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

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After some talk, Forbes agreed with my view of the case, so he is off to
Edinburgh, and I shall go off to London. I hope to remain there for my
life long.

[He had long felt that London gave the best opportunities for a
scientific career, and it was on his advice that Tyndall had left
Queenwood College for the Royal Institution, where he was elected
Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1853:--]

6 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, February 25, 1853.

My dear Tyndall,

Having rushed into more responsibility than I wotted of, I have been
ruminating and taking counsel what advice to give you. When I wrote I
hardly knew what kind of work you had in your present office, but
Francis has since enlightened me. I thought you had more leisure. One
thing is very clear--you must come out of that. Your Pegasus is quite
out of place ploughing. You are using yourself up in work that comes to
nothing, and so far as I can see cannot be worse off.

Now what are your prospects? Why, as I told you before, you have made a
succes here and must profit by it. The other night your name was
mentioned at the Philosophical Club (the most influential scientific
body in London) with great praise. Gassiot, who has great influence,
said in so many words, "you had made your fortune," and I frankly tell
you I believe so too, if you can only get over the next three years. So
you see that quoad position, like Quintus Curtius, there is a "fine
opening" ready for you, only mind you don't spoil it by any of your
horrid modesty.

So much for glory--now for economics. I have been trying to ferret out
more nearly your chances of a post, and here are my results (which, I
need not tell you, must be kept to yourself).

At the Museum in Jermyn Street, Playfair, Forbes, Percy and I think Sir
Henry would do anything to get you, and eliminate --; but, so far as I
can judge, the probability of his going is so small that it is not worth
your while to reckon upon it. Nevertheless it may be comforting to you
to know that in case of anything happening these men will help you tooth
and nail. Cultivate Playfair when you have a chance--he is a good
fellow, wishes you well, has great influence, and will have more. Entre
nous, he has just got a new and important post under Government.

Next, the Royal Institution. This is where, as I told you, you ought to
be looking to Faraday's place. Have no scruple about your chemical
knowledge; you won't be required to train a college of students in
abstruse analyses; and if you were, a year's work would be quite enough
to put you at ease. What they want, and what you have, are CLEAR POWERS
OF EXPOSITION--so clear that people may think they understand even if
they don't. That is the secret of Faraday's success, for not a tithe of
the people who go to hear him really understand him.

However, I am afraid that a delay must occur before you can get placed
at the Royal Institution, as you cannot hold the Professorship until you
have given a course of lectures there, and it would seem that there is
no room for you this year. However, I must try and learn more about
this.

Under these circumstances the London Institution looks tempting. I have
been talking over the matter with Forbes, whose advice I look upon as
first-rate in all these things, and he is decidedly of the opinion that
you should take the London Institution if it is offered you. He says
that lecturing there and lecturing at other Institutions, and writing,
you could with certainty make more than you at present receive, and that
you would have the command of a capital laboratory and plenty of time.

Then as to position--of which I was doubtful--it appears that Grove has
made it a good one.

It is of great importance to look to this point in London--to be
unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the highest places,
and it was only my fear on this head that made me advise you to hesitate
about the London Institution. More consideration leads me to say, take
that, if it will bring you up to London at once, so that you may hammer
your reputation while it is hot.

However, consider all these things well, and don't be hasty. I will keep
eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly. Write to me if there is
anything you want done, supposing always there is nobody who will do it
better--which is improbable.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[But this year of victory was not to pass away without one last blow
from fate. On November 18, Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had
found a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and
sincerity as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh. The strong but
delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon intellectual
affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong characters,
where each subordinated interest to ideal, and treated others by the
measure of his own self-respect. As early as March 1851 he had
written:--]

I wish you knew my friend Professor Forbes. He is the best creature you
can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways. A man of very great
knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two
besetting sins of literary and scientific men. Up to his eyes in work,
he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend. He is one of the
few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a
particle of independence or self-respect.

[The following from a letter to Hooker, announcing Forbes'death, is a
striking testimony to his worth:--]

I think I have never felt so crushed by anything before. It is one of
those losses which cannot be replaced either to the private friend or to
science. To me especially it is a bitter loss. Without the aid and
sympathy he has always given me from first to last, I should never have
had the courage to persevere in the course I have followed. And it was
one of my greatest hopes that we should work in harmony for long years
at the aims so dear to us both.

But it is otherwise, and we who remain have nothing left but to bear the
inevitable as we best may.

[And again a few days later:--]

I have had no time to write to you again till now, but I write to say
how perfectly you express my own feeling about our poor friend. One of
the first things I thought of was that medal business, and I never
rejoiced in anything more than that I had not been deterred by any moral
cowardice from acting as I did.

As it is I reckon that letter (which I will show you some day) among my
most precious possessions.

[Huxley's last tribute to his dead friend was the organising a memorial
fund, part of which went to getting a bust of him made, part to
establishing an Edward Forbes medal, to be competed for by the students
of his old school in Jermyn Street.

As Huxley had been Forbes' successor at Jermyn Street, so now he seemed
to many marked out to succeed him at Edinburgh. In November he writes to
Hooker:--]

People have been at me about the Edinburgh chair. If I could contrive to
stop here, between you and I, I would prefer it to half a dozen
Edinburgh chairs, but there is a mortal difference between 200 and 1000
pounds sterling a year. I have written to say that if the Professors can
make up their minds they wish me to stand, I will--if not, I will not.
For my own part, I believe my chances would be very small, and I think
there is every probability of their dividing the chair, in which case I
certainly would not go. However, I hate thinking about the thing.

[And also to his sister:--]

November 26, 1854.

My dearest Lizzie,

I feel I have been silent very long--a great deal too long--but you
would understand if you knew how much I have to do; why, with every
disposition to do otherwise, I now write hardly any but business
letters. Even Nettie comes off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as
I have done, with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea
of life in London, with the determination to MAKE the influence and the
position and the money which he hasn't got, you may depend upon it that
the fierce wants and interests of his present and immediate circle leave
him little time to think of anything else, whatever old loves and old
memories may be smouldering as warmly as ever below the surface. So,
sister mine, you must not imagine because I do not write that therefore
I do not think of you or care to know about you, but only that I am
eaten up with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the
thing that the moment calls for.

The last year has been eventful for me. There is always a Cape Horn in
one's life that one either weathers or wrecks one's self on. Thank God I
think I may say I have weathered mine--not without a good deal of damage
to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side.

At the commencement of this year my affairs came to a crisis. The
Government, notwithstanding all the representations which were made to
them, would neither give nor refuse the grant for the publication of my
work, and by way of cutting short all further discussion the Admiralty
called upon me to serve. A correspondence ensued, in which, as commonly
happens in these cases, they got the worst of it in logic and words, and
I in reality and "tin." They answered my syllogism by the irrelevant and
absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did not serve at once. Here was a
pretty business! However, it was no use turning back when so much had
been sacrificed for one's end, so I put their Lordships' letter up on my
mantelpiece and betook myself to scribbling for my bread. They, on the
other hand, removed my name from the List. So there was an interregnum
when I was no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had already joined the
"Westminster Review," and had inured myself to the labour of
translation--and I could get any amount of scientific work I wanted--so
there was a living, though a scanty one, and amazingly hard work for it.
My pen is not a very facile one, and what I write costs me a good deal
of trouble.

In the spring of this year, however, a door opened. My poor lost friend
Professor Forbes--whose steady attachment and aid had always been of the
utmost service to me--was called to fill the chair of Natural History in
Edinburgh at a moment's notice. It is a very valuable appointment, and
he was obliged to fill it at once. Of course he left a number of
vacancies behind, among them one at the Government School of Mines in
Jermyn Street, where he lectured on Natural History. I was called upon
to take up his lectures where he left off, in the same sudden way, and
the upshot of it all was that I became permanently attached--with 200
pounds sterling a year pay. In other ways I can make a couple of hundred
a year more even now, and I hope by-and-by to do better. In fact, a
married man, as I hope soon to be, cannot live at all in the position
which I ought to occupy under less than six hundred a year. If I keep my
health, however, I have every hope of being able to do this--but, as the
jockeys say, the pace is severe. Nettie is coming over in the spring,
and if I have any luck at all, I mean to have paid off my debts and to
be married by this time next year. ([He writes on July 21, 1851:--]"I
commenced life upon nothing at all, and I had to borrow in the ordinary
way from an agent for the necessary expenses of my outfit. I sent home a
great deal of money, but notwithstanding, from the beautiful way they
have of accumulating interest and charges of one description and
another, I found myself 100 pounds sterling in debt when I
returned--besides something to my brother, about which, however, I do
not suppose I need trouble myself just at present. As you may imagine,
living in London, my pay now hardly keeps me, to say nothing of paying
off my old scores. I could get no account of how things were going on
with my agent while I was away,and therefore I never could tell exactly
how I stood.")

In the meanwhile, strangely enough--and very painfully for me--new
possibilities have sprung up. My poor friend Forbes died only a week
ago, just as he was beginning his course and entering upon as brilliant
a career as ever was opened to any scientific man in this country.

I cannot tell you how deeply this has shocked me. I owe him so much, I
loved him so well, and I have so very very few friends in the true sense
of the word, that it has been perhaps a greater loss to me than to any
one--although there never was a man so widely lamented. One could trust
him so thoroughly! However, he has gone, poor fellow, and there is
nothing for it but to shut one's self up again--and I was only going to
say that his death leaves his post vacant, and I have been strongly
urged to become a candidate for it by several of the most influential
Edinburgh Professors. I am greatly puzzled what to do. I do not want to
leave London, nor do I think much of my own chances of success if I
become a candidate--though others do. On the other hand, a stipend which
varies between 800 and 1200 pounds sterling a year is not to be
pooh-poohed.

We shall see. If I can carry out some arrangements which are pending
with the Government to increase my pay to 400 pounds sterling a year, I
shall be strongly tempted to stop in London. It is THE place, the centre
of the world.

In the meanwhile, as things always do come in heaps, I obtained my
long-fought-for Grant--though indirectly--from the Government, which is,
I think, a great triumph and vindication of the family motto--tenax
propositi. Like many long-sought-for blessings, however, it is rather a
bore now that I have it, as I don't see how I am to find time to write
the book. But things "do themselves" in a wonderful way. I'll tell you
how many irons I have in the fire at this present moment:--(1) a manual
of Comparative Anatomy for Churchill; (2) my "Grant" book; (3) a book
for the British Museum people (half done); (4) an article for Todd's
"Cyclopaedia" (half done); (5) sundry memoirs on Science; (6) a regular
Quarterly article in the "Westminster"; (7) lectures at Jermyn Street in
the School of Mines; (8) lectures at the School of Art, Marlborough
House; (9) lectures at the London Institution, and odds and ends. Now,
my dearest Lizzie, whenever you feel inclined to think it unkind I don't
write, just look at that list, and remember that all these things
require strenuous attention and concentration of the faculties, and
leave one not very fit for anything else. You will say that it is bad to
be so entirely absorbed in these things, and to that I heartily say
Amen!--but you might as well argue with a man who has just mounted the
favourite for the "Oaks" that it is a bad thing to ride fast. He admits
that, and is off like a shot when the bell rings nevertheless. My bell
has rung some time, and thank God the winning post is in sight.

Give my kindest regards to the doctor and special love to all the
children. I send a trifle for my godson and some odds and ends in the
book line, among other things a Shakespeare for yourself, dear Liz.

Believe me, ever your affectionate brother,

T.H. Huxley.

[In December the Edinburgh chair was practically offered to him
undivided; but by that time the London authorities thought they had
better make it worth his while to stay at Jermyn Street, and with
negotiations begun for this end he refused to stand for Edinburgh. In
the following spring, however, he was again approached from
Edinburgh--not so much to withdraw his refusal and again become a
candidate, as to let it be made known that he would accept the chair if
it were offered him. But his position in London was now established; and
he preferred to live in London on a bare sufficiency rather than to
enjoy a larger income away from the centre of things.

Two letters to Tyndall, which refer to the division of labour in the
science reviews for the "Westminster," indicate very clearly the high
pressure at which Huxley had already begun to work:--]

Tenby, South Wales, October 22, 1854.

My dear Tyndall,

I was rejoiced to find you entertaining my proposition at all. No one
believes how hard you work more than I, but I was not going to be such a
bad diplomatist as to put that at the head of my letter, and if I had
thought that what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto,
I think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But really and
truly, so long as it is confined to our own department it is no great
affair. You make me laugh at the long face you pull about the duties,
based on my phrase. The fact is, you notice what you like, and what you
do not you leave undone, unless you get an editorial request to say
something about a particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your
own hands--at least it is in mine--as I went upon my principle of having
a row at starting...

Now here is an equitable proposition. Look at my work. I have a couple
of monographs, odds and ends of papers for journals, a manual and some
three courses of lectures to provide for this winter. "My necessities
are as great as thine," as Sir Philip Sidney didn't say, so be a brick,
split the difference, and say you will be ready for the April number. I
will write and announce the fact to Chapman.

What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this pace. I almost repent
me of tempting you--after all--so I promise to hold on if you really
think you will be overdoing it.

With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for
myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps. I have not, now,
nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both, and if I work the
latter, not even the fresh breezes of this place will keep the former in
order. That is a discovery I have made here, and though highly
instructive, it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results
that have turned up.

Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my man. The poor
fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article, which has
appeared in the last "Westminster," as his forlorn vale! to the world.
After all, that is the way to die, better a thousand times than
drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old
age.

Believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On Tyndall consenting, he wrote again on the 29th:--]

I rejoice in having got you to put your head under my yoke, and feel
ready to break into a hand gallop on the strength of it.

I have written to Chapman to tell him you only make an experiment on
your cerebral substance--whose continuance depends on tenacity thereof.

I didn't suspect you of being seduced by the magnificence of the
emolument, you Cincinnatus of the laboratory. I only suggested that as
pay sweetens labour, a fortiori it will sweeten what to you will be no
labour.

I'm not a miserable mortal now--quite the contrary. I never am when I
have too much to do, and my sage reflection was not provoked by envy of
the more idle. Only I do wish I could sometimes ascertain the exact
juste milieu of work which will suit, not my head or will, THESE can't
have too much; but my absurd stomach.

[The Edinburgh candidature, the adoption of his wider scheme for the
carrying out of the coast survey, and his approaching marriage, are
touched upon in the following letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster of Tenby,
whose keen interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm
friendship with the rising naturalist, some fifteen years his junior.
(It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 to F.D.
Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his best to help),
and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of June
1855.] "What Kingsley do you refer to?" [he writes on May 6,] "ALTON
LOCKE Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right glad to find
good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for any man. But
the work must be critically done.") [He was strongly urged by the
younger man to complete and systematise his observations by taking in
turn all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, and
working them up into a series of little monographs] "which would be the
best of all possible foundations for a History of the British
Annelidae":--

To Dr. Dyster.

January 5, 1855

[He begins by confessing "a considerable liberty" he had been taking
with Dyster's name, in calling a joint discovery of this, which he
described in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal," Protula
Dysteri.]

Are you very savage? If so, you must go and take a walk along the sands
and see the slant rays of the sunset tipping the rollers as they break
on the beach; that always made even ME at peace with all the world, and
a fortiori it will you.

Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. Chimney pots are
highly injurious to my morals, and my temper is usually in proportion to
the extent of my horizon.

I have been swallowing oceans of disgust lately. All sorts of squabbles,
some made by my own folly and others by the malice of other people, and
no great sea and sky to go out under, and be alone and forget it all.

You may have seen my name advertised by Reeve as about to write a memoir
of poor Forbes, to be prefixed to a collection of his essays. I found
that to be a mere bookseller's dodge on Reeve's part, and when I made
the discovery, of course we had a battle-royal, and I have now wholly
withdrawn from it.

I find, however, that one's kind and generous friends imagine it was an
electioneering manoeuvre on my part for Edinburgh. Imagine how
satisfactory. I forget whether I told you that I had been asked to stand
for Edinburgh and have done so. Whether I shall be appointed or not I do
not know. So far as my own wishes go, I am in a curiously balanced state
of mind about it. Many things make it a desirable post, but I dread
leaving London and its freedom--its Bedouin sort of life--for Edinburgh
and no whistling on Sundays. Besides, if I go there, I shall have to
give up all my coast-survey plans, and all their pleasant concomitants.

Apropos of Edinburgh I feel much like the Irish hod-man who betted his
fellow he could not carry him up to the top of a house in his hod. The
man did it, but Pat turning round as he was set down on the roof, said,
"Ye've done it, sure enough, but, bedad, I'd great hopes ye'd let me
fall about three rounds from the top." Bedad, I'm nearly at the top of
the Scotch ladder, but I've hopes.

It is finally settled that the chair will not be divided. I told them
frankly I would not go if it were.

Has Highly sent your books yet?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Jermyn Street, February 13, 1855.

My dear Dyster,

...I will do my best to help--to some alumni if the chance comes in my
way, though, as you say, I don't like him. I can't help it. I respect
piety, and hope I have some after my own fashion, but I have a profound
prejudice against the efflorescent form of it. I never yet found in
people thoroughly imbued with that pietism, the same notions of honour
and straightforwardness that obtain among men of the world. It may be
otherwise with --, but I can't help my pagan prejudice. So don't judge
harshly of me there-anent.

About Edinburgh, I have been going to write to you for days past. I have
decided on withdrawing from the candidature, and have done so. In fact
the more I thought of it the less I liked it. They require nine months'
lectures some four or five times a week, which would have thoroughly
used me up, and completely put a stop to anything like original work;
and then there was a horrid museum to be arranged, work I don't care
about, and which would have involved an amount of intriguing and
heart-burning, and would have required an amount of diplomacy to carry
to a successful issue, for which my temper and disposition are wholly
unfitted.

And then I felt above all things that it was for me an imposture. Here
have I been fighting and struggling for years, sacrificing everything to
be a man of science, a genuine worker, and if I had obtained the
Edinburgh chair, I should have been in reality a mere pedagogue and a
man of science only in name. Such were my notions, and if I hesitated at
all and allowed myself to become a candidate, it was only because I have
other interests to consult than my own. Intending to "range myself" one
of these days and become a respectable member of society, I was bound to
consider my material interests. And so I should have been still a
candidate for Edinburgh had not the Government here professed themselves
unwilling to lose my services, adding the "material guarantee" of an
addition to my income, which, though by no means bringing it up to the
point of Edinburgh, will still enable me (das heisst "us") to live
comfortably here.

I must renounce the "pomps and vanities," but all those other "lusts of
the flesh" which may beseem a gentleman may be reasonably gratified.

Don't you think I have been wise in my Hercules choice? After all I
don't lay claim to any great merit, seeing it was anything but certain I
should get Edinburgh.

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