a letterwould cost a penny per half ounce no matter where it was going in England. But now, in 1838, it was more expensive to send a letter outside of London, though that didn’t matter to Emma or even to frugal Charles. It was the only way to communicate. Letter writing was one of the centers of social life in nineteenth-century England, along with visiting relatives and friends and going to or giving parties.
    In London Lyell read, “I have the very good, and shortly since very unexpected fortune, of going to be married. The lady is my cousin, Miss Emma Wedgwood, the sister of Hensleigh Wedgwood, and of the elder brother who married my sister, so we are connected by manifold ties, besides on my part by the most sincere love and hearty gratitude to her for accepting such a one as myself.”
    Charles had two reasons for writing to Lyell right away. One was to tell his friend the good news. The other was to tell him that he was marrying Emma and not a Horner girl, so Lyell would tell his wife’s family before Charles got back to London. It might be less awkward for Charles when he ran into Mr. Horner, or the “Mother-in-law,” if they had time to get used to the idea that he was no longer available.
    The Horners did not react positively to the engagement of Charles Darwin to Emma Wedgwood (and for good reason!). But they were the only ones. All over the countryside in Shropshire and Staffordshire, in London, as well as in Geneva, where Aunt Jessie lived, family and friends were exulting in the news.
    Emma’s beautiful older sister Charlotte, whom Charles had had a crush on when he was younger, wrote to her future brother-in-law, “How truly & warmly I rejoice in this marriage. Nothing else could have happened to give me so much pleasure—it seems as if it was the only thing to wish for. Asmuch as it is possible to rely upon the happiness of any two people I feel a reliance on yours & Emma’s.”
    Even Poor Old Ras, as Charles called his brother, expressed his excitement and his vicarious happiness. He wrote to Charles, “It is a marriage which will give almost as much pleasure to the rest of the world as it does to your-selves—the best auspices I should think for any marriage.”
    There were, indeed, many reasons to have auspicious hopes for the marriage. In Geneva, Aunt Jessie wrote to her niece:
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    Everything I have ever heard of C. Darwin I have particularly liked, and have long wished for what has now taken place, that he would woo and win you. I love him all the better that he unites to all