Books: The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1

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He had been warned by Forbes not to speak too strongly about the
dilatoriness of the Government in the matter of the grant, so he
writes:] "I will 'roar you like any sucking dove' at the dinner, though
I felt tempted otherwise." [On December 1 he tells how he carried out
this advice.]

My dear Forbes,

You will, I know, like to learn how I got on yesterday. The President's
address to me had been drawn up by Bell. It was, of course, too
flattering, but he had taken hold of the right points in my work--at
least I thought so.

Bunsen spoke very well for Humboldt.

There was a capital congregation at the dinner--sixty or seventy Fellows
there...

When it came to my turn to return thanks, I believe I made a very
tolerable speechification, at least everybody says so. Lord Rosse had
alluded to "science having to take care of itself in this country," and
in winding up I gave them a small screed upon that text. That you may
see I kept your caution in mind, I will tell you as nearly as may be
what I said. I told them that I could not conceive that anything I had
hitherto done merited the honour of that day (I looked so preciously
meek over this), but that I was glad to be able to say that I had so
much unpublished material as to make me hopeful of one day diminishing
the debt. I then said, "The Government of this country, of this GREAT
country, has been two years debating whether it should grant the three
hundred pounds sterling necessary for the publication of these
researches. I have been too long used to strict discipline to venture to
criticise any act of my superiors, but I venture to hope that before
long, in consequence of the exertions of Lord Rosse, of the President of
the British Association, and the goodwill, which I gratefully
acknowledge, of the present Lord of the Admiralty, I shall be able to
lay before you something more worthy of to-day's award."

I had my doubts how the nobs would take it, but both Lord Rosse and
Sabine warmly commended my speech and regretted I had not said even more
upon the subject.

[Some light is thrown upon his habits at this time by the following,
part of his letter to Forbes of November 19:--]

I have frequent visits from --. He is a good man, but direfully
argumentative, and in that sense to me a bore. Besides that, the
creature will come and call upon me at nine or ten o'clock in the
morning before I am out of bed, or if out of bed, before I am in
possession of my faculties, which never arrive before twelve or one.

[This morning incapacity was of a piece with his hatred of the
breakfast-party of the period. To go abroad from home or to do any work
before breakfasting ensured him a headache for the rest of the day, so
that he never was one of those risers with the dawn who do half a day's
work before the rest of the world is astir. And though necessity often
compelled him to do with less, he always found eight hours his proper
allowance of sleep.

But in the end of 1853 we hear of a reform in his ways, after a bad bout
of ill-health, when he rises at eight, goes to bed at twelve, and
eschews parties of every kind as far as possible, with excellent results
as far as health went.

After his marriage, however, and indeed to the beginning of his last
illness, he always rose early enough for an eight o'clock breakfast,
after which the working day began, lasting regularly from a little after
nine till midnight.

4 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, February 6, 1853.

Many thanks, my dearest sister, for your kind and thoughtful letter--it
went to my heart no little that you, amidst all your trials and
troubles, should find time to think so wisely and so affectionately of
mine. Though greatly tempted otherwise, I have acted in the spirit of
your advice, and my reward, in the shape of honours at any rate, has not
failed me, as the Royal Society gave me one of the Royal medals last
year. It's a bigger one than I got under your auspices so many years
ago, being worth 50 pounds sterling, but I don't know that I cared so
much about it.

It was assigned to me quite unexpectedly, and in the eyes of the world
I, of course, am greatly the bigger--but I will confess to you privately
that I am by no means dilated, and am the identical Boy Tom I was before
I achieved the attainment of my golden porter's badge. Curiously it was
given for the first Memoir I have in the Royal Society's "Transactions,"
sent home four years ago with no small fear and trembling, and, "after
many days," returning with this queer crust of bread. In the speech I
had to make at the Anniversary Dinner I grew quite eloquent on that
point, and talked of the dove I had sent from my ark, returning, not
with the olive branch, but with a sprig of the bay and a fruit from the
garden of the Hesperides--a simile which I thought decidedly clever, but
which the audience--distinguished audience I ought to have
said--probably didn't, as they did not applaud that, while they did some
things I said which were incomparably more stupid. This was in November,
and I ought to have written to you about it before, my dear Lizzie, but
for one thing I am very much occupied, and for the other (shall I
confess it?) I was rather puzzled that I had not heard from you since I
wrote. Now my useless conscience, which never makes me do anything right
in time, is pitching in to me when it is too late.

The medal, however, must not be jested at, as it is most decidedly of
practical use in giving me a status in the eyes of those charming
people, "practical men," such as I had not before, and I am amused to
find some of my friends, whose contempt for my "dreamy" notions was not
small in time past, absolutely advising me to take a far more dreamy
course than I dare venture upon. However, I take very much my own course
now, even as I have done before--Huxley all over.

However, that is enough about myself just now. In the next letter I will
tell you more at length about my plans and prospects, which are mostly,
I am sorry to say, only provocative of setting my teeth hard and saying,
"Never mind, I WILL." But what I write in a hurry about and want you to
do at once, is to write to me and tell me exactly how money may be sent
safely to you. It is inexpedient to send without definite directions,
according to the character you give your neighbours. Don't expect
anything vast, but there is corn in Egypt...

Two classes of people can I deal with and no third. They are the good
people--people after my own heart, and the thorough men of the world.
Either of these I can act and sympathise with, but the others, who are
neither for God nor for the Devil, but for themselves, as grim old Dante
has it, and whom he therefore very justly puts in a most uncomfortable
place, I cannot do with...

So Florry is growing up into a great girl; the child will not remember
me, but kiss her and my godson for me, and give my love to them all. The
Lymph shall come in my next letter for the young Yankee. I hope the
juices of the English cow will prevent him from ever acquiring the
snuffle.

Tell the Doctor all about the medal, with my kindest regards, and
believe me, my dearest Lizzie, your affectionate brother,

Tom.

4 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, April 22, 1853.

My dearest Lizzie,

First let me congratulate you on being safe over your troubles and in
possession of another possible President. I think it may be worth coming
over twenty years hence on the possibility of picking up something or
other from one of my nephews at Washington.

[He sends some money.] Would it were more worth your having, but I have
not as yet got on to Tom Tiddler's ground on this side of the water. You
need not be alarmed about my having involved myself in any way--such
portion of it as is of my sending has been conquered by mine own sword
and spear, and the rest came from Mary. [Mrs. George Huxley]...

[After giving a summary of his struggle with the Admiralty, he
proceeds]--If I were to tell you all the intriguing and humbug there has
been about my unfortunate grant--which yet granted--it would occupy this
letter, and though a very good illustration of the encouragement
afforded to Science in this country, would not be very amusing. Once or
twice it has fairly died out, only to be stirred up again by my own
pertinacity. However, I have hopes of it at last, as I hear Lord Rosse
is just about to make another application to the present Government on
the subject. While this business has been dragging on of course I have
not been idle. I have four memoirs (on various matters in Comparative
Anatomy) in the "Philosophical Transactions," and they have given me
their Fellowship and one of the Royal medals. I have written a whole lot
of things for the journals--reviews for the "British and Foreign
Quarterly Medical," etc. I am one of the editors of Taylor's "Scientific
Memoirs" (German scientific translations). In conjunction with my friend
Busk I am translating a great German book on the "Microscopical Anatomy
of Man," and I have engaged to write a long article for Todd's
"Cyclopaedia." Besides this, have read two long memoirs at the British
Association, and have given two lectures at the Royal Institution--one
of them only two days ago, when I was so ill with influenza I could
hardly stand or speak.

Furthermore, I have been a candidate for a Professorship of Natural
History at Toronto (which is not even yet decided); for one at Aberdeen,
which has been given against me; and at present I am a candidate for the
Professorship of Physiology at King's College, or, rather, for half of
it--Todd having given up, and Bowman, who remains, being willing to take
only half, and that he will soon give up. My friend Edward Forbes--a
regular brick, who has backed me through thick and thin--is backing me
for King's College, where he is one of the Professors. My chance is, I
believe, very good, but nothing can be more uncertain than the result of
the contest. If they don't take one of their own men I think they will
have me. It would suit me very well, and the whole chair is worth 400
pounds sterling a year, and would enable me to live.

Something I must make up my mind to do, and that speedily. I can get
honour in Science, but it doesn't pay, and "honour heals no wounds." In
truth I am often very weary. The longer one lives the more the ideal and
the purpose vanishes out of one's life, and I begin to doubt whether I
have done wisely in giving vent to the cherished tendency towards
Science which has haunted me ever since my childhood. Had I given myself
to Mammon I might have been a respectable member of society with large
watch-seals by this time. I think it is very likely that if this King's
College business goes against me, I may give up the farce
altogether--burn my books, burn my rod, and take to practice in
Australia. It is no use to go on kicking against the pricks...

CHAPTER 1.8.

1854.

[The year 1854 marks the turning-point in Huxley's career. The desperate
time of waiting came to an end. By the help of his lectures and his pen,
he could at all events stand and wait independently of the Navy. He
could not, of course, think of immediate marriage, nor of asking Miss
Heathorn to join him in England; but it so happened that her father was
already thinking of returning home, and finally this was determined upon
just before Professor Forbes' translation to a chair at Edinburgh gave
Huxley what turned out to be the long-hoped-for permanency in London.]

June 3, 1854.

I have often spoken to you of my friend Edward Forbes. He has quite
recently been suddenly appointed to a Professorial Chair in Edinburgh,
vacated by the death of old Jamieson. He was obliged to go down there at
once and lecture, and as he had just commenced his course at the
Government School of Mines in Jermyn Street, it was necessary to obtain
a substitute. He had spoken to me of the possibility of his being called
away long ago, and had asked if I would take his place, to which, of
course, I assented, but the whole affair was so uncertain that I never
in any way reckoned upon it. Even at last I did not know on the Monday
whether I was to go on for him on the Friday or not. However, he did go
after giving two lectures, and on Friday the 25th May I took his
lecture, and I have been going on ever since, twice a week on Mondays
and Fridays. Called upon so very suddenly to give a course of some six
and twenty lectures, I find it very hard work, but I like it and I never
was in better health.

[On July 20, this temporary work, which he had undertaken as the friend
of Forbes, was exchanged for one of the permanent lectureships formerly
held by the latter. A hundred a year for twenty-six lectures was not
affluence; it would have suited him better to have had twice the work
and twice the pay. But it was his crossing of the Rubicon, and,
strangely enough, no sooner had he gained this success than it was
doubled.]

July 30, 1854.

I was appointed yesterday to a post of 200 pounds sterling a year. It
has all come about in the strangest way. I told you how my friend Forbes
had been suddenly called away to Edinburgh, and that I had suddenly
taken his duties--sharp work it has been I can tell you these summer
months, but it is over and done satisfactorily. Forbes got 500 pounds
sterling a year, 200 pounds sterling for a double lectureship, 300
pounds sterling for another office. I took one of the lectureships,
which would have given me 100 pounds sterling a year only, and another
man was to have the second lectureship and the other office in question.
It was so completely settled a week ago that I had written to the
President of the Board of Trade who makes the appointment, accepting
mine, and the other man had done the same. Happily for me, however, my
new colleague was suddenly afflicted with a sort of moral colic, an
absurd idea that he could not perform the duties of his office, and
resigned it. The result is that a new man has been appointed to the
office he left vacant, while the lectureship was offered to me. Of
course I took it, and so in the course of the week I have seen my paid
income doubled...So after a short interval I have become a Government
officer again, but in rather a different position I flatter myself. I am
chief of my own department, and my position is considered a very good
one--as good as anything of its kind in London.

[Furthermore, on August 11 he was "entrusted with the Coast Survey
investigations under the Geological Survey, and remunerated by fee until
March 31, 1855, when he was ranked as Naturalist on the Survey with an
additional salary of 200 pounds sterling, afterwards increased to 400
pounds sterling, rising to 600 pounds sterling per annum," as the
official statement has it.

Then in quick succession he was offered in August a lectureship on
Comparative Anatomy at St. Thomas' Hospital for the following May and
June, and in September he was asked to lecture in November and March for
the Science and Art Department at Marlborough House.

Now therefore, with the Heathorns coming to England, his plans and
theirs exactly fitted, and he proposed to get married as soon as they
came over, early in the following summer.

A letter of this year deserves quoting as illustrating the directness of
Huxley's dealings with his friends, and his hatred of doing anything
unknown to them which might be misreported to them or misconstrued
without explanation. As a member of the Royal Society Council, it was
his duty to vote upon the persons to whom the yearly medals of the
Society should be awarded. For the Royal Medal first Hooker was named,
and received his hearty support; then Forbes, in opposition to Hooker,
in his eyes equally deserving of recognition, and almost more closely
bound to him by ties of friendship, so that whatever action he took,
might be ascribed to motives which should have no part in such a
selection. The course actually taken by him he explained at length in
letters to both Forbes and Hooker.]

November 6, 1854.

My dear Hooker,

I have been so busy with lecturing here and there that I have not had
time to write and congratulate you on the award of the medal. The queer
position in which I was placed prevents me from being able to
congratulate MYSELF on having any finger in the pie, but I am quite sure
there was no member of the Council who felt more strongly than myself
that what honour the bauble could confer was most fully won, and no more
than your just deserts; or who rejoiced more when the thing was settled
in your favour.

However, I do trust that I shall never be placed in such an awkward
position again. I would have given a great deal to be able to back
Forbes tooth and nail--not only on account of my personal friendship and
affection for him, but because I think he well deserves such
recognition. And had I thought right to do so, I felt sure that you
would have fully appreciated my motives, and that it would have done no
injury to our friendship.

But as I told the Council I did not think this a case where either of
you had any right to be excluded by the other. I told them that had
Forbes been first named, I should have thought it injudicious to bring
you forward, and that, as you were named, I for my own part should not
have brought forward Forbes as a candidate; that therefore while willing
to speak up to any extent for Forbes' POSITIVE merits and deserts, I
would carefully be understood to give no opinion as to your and his
RELATIVE standing.

They did not take much by my speech therefore either way, more
especially as I voted for BOTH of you.

I hate doing anything of the kind "unbeknownst" to people, so there is
the exact history of my proceedings. If I had been able to come to the
clear conclusion that the claims of either of you were strongly superior
to those of the other, I think I should have had the honesty and moral
courage to "act accordin'," but I really had not, and so there was no
part to play but that of a sort of Vicar of Bray.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Forbes' reply was a letter which Huxley, after his friend's death,
held] "among his most precious possessions." [It appeared without names
in the obituary notice of Forbes in the "Literary Gazette" for November
25, 1854, as an example of his unselfish generosity:--

I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and had I been placed as
you have been, would have done exactly the same...Your way of proceeding
was as true an act of friendship as any that could be performed. As to
myself, I dream so little about medals, that the notion of being on the
list never entered my brain, even when asleep. If it ever comes I shall
be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing to
break my equanimity. Indeed, I would always like to see it given not as
a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and this it is assuredly in
Hooker's case. Government people are so ignorant that they require to
have merits drummed into their heads by all possible means, and Hooker's
getting the medal may be of real service to him before long. I am in a
snug, though not an idle nest,--he has not got his resting-place yet.
And so, my dear Huxley, I trust that you know me too well to think that
I am either grieved or envious, and you, Hooker, and I are much of the
same way of thinking.

It is interesting to record the same scrupulosity over the election to
the Registrarship of the University of London in 1856, when, having
begun to canvass for Dr. Latham before his friend Dr. W.B. Carpenter
entered the field, he writes to Hooker:--]

I at once, of course told Carpenter precisely what I had done. Had I
known of his candidature earlier, I should certainly have taken no
active part on either side--not for Latham, because I would not oppose
Carpenter, and not for Carpenter, because his getting the Registrarship
would probably be an advantage for me, as I should have a good chance of
obtaining the Examinership in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy which
he would vacate. Indeed, I refused to act for Carpenter in a case in
which he asked me to do so, partly for this reason and partly because I
felt thoroughly committed to Latham. Under these circumstances I think
you are quite absolved from any pledge to me. It's deuced hard to keep
straight in this wicked world, but as you say the only chance is to out
with it, and I thank you much for writing so frankly about the matter. I
hope it will be as fine as to-day at Down. [(Charles Darwin's home in
Kent.)

Unfortunately the method was not so successful with smaller minds. Once
in 1852, when he had to report unfavourably on a paper for the "Annals
of Natural History" on the structure of the Starfishes, sent in by an
acquaintance, he felt it right not to conceal his action, as he might
have done, behind the referee's usual screen of anonymity, but to write
a frank account of the reasons which had led him so to report, that he
might both clear himself of the suspicion of having dealt an unfair blow
in the dark, and give his acquaintance the opportunity of correcting and
enlarging his paper with a view of submitting it again for publication.

In this case the only result was an impassioned correspondence, the
author even going so far as to suggest that Huxley had condemned the
paper without having so much as dissected an Echinoderm in his life! and
then all intercourse ceased, till years afterwards the gentleman in
question realised the weaknesses of his paper and repented him of his
wrath.

Before leaving London to begin his work at Tenby as Naturalist to the
Survey, he delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on July 22, an address on the
"Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences. (The subsequent
reference is to the words, "I cannot but think that he who finds a
certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of
the very worms will bear his own share with more courage and submission;
and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories
of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an
oversight and a mistake, to be corrected by and by." ("Collected Essays"
3 page 62.) This essay contains the definition of science as "trained
and organised common sense," and the reference to a new "Peter Bell"
which suggested Miss May Kendall's spirited parody of Wordsworth:--

Primroses by the river's brim
Dicotyledons were to him,
And they were nothing more.)

This, when it came out later as a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend
Dr. Dyster (of whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he
replied on October 10:--]

...I am rejoiced you liked my speechment. It was written hastily and is,
like its speaker, I fear, more forcible than eloquent, but it can lay
claim to the merit of being sincere.

My intention on page 28 was by no means to express any satisfaction at
the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show that pain being
everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all other inevitable things
to be borne. The rest of it is the product of my scientific Calvinism,
which fell like a shell at your feet when we were talking over the fire.

I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of ultimate
happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite possibility fully
in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make up my mind to bear it
also.

You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism; that may
be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my "grin and bear it"
philosophy stand me in such good stead in my course through oceans of
disgust and chagrin, that I should be loth to give it up.

[The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the Busks at Tenby, amid
plenty of open-air work and in great peace of mind, varied with a short
visit to Liverpool in order to talk business with his friend Forbes, who
was eager that Huxley should join him in Edinburgh.]

Tenby, South Wales, September 3, 1854.

I have been here since the middle of August, getting rid of my yellow
face and putting on a brown one, banishing dyspepsias and hypochondrias
and all such other town afflictions to the four winds, and rejoicing
exceedingly that I am out of the way of that pest, the cholera, which is
raging just at present in London.

After I had arranged to come here to do a lot of work of my own which
can only be done by the seaside, our Director, Sir Henry de la Beche,
gave me a special mission of his own whereby I have the comfort of
having my expenses paid, but at the same time get it taken out of me in
additional labour, so my recreation is anything but leisure.

October 14.

I left this place for a week's trip to Liverpool in the end of
September. The meeting of the British Association was held there, but I
went not so much to be present as to meet Forbes, with whom I wanted to
talk over many matters concerning us both. Forbes had a proposition that
I should go to Edinburgh to take part of the duties of the Professor of
Physiology there, who is in bad health, with the ultimate aim of
succeeding to the chair. It was a tempting offer made in a flattering
manner, and presenting a prospect of considerably better emolument than
my special post, but it had the disadvantage of being but an uncertain
position. Had I accepted, I should have been at the mercy of the actual
Professor--and that is a position I don't like standing in, even with
the best of men, and had he died or resigned at any time the Scotch
chairs are so disposed of that there would have been nothing like a
certainty of my getting the post, so I definitely declined--I hope
wisely.

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