Books: The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3

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[Sketch of an active little black demon.]

T.H. Huxley.

[Though not so strikingly as before, the high Alpine air was again a
wonderful tonic to him. His diary still contains a note of occasional
long walks; and once more he was the centre of a circle of friends,
whose cordial recollections of their pleasant intercourse afterwards
found expression in a lasting memorial. Beside one of his favourite
walks, a narrow pathway skirting the blue lakelet of Sils, was placed a
gray block of granite. The face of this was roughly smoothed, and upon
it was cut the following inscription:--

In memory of the illustrious English Writer and Naturalist, Thomas
Henry Huxley, who spent many summers at the Kursaal, Maloja.

In a letter to Sir J. Hooker, of October 1, he describes the effects of
his trip, and his own surprise at being asked to write a critical
account of Owen's work:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, October 1, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

I am no better than a Gadarene swine for not writing to you from the
Maloja, but I was too procrastinatingly lazy to expend even that amount
of energy. I found I could walk as well as ever, but unless I was
walking I was everlastingly seedy, and the wife was unwell almost all
the time. I am inclined to think that it is coming home which is the
most beneficial part of going abroad, for I am remarkably well now, and
my wife is very much better.

I trust the impaled and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker's youngest
son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse.
It is wonderful what boys go through (also what goes through them).

You will get all the volumes of my screeds. I was horrified to find
what a lot of stuff there was--but don't acknowledge them unless the
spirit moves you...I think that on Natural Inequality of Man will be to
your taste.

Three, or thirty, guesses and you shall not guess what I am about to
tell you.

Reverend Richard Owen has written to me to ask me to write a concluding
chapter for the biography of his grandfather--containing a "critical"
estimate of him and his work!!! Says he is moved thereto by my speech
at the meeting for a memorial.

There seemed nothing for me to do but to accept as far as the
scientific work goes. I declined any personal estimate on the ground
that we had met in private society half a dozen times.

If you don't mind being bothered I should like to send you what I write
and have your opinion about it.

You see Jowett is going or gone. I am very sorry we were obliged to
give up our annual visit to him this year. But I was quite unable to
stand the exertion, even if Hames had not packed me off. How one's old
friends are dropping!

Romanes gave me a pitiable account of himself in a letter the other
day. He has had an attack of hemiplegic paralysis, and tells me he is a
mere wreck. That means that the worst anticipations of his case are
being verified. It is lamentable.

Take care of yourself, my dear old friend, and with our love to you
both, believe me, ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Not long after his return he received a letter from a certain G-- S--,
who wrote from Southampton detailing a number of observations he had
made upon the organisms to be seen with a magnifying glass in an
infusion of vegetable matter, and as "an ignoramus," apologised for any
appearance of conceit in so doing, while asking his advice as to the
best means of improving his scientific knowledge. Huxley was much
struck by the tone of the letter and the description of the
experiments, and he wrote back:--]

Hodeslea, November 9, 1893.

Sir,

We are all "ignoramuses" more or less--and cannot reproach one another.
If there were any sign of conceit in your letter, you would not get
this reply.

On the contrary, it pleases me. Your observations are quite accurate
and clearly described--and to be accurate in observation and clear in
description is the first step towards good scientific work.

You are seeing just what the first workers with the microscope saw a
couple of centuries ago.

Get some such book as Carpenter's "On the Microscope" and you will see
what it all means.

Are there no science classes in Southampton? There used to be, and I
suppose is, a Hartley Institute.

If you want to consult books you cannot otherwise obtain, take this to
the librarian, give him my compliments, and say I should be very much
obliged if he would help you.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Great was Huxley's astonishment when he learned in reply that his
correspondent was a casual dock labourer, and had but scanty hours of
leisure in which to read and think and seek into the recesses of
nature, while his means of observation consisted of a toy microscope
bought for a shilling at a fair. Casting about for some means of
lending the man a helping hand, he bethought him of the Science and Art
Department, and wrote on December 30 to Sir J. Donnelly:--]

The Department has feelers all over England--has it any at Southampton?
And if it has, could it find out something about the writer of the
letters I enclose? For a "casual docker" they are remarkable; and I
think when you have read them you will not mind my bothering you with
them. (I really have had the grace to hesitate.)

I have been puzzled what to do for the man. It is so much easier to do
harm than good by meddling--and yet I don't like to leave him to
"casual docking."

In that first letter he has got--on his own hook--about as far as
Buffon and Needham 150 years ago.

And later to Professor Howes:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, February 12, 1894.

My dear Howes,

Best thanks for unearthing the volumes of Milne-Edwards. I was afraid
my set was spoiled.

I shall be still more obliged to you if you can hear of something for
S--. There is a right good parson in his neighbourhood, and from what
he tells me about S-- I am confirmed in my opinion that he is a very
exceptional man, who ought to be at something better than porter's work
for twelve hours a day.

The mischief is that one never knows how transplanting a tree, much
less a man, will answer. Playing Providence is a game at which one is
very apt to burn one's fingers.

However, I am going to try, and hope at any rate to do no harm to the
man I want to help.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[He was eventually offered more congenial occupation at the Natural
History Museum in South Kensington, but preferred not to enter into the
bonds of an unaccustomed office.

Meanwhile, through Sir John Donnelly, Huxley was placed in
communication with the Reverend Montague Powell, who, at his request,
called upon the docker; and finding him a man who had read and thought
to an astonishing extent upon scientific problems, and had a
considerable acquaintance with English literature, soon took more than
a vicarious interest in him. Mr. Powell, who kept Huxley informed of
his talks and correspondence with G.S., gives a full account of the
circumstances in a letter to the "Spectator" of July 13, 1895, from
which I quote the following words:--

The Professor's object in writing was to ask me how best such a man
could be helped, I being at his special request the intermediary. So I
suggested in the meanwhile a microscope and a few scientific books. In
the course of a few days I received a splendid achromatic compound
microscope and some books, which I duly handed over to my friend,
telling him it was from an unknown hand. "Ah," he said, "I know who
that must be; it can be no other than the greatest of living
scientists; it is just like him to help a tyro."

One small incident of this affair is perhaps worth preserving as an
example of Huxley's love of a bantering repartee. In the midst of the
correspondence Mr. Powell seems suddenly to have been seized by an
uneasy recollection that Huxley had lately received some honour or
title, so he next addressed him as "My dear Sir Thomas." The latter,
not to be outdone, promptly replied with] "My dear Lord Bishop of the
Solent."

[About the same time comes a letter to Mr. Knowles, based upon a
paragraph from the gossiping column of some newspaper which had come
into Huxley's hands:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 9, 1893.

Gossip of the Town.

"Professor Huxley receives 200 guineas for each of his articles for the
'Nineteenth Century'."

My dear Knowles,

I have always been satisfied with the "Nineteenth Century" in the
capacity of paymaster, but I did not know how much reason I had for my
satisfaction till I read the above!

Totting up the number of articles and multiplying by 200 it strikes me
I shall be behaving very handsomely if I take 2000 pounds for the
balance due.

So sit down quickly, take thy cheque-book, and write five score, and
let me have it at breakfast time to-morrow. I once got a cheque for
1000 pounds at breakfast, and it ruined me morally. I have always been
looking out for another.

I hope you are all flourishing. We are the better for Maloja, but more
dependent on change of weather and other trifles than could be wished.
Yet I find myself outlasting those who started in life along with me.
Poor Andrew Clark and I were at Haslar together in 1846, and he was the
younger by a year and a half.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

All my time is spent in the co-ordination of my eruptions when I am an
active volcano.

I hope you got the volumes which I told Macmillan to send you.

[The following letter to Professor Romanes, whose failing eyesight was
a premonitory symptom of the disease which proved fatal the next year,
reads, so to say, as a solemn prelude to the death of three old friends
this autumn--of Andrew Clark, his old comrade at Haslar, and cheery
physician for many years; of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, whose
acquaintance he had first made in 1851 at the Stanleys' at Harrow, and
with whom he kept up an intimacy to the end of his life, visiting
Balliol once or twice every year; and, heaviest blow, of John Tyndall,
the friend and comrade whose genial warmth of spirit made him almost
claim a brother's place in early struggles and later success, and whose
sudden death was all the more poignant for the cruel touch of tragedy
in the manner of it.]

Hodeslea, September 28, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

We are very much grieved to hear such a bad account of your health.
Would that we could achieve something more to the purpose than assuring
you and Mrs. Romanes of our hearty sympathy with you both in your
troubles. I assure you, you are much in our thoughts, which are sad
enough with the news of Jowett's, I fear, fatal attack.

I am almost ashamed to be well and tolerably active when young and old
friends are being thus prostrated.

However, you have youth on your side, so do not give up, and wearisome
as doing nothing may be, persist in it as the best of medicines.

At my time of life one should be always ready to stand at attention
when the order to march comes; but for the rest I think it well to go
on doing what I can, as if F. M. General Death had forgotten me. That
must account for my seeming presumption in thinking I may some day
"take up the threads" of late evolutionary speculation.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

My wife joins with me in love and kind wishes to you both.

[At the request of his friends, Huxley wrote for the "Nineteenth
Century" a brief appreciation of his old comrade Tyndall--the tribute
of a friend to a friend--and, difficult task though it was, touched on
the closing scene, if only from a chivalrous desire to do justice to
the long devotion which accident had so cruelly wronged:--]

I am comforted [he writes to Sir J. Hooker on January 3] by your liking
the Tyndall article. You are quite right, I shivered over the episode
of the "last words," but it struck me as the best way of getting
justice done to her, so I took a header. I am glad to see by the
newspaper comments that it does not seem to have shocked other people's
sense of decency.

[The funeral took place on Saturday, December 9. There was no storm nor
fog to make the graveside perilous for the survivors. In the Haslemere
churchyard the winter sun shone its brightest, and the moorland air was
crisp with an almost Alpine freshness as this lover of the mountains
was carried to his last resting-place. But though he took no outward
harm from that bright still morning, Huxley was greatly shaken by the
event]: "I was very much used up," [he writes to Sir M. Foster on his
return home two days later], "to my shame be it said, far more than my
wife"; [and on December 30 to Sir John Donnelly:--]

Your kind letter deserved better than to have been left all this time
without response, but the fact is, I came to grief the day after
Christmas Day (no, we did NOT indulge in too much champagne). Lost my
voice, and collapsed generally, without any particular reason, so I
went to bed and stayed there as long as I could stand it, and now I am
picking up again. The fact is, I suppose I had been running up a little
account over poor old Tyndall. One does not stand that sort of wear and
tear so well as one gets ancient.

[On the same day he writes to Sir J.D. Hooker:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 30, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

You gave the geographers some uncommonly sane advice. I observe that
the words about the "stupendous ice-clad mountains" you saw were hardly
out of your mouth when -- coolly asserts that the Antarctic continent
is a table-land! "comparatively level country." It really is wrong that
men should be allowed to go about loose who fill you with such a strong
desire to kick them as that little man does.

I send herewith a spare copy of "Nineteenth" with my paper about
Tyndall. It is not exactly what I could wish, as I was hurried over it,
and knocked up into the bargain, but I have tried to give a fair view
of him. Tell me what you think of it.

I have been having a day or two on the sick list. Nothing discernible
the matter, only flopped, as I did in the spring. However, I am picking
up again. The fact is, I have never any blood pressure to spare, and a
small thing humbugs the pump.

However, I have some kicks left in me, vide the preface to the fourth
volume of Essays; ditto Number 5 when that appears in February.

Now, my dear old friend, take care of yourself in the coming year '94.
I'll stand by you as long as the fates will let me, and you must be
equally "Johnnie." With our love to Lady Hooker and yourself.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.13.

1894.

[The completion early in 1894 of the ninth volume of "Collected Essays"
was followed by a review of them in "Nature" (February 1), from the pen
of Professor Ray Lankester, emphasising the way in which the writer's
personality appears throughout the writing:--

There is probably no lover of apt discourse, of keen criticism, or of
scientific doctrine who will not welcome the issue of Professor
Huxley's "Essays" in the present convenient shape. For my own part, I
know of no writing which by its mere form, even apart from the supreme
interest of the matters with which it mostly deals, gives me so much
pleasure as that of the author of these essays. In his case, more than
that of his contemporaries, it is strictly true that the style is the
man. Some authors we may admire for the consummate skill with which
they transfer to the reader their thought without allowing him, even
for a moment, to be conscious of their personality. In Professor
Huxley's work, on the other hand, we never miss his fascinating
presence; now he is gravely shaking his head, now compressing the lips
with emphasis, and from time to time, with a quiet twinkle of the eye,
making unexpected apologies or protesting that he is of a modest and
peace-loving nature. At the same time, one becomes accustomed to a rare
and delightful phenomenon. Everything which has entered the author's
brain by eye or ear, whether of recondite philosophy, biological fact,
or political programme, comes out again to us--clarified, sifted,
arranged, and vivified by its passage through the logical machine of
his strong individuality.

Of the artist in him it continues:--

He deals with form not only as a mechanical engineer in partibus
(Huxley's own description of himself), but also as an artist, a born
lover of forms, a character which others recognise in him though he
does not himself set it down in his analysis.

The essay on "Animal Automatism" suggested a reminiscence of Professor
Lankester's as to the way in which it was delivered, and this in turn
led to Huxley's own account of the incident in the letter given in
volume 2.

About the same time there is a letter acknowledging Mr. Bateson's book
"On Variation", which is interesting as touching on the latter-day
habit of speculation apart from fact which had begun to prevail in
biology:--]

Hodeslea, February 20, 1894.

My dear Mr. Bateson,

I have put off thanking you for the volume "On Variation" which you
have been so good as to send me in the hope that I should be able to
look into it before doing so.

But as I find that impossible, beyond a hasty glance, at present, I
must content myself with saying how glad I am to see from that glance
that we are getting back from the region of speculation into that of
fact again.

There have been threatenings of late that the field of battle of
Evolution was being transferred to Nephelococcygia.

I see you are inclined to advocate the possibility of considerable
"saltus" on the part of Dame Nature in her variations. I always took
the same view, much to Mr. Darwin's disgust, and we used often to
debate it.

If you should come across my article in the "Westminster" (1860) you
will find a paragraph on that question near the end. I am writing to
Macmillan to send you the volume.

Yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

By the way, have you ever considered this point, that the variations of
which breeders avail themselves are exactly those which occur when the
previously wild stocks are subjected to exactly the same conditions?

[The rest of the first half of the year is not eventful. As
illustrating the sort of communications which constantly came to him, I
quote from a letter to Sir J. Donnelly, of January 11:--]

I had a letter from a fellow yesterday morning who must be a lunatic,
to the effect that he had been reading my essays, thought I was just
the man to spend a month with, and was coming down by the five o'clock
train, attended by his seven children and his MOTHER-IN-LAW!

Frost being over, there was lots of boiling water ready for him, but he
did not turn up!

Wife and servants expected nothing less than assassination.

[Later he notes with dismay an invitation as a Privy Councillor to a
State evening party:--]

It is at 10.30 P.M., just the time this poor old septuagenarian goes to
bed!

My swellness is an awful burden, for as it is I am going to dine with
the Prime Minister on Saturday.

[The banquet with the Prime Minister here alluded to was the occasion
of a brief note of apology to Lord Rosebery for having unintentionally
kept him waiting:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, May 28, 1894.

Dear Lord Rosebery,

I had hoped that my difficulties in dealing with an overtight scabbard
stud, as we sat down to dinner on Saturday had inconvenienced no one
but myself, until it flashed across my mind after I had parted from you
that, as you had observed them, it was only too probable that I had the
misfortune to keep you waiting.

I have been in a state of permanent blush ever since, and I feel sure
you will forgive me for troubling you with this apology as the only
remedy to which I can look for relief from that unwonted affliction.

I am, dear Lord Rosebery, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[All through the spring he had been busy completing the chapter on Sir
Richard Owen's work, which he had been asked to write by the biographer
of his old opponent, and on February 4 tells Sir J.D. Hooker:--]

I am toiling over my chapter about Owen, and I believe his ghost in
Hades is grinning over my difficulties.

The thing that strikes me most is, how he and I and all the things we
fought about belong to antiquity.

It is almost impertinent to trouble the modern world with such
antiquarian business.

[He sent the manuscript to Sir M. Foster on June 16; the book itself
appeared in December. The chapter in question was restricted to a
review of the immense amount of work, most valuable on its positive
side, done by Owen (compare the letter of January 18, 1893.); and the
review in "Nature" remarks of it that the criticism is "so
straightforward, searching, and honest as to leave nothing further to
be desired."

Besides this piece of work, he had written early in the year a few
lines on the general character of the nineteenth century, in reply to a
request, addressed to "the most illustrious children of the century,"
for their opinion as to what name will be given to it by an impartial
posterity--the century of Comte, of Darwin or Renan, of Edison,
Pasteur, or Gladstone. He replied:--]

I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century
has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent
application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems
with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of
traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such
investigation.

The activity of the scientific spirit has been manifested in every
region of speculation and of practice.

Many of the eminent men you mention have been its effective organs in
their several departments.

But the selection of any one of these, whatever his merits, as an
adequate representative of the power and majesty of the scientific
spirit of the age would be a grievous mistake.

Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a
Messiah.

[The unexampled increase in the expenditure of the European states upon
their armaments led the Arbitration Alliance this year to issue a
memorial urging the Government to co-operate with other Governments in
reducing naval and military burdens. Huxley was asked to sign this
memorial, and replied to the secretary as follows:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, June 21, 1894.

Dear Sir,

I have taken some time to consider the memorial to which you have
called my attention, and I regret that I do not find myself able to
sign it.

Not that I have the slightest doubt about the magnitude of the evils
which accrue from the steady increase of European armaments; but
because I think that this regrettable fact is merely the superficial
expression of social forces, the operation of which cannot be sensibly
affected by agreements between Governments.

In my opinion it is a delusion to attribute the growth of armaments to
the "exactions of militarism." The "exactions of industrialism,"
generated by international commercial competition, may, I believe,
claim a much larger share in prompting that growth. Add to this the
French thirst for revenge, the most just determination of the German
and Italian peoples to assert their national unity; the Russian
Panslavonic fanaticism and desire for free access to the western seas;
the Papacy steadily fishing in the troubled waters for the means of
recovering its lost (I hope for ever lost) temporal possessions and
spiritual supremacy; the "sick man," kept alive only because each of
his doctors is afraid of the other becoming his heir.

When I think of the intensity of the perturbing agencies which arise
out of these and other conditions of modern European society, I confess
that the attempt to counteract them by asking Governments to agree to a
maximum military expenditure, does not appear to me to be worth making;
indeed I think it might do harm by leading people to suppose that the
desires of Governments are the chief agents in determining whether
peace or war shall obtain in Europe.

I am, yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Later in the year, on August 8, took place the meeting of the British
Association at Oxford, noteworthy for the presidential address
delivered by Lord Salisbury, Chancellor of the University, in which the
doctrine of evolution was "enunciated as a matter of course--disputed
by no reasonable man,"--although accompanied by a description of the
working of natural selection and variation which appeared to the man of
science a mere travesty of these doctrines.

Huxley had been persuaded to attend this meeting, the more willingly,
perhaps, since his reception at Oxford the year before suggested that
there would be a special piquancy in the contrast between this and the
last meeting of the Association at Oxford in 1860. He was not
disappointed. Details apart, the cardinal situation was reversed. The
genius of the place had indeed altered. The representatives of the
party, whose prophet had once contemptuously come here to anathematise
the "Origin", returned at length to the same spot to admit--if not
altogether ungrudgingly--the greatness of the work accomplished by
Darwin.

Once under promise to go, he could not escape without the "few words"
which he now found so tiring; but he took the part which assured him
greatest freedom, as seconder of the vote of thanks to the president
for his address. The study of an advance copy of the address raised an]
"almost overwhelming temptation" [to criticise certain statements
contained in it; but this would have been out of place in seconding a
vote of thanks; and resisting the temptation, he only] "conveyed
criticism," [as he writes to Professor Lewis Campbell], "in the form of
praise": [going so far as to suggest] "it might be that, in listening
to the deeply interesting address of the President, a thought had
occasionally entered his mind how rich and profitable might be the
discussion of that paper in Section D" (Biology). [It was not exactly
an offhand speech. Writing to Sir M. Foster for any good report which
might appear in an Oxford paper, he says:--]

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