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

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All the early part of the year, till he found it necessary to go to
Switzerland again, he stayed unwillingly in Eastbourne, from time to
time running up to town, or having son or daughter to stay with him for
a week, his wife being too busy to leave town, with the double
preparations for the weddings on hand, so that he writes to her:] "I
feel worse than the 'cowardly agnostic' I am said to be--for leaving
you to face your botherations alone." [One can picture him still firm
of tread, with grizzled head a little stooped from his square
shoulders, pacing the sea wall with long strides, or renewing somewhat
of his strength as it again began to fail, in the keener air of the
downs, warmly defended against chill by a big cap--for he had been
suffering from his ears--and a long rough coat. He writes (February
22):] "I have bought a cap with flaps to protect my ears. I look more
'doggy' than ever." [And on March 3:--]

We have had a lovely day, quite an Italian sky and sea, with a good
deal of Florentine east wind. I walked up to the Signal House, and was
greatly amused by a young sheep-dog whose master could hardly get him
away from circling round me and staring at me with a short dissatisfied
bark every now and then. It is the undressed wool of my coat bothers
all the dogs. They can't understand why a creature which smells so like
a sheep should walk on its hind legs. I wish I could have relieved that
dog's mind, but I did not see my way to an explanation.

From this time on, the effects of several years' comparative rest
became more perceptible. His slowly returning vigour was no longer
sapped by the unceasing strain of multifarious occupations. And if his
recurrent ill-health sometimes seems too strongly insisted on, it must
be remembered that he had always worked at the extreme limit of his
powers--the limit, as he used regretfully to say, imposed on his brain
by his other organs--and that after his first breakdown he was never
very far from a second. When this finally came in 1884, his forces were
so far spent that he never expected to recover as he did.

In the marriage this year of his youngest daughter, Huxley was doomed
to experience the momentary little twinge which will sometimes come to
the supporter of an unpopular principle when he first puts it into
practice among his own belongings.

Athenaeum Club, January 14, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I have just left the x "Archives" here for you. I left them on my table
by mischance when I came here on the x day.

I have a piece of family news for you. My youngest daughter Ethel is
going to marry John Collier.

I have always been a great advocate for the triumph of common sense and
justice in the "Deceased Wife's Sister" business--and only now
discover, that I had a sneaking hope that all of my own daughters would
escape that experiment!

They are quite suited to one another and I would not wish a better
match for her. And whatever annoyances and social pin-pricks may come
in Ethel's way, I know nobody less likely to care about them.

We shall have to go to Norway, I believe, to get the business done.

In the meantime, my wife (who has been laid up with bronchitic cold
ever since we came home) and I have had as much London as we can stand,
and are off to-morrow to Eastbourne again, but to more sheltered
quarters.

I hope Lady Hooker and you are thriving. Don't conceal the news from
her, as my wife is always accusing me of doing.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

To Mr. W.F. Collier.

4 Marlborough Place, January 24, 1889.

Many thanks for your kind letter. I have as strong an affection for
Jack as if he were my own son, and I have felt very keenly the ruin we
involuntarily brought upon him--by our poor darling's terrible illness
and death. So that if I had not already done my best to aid and abet
other people in disregarding the disabilities imposed by the present
monstrous state of the law, I should have felt bound to go as far as I
could towards mending his life. Ethel is just suited to him...Of course
I could have wished that she should be spared the petty annoyances
which she must occasionally expect. But I know of no one less likely to
care for them.

Your Shakespere parable is charming--but I am afraid it must be put
among the endless things that are read IN to the "divine Williams" as
the Frenchman called him. [The second part of the letter replies to the
question whether Shakespeare had any notion of the existence of the
sexes in plants and the part played in their fertilisation by insects,
which, of course, would be prevented from visiting them by rainy
weather, when he wrote in the "Midsummer Night's Dream":--

The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye,
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower
Lamenting some enforced chastity.]

There was no knowledge of the sexes of plants in Shakespere's time,
barring some vague suggestion about figs and dates. Even in the 18th
century, after Linnaeus, the observations of Sprengel, who was a man of
genius, and first properly explained the action of insects, were set
aside and forgotten.

I take it that Shakespere is really alluding to the "enforced chastity"
of Dian (the moon). The poets ignore that little Endymion business when
they like!

I have recovered in such an extraordinary fashion that I can plume
myself on being an "interesting case," though I am not going to compete
with you in that line. And if you look at the February "Nineteenth" I
hope you will think that my brains are none the worse. But perhaps that
conceited speech is evidence that they are.

We came to town to make the acquaintance of Nettie's fiance, and I am
happy to say the family takes to him. When it does not take to anybody,
it is the worse for that anybody.

So, before long, my house will be empty, and as my wife and I cannot
live in London, I think we shall pitch our tent in Eastbourne. Good
Jack offers to give us a pied-a-terre when we come to town. To-day we
are off to Eastbourne again. Carry off Harry, who is done up from too
zealous Hospital work. However, it is nothing serious.

The following is in reply to a request that he would write a letter, as
he describes it elsewhere, "about the wife's sister business--for the
edification of the peers."

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, March 12, 1889.

My dear Donnelly,

I feel "downright mean," as the Yankees say, that I have not done for
the sake of right and justice what I am moved to do now that I have a
personal interest in the matter of the directest kind; and I rather
expect that will be thrown in my teeth if my name is at the bottom of
anything I write.

On the other hand, I loathe anonymity. However, we can take time to
consider that point.

Anyhow I will set to work on the concoction of a letter, if you will
supply me with the materials which will enable me to be thoroughly
posted up in the facts.

I have just received your second letter. Pity you could not stay over
yesterday--it was very fine.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The letter in question is as follows:--]

April 30, 1889.

Dear Lord Hartington,

I am assured by those who know more about the political world than I
do, that if Lord Salisbury would hold his hand and let his party do as
they like about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill which is to come on
next week, it would pass. Considering the irritation against the
bishops and a certain portion of the lay peers among a number of people
who have the means of making themselves heard and felt, which is kept
up and aggravated, as time goes on, by the action of the Upper House in
repeatedly snubbing the Lower, about this question, I should have
thought it (from a Conservative point of view) good policy to heal the
sore.

The talk of Class versus Mass is generally mere clap-trap; but, in this
case, there is really no doubt that a fraction of the Classes stands in
the way of the fulfilment of a very reasonable demand on the part of
the Masses.

A clear-headed man like Lord Salisbury would surely see this if it were
properly pressed on his attention.

I do not presume to say whether it is practicable or convenient for the
Leader of the Liberal Unionist party to take any steps in this
direction; and I should hardly have ventured to ask you to take this
suggestion into consideration if the interest I have always taken in
the D.W.S. Bill had not recently been quickened by the marriage of one
of my daughters as a Deceased Wife's Sister.

I am, etc.

[Meantime the effect of Eastbourne, which Sir John Donnelly had induced
him to try, was indeed wonderful. He found in it the place he had so
long been looking for. References to his health read very differently
from those of previous years. He walked up Beachy Head regularly
without suffering from any heart symptoms. And though Beachy Head was
not the same thing as the Alps, it made a very efficient substitute for
a while, and it was not till April that the need of change began to
make itself felt. And so he made up his mind to listen no more to the
eager friends who wished him to pitch his tent near them at either end
of Surrey, but to settle down at Eastbourne, and, by preference, to
build a house of the size and on the spot that suited himself, rather
than to take any existing house lower down in the town. He must have
been a trifle irritated by unsolicited advice when he wrote the
following:--]

It is very odd that people won't give one credit for common sense. We
have tried one winter here, and if we tried another we should be just
as much dependent upon the experience of longer residents as ever we
were. However, as I told X. I was going to settle matters to-morrow,
there won't be any opportunity for discussing that topic when he comes.
If we had taken W.'s house, somebody would have immediately told us
that we had chosen the dampest site in winter and the stuffiest in
summer, and where, moreover, the sewage has to be pumped up into the
main drain.

[He finally decided upon a site on the high ground near Beachy Head, a
little way back from the sea front, at the corner of the Staveley and
Buxton Roads, with a guarantee from the Duke of Devonshire's agent that
no house should be built at the contiguous end of the adjoining plot of
land in the Buxton Road, a plot which he himself afterwards bought. The
principal rooms were planned for the back of the house, looking
south-west over open gardens to the long line of downs which culminate
in Beachy Head, but with due provision against southerly gales and
excess of sunshine.

On May 29 the builder's contract was accepted, and for the rest of the
year the progress of the house, which was designed by his son-in-law,
F.W. Waller, afforded a constant interest.

Meantime, with the improvement in his general health, the old appetite
for work returned with increased and unwonted zest. For the first time
in his life he declares that he enjoyed the process of writing. As he
wrote somewhat later to his newly married daughter from Eastbourne,
where he had gone again very weary the day after her wedding: "Luckily
the bishops and clergy won't let me alone, so I have been able to keep
myself pretty well amused in replying." The work which came to him so
easily and pleasurably was the defence of his attitude of agnosticism
against the onslaught made upon it at the previous Church Congress by
Dr. Wace, the Principal of King's College, London, and followed up by
articles in the "Nineteenth Century" from the pen of Mr. Frederic
Harrison and Mr. Laing, the effect of which upon him he describes to
Mr. Knowles on December 30, 1888:--]

I have been stirred up to the boiling pitch by Wace, Laing, and
Harrison in re Agnosticism, and I really can't keep the lid down any
longer. Are you minded to admit a goring article into the February
"Nineteenth"?

[As for his health, he adds:--]

I have amended wonderfully in the course of the last six weeks, and my
doctor tells me I am going to be completely patched up--seams caulked
and made seaworthy, so the old hulk may make another cruise.

We shall see. At any rate I have been able and willing to write lately,
and that is more than I can say for myself for the first three-quarters
of the year.

...I was so pleased to see you were in trouble about your house. Good
for you to have a taste of it for yourself.

[To this controversy he contributed four articles; three directly in
defence of Agnosticism, the fourth on the value of the underlying
question of testimony to the miraculous.

The first article, "Agnosticism," appeared in the February number of
the "Nineteenth Century". No sooner was this finished than he began a
fresh piece of work, "which," he writes, "is all about miracles, and
will be rather amusing." This, on the "Value of Testimony to the
Miraculous," appeared in the following number of the "Nineteenth
Century". It did not form part of the controversy on hand, though it
bore indirectly upon the first principles of agnosticism. The question
at issue, he urges, is not the possibility of miracles, but the
evidence to their occurrence, and if from preconceptions or ignorance
the evidence be worthless the historical reality of the facts attested
vanishes. The cardinal point, then, "is completely, as the author of
Robert Elsmere says, the value of testimony."

[The March number also contained replies from Dr. Wace and Bishop Magee
on the main question, and an article by Mrs. Humphry Ward on a kindred
subject to his own, "The New Reformation." Of these he writes on
February 27:--]

The Bishop and Wace are hammering away in the "Nineteenth". Mrs. Ward's
article very good, and practically an answer to Wace. Won't I stir them
up by and by.

[And a few days later:--]

Mrs. Ward's service consists in her very clear and clever exposition of
critical results and methods.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, February 29, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I have just been delighted with Mrs. Ward's article. She has swept away
the greater part of Wace's sophistries as a dexterous and
strong-wristed housemaid sweeps away cobwebs with her broom, and saved
a lot of time.

What in the world does the Bishop mean by saying that I have called
Christianity "sorry stuff" (page 370)? To my knowledge I never so much
as thought anything of the kind, let alone saying it.

I shall challenge him very sharply about this, and if, as I believe, he
has no justification for his statement, my opinion of him will be very
considerably lowered.

Wace has given me a lovely opening by his profession of belief in the
devils going into the swine. I rather hoped I should get this out of
him.

I find people are watching the game with great interest, and if it
should be possible for me to give a little shove to the "New
Reformation," I shall think the fag end of my life well spent.

After all, the reproach made to the English people that "they care for
nothing but religion and politics" is rather to their credit. In the
long run these are the two things that ought to interest a man more
than any others.

I have been much bothered with ear-ache lately, but if all goes well I
will send you a screed by the middle of March.

Snowing hard! They have had more snow within the last month than they
have known for ten years here.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[He set to work immediately, and within ten days despatched his second
contribution, "Agnosticism, a Rejoinder," which appeared in the April
number of the "Nineteenth Century".

On March 3 he writes:--]

I am possessed by a writing demon, and have pretty well finished in the
rough another article for Knowles, whose mouth is wide open for it.

[And on the 9th:--]

I sent off another article to Knowles last night--a regular facer for
the clericals. You can't think how I enjoy writing now for the first
time in my life.

[He writes at greater length to Mr. Knowles]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, March 10, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

There's a Divinity that shapes the ends (of envelopes!) rough-hew them
how we will. This time I went and bought the strongest to be had, and
sealed him up with wax in the shop. I put no note inside, meaning to
write to you afterwards, and then I forgot to do so.

I can't understand Peterborough nohow. However, so far as the weakness
of the flesh would permit me to abstain from smiting him and his
brother Amalekite, I have tried to turn the tide of battle to matters
of more importance.

The pith of my article is the proposition that Christ was not a
Christian. I have not ventured to state my thesis exactly in that
form--fearing the Editor--but, in a mild and proper way, I flatter
myself I have demonstrated it. Really, when I come to think of the
claims made by orthodox Christianity on the one hand, and of the total
absence of foundation for them on the other, I find it hard to abstain
from using a phrase which shocked me very much when Strauss first
applied it to the Resurrection, "Welthistorischer Humbug!"

I don't think I have ever seen the portrait you speak of. I remember
the artist--a clever fellow, whose name, of course, I forget--but I do
not think I saw his finished work. Some of these days I will ask to see
it.

I was pretty well finished after the wedding, and bolted here the next
day. I am sorry to say I could not get my wife to come with me. If she
does not knock up I shall be pleasantly surprised. The young couple are
flourishing in Paris. I like what I have seen of him very much.

What is the "Cloister scheme"? [It referred to a plan for using the
cloisters of Westminster Abbey to receive the monuments of
distinguished men, so as to avoid the necessity of enlarging the Abbey
itself.] Recollect how far away I am from the world, the flesh and the
d--.

Are you and Mrs. Knowles going to imitate the example of Eginhard and
Emma? What good pictures you will have in your monastery church!

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[And again, a few days later:--]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne; March 15, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am sending my proof back to Spottiswoode's. I did not think the
manuscript would make so much, and I am afraid it has lengthened in the
process of correction.

You have a reader in your printer's office who provides me with jokes.
Last time he corrected, where my manuscript spoke of the pigs as
unwilling "porters" of the devils, into "porkers." And this time, when
I, writing about the Lord's Prayer, say "current formula," he has it
"canting formula." If only Peterborough had got hold of that! And I am
capable of overlooking anything in a proof.

You see we have got to big questions now, and if these are once fairly
before the general mind all the King's horses and all the King's men
won't put the orthodox Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[After the article came out he wrote again to Mr. Knowles:--]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., April 14, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am going to try and stop here, desolate as the house is now all the
chicks have flown, for the next fortnight. Your talk of the inclemency
of Torquay is delightfully consoling. London has been vile.

I am glad you are going to let Wace have another "go." My object, as
you know, in the whole business has been to rouse people to think...

Considering that I got named in the House of Commons last night as an
example of a temperate and well-behaved blasphemer, I think I am
attaining my object. [In the debate upon the Religious Prosecutions
Abolition Bill, Mr. Addison said "the last article by Professor Huxley
in the "Nineteenth Century" showed that opinion was free when it was
honestly expressed."--"Times" April 14.]

Of course I go for a last word, and I am inclined to think that
whatever Wace may say, it may be best to get out of the region of
controversy as far as possible and hammer in two big nails--(1) that
the Demonology of Christianity shows that its founders knew no more
about the spiritual world than anybody else, and (2) that Newman's
doctrine of "Development" is true to an extent of which the Cardinal
did not dream.

I have been reading some of his works lately, and I understand now why
Kingsley accused him of growing dishonesty.

After an hour or two of him I began to lose sight of the distinction
between truth and falsehood.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

If you are at home any day next week I will look in for a chat.

[The controversy was completed by a third article, "Agnosticism and
Christianity," in the June number of the "Nineteenth Century". There
was a humorous aspect of this article which tickled his fancy
immensely, for he drove home his previous arguments by means of an
authority whom his adversaries could not neglect, though he was the
last man they could have expected to see brought up against them in
this connection--Cardinal Newman. There is no better evidence for
ancient than for modern miracles, he says in effect; let us therefore
accept the teachings of the Church which maintains a continuous
tradition on the subject. But there is a very different conclusion to
be drawn from the same premises; all may be regarded as equally
doubtful, and so he writes on May 30 to Sir J. Hooker:--]

By the way, I want you to enjoy my wind-up with Wace in this month's
"Nineteenth" in the reading as much as I have in the writing. It's as
full of malice [I.e. in the French sense of the word.] as an egg is
full of meat, and my satisfaction in making Newman my accomplice has
been unutterable. That man is the slipperiest sophist I have ever met
with. Kingsley was entirely right about him.

Now for peace and quietness till after the next Church Congress!

[Three other letters to Mr. Knowles refer to this article.]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., May 4, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I am at the end of my London tether, and we go to Eastbourne (3
Jevington Gardens again) on Monday.

I have been working hard to finish my paper, and shall send it to you
before I go.

I am astonished at its meekness. Being reviled, I revile not; not an
exception, I believe, can be taken to the wording of one of the
venomous paragraphs in which the paper abounds. And I perceive the
truth of a profound reflection I have often made, that reviling is
often morally superior to not reviling.

I give up Peterborough. His "Explanation" is neither straightforward,
nor courteous, nor prudent. Of which last fact, it may be, he will be
convinced when he reads my acknowledgment of his favours, which is
soft, not with the softness of the answer which turneth away wrath, but
with that of the pillow which smothered Desdemona.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I shall try to stand an hour or two of the Academy dinner, and hope it
won't knock me up.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., May 6, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

If I had not gone to the Academy dinner I might have kept my promise
about sending you my paper to-day. I indulged in no gastronomic
indiscretions, and came away after H.R.H.'s speech, but I was dead beat
all yesterday, nevertheless.

We are off to Eastbourne, and I will send the manuscript from there;
there is very little to do.

Such a waste! I shall have to omit a paragraph that was really a
masterpiece.

For who should I come upon in one of the rooms but the Bishop! As we
shook hands, he asked whether that was before the fight or after; and I
answered, "A little of both." Then we spoke our minds pretty plainly;
and then we agreed to bury the hatchet. [As he says ("Collected Essays"
5 210), this chance meeting ended "a temporary misunderstanding with a
man of rare ability, candour, and wit, for whom I entertained a great
liking and no less respect."]

So yesterday I tore up THE paragraph. It was so appropriate I could not
even save it up for somebody else!

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, May 22, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I sent back my proof last evening. I shall be in town Friday afternoon
to Monday morning next, having a lot of things to do. So you may as
well let me see a revise of the whole. Did you not say to me, "sitting
by a sea-coal fire" (I say nothing about a "parcel gilt goblet"), that
this screed was to be the "last word"? I don't mind how long it goes on
so long as I have the last word. But you must expect nothing from me
for the next three or four months. We shall be off abroad, not later
than the 8th June, and among the everlasting hills, a fico for your
controversies! Wace's paper shall be waste paper for me. Oh! This is a
"goak" which Peterborough would not understand.

I think you are right about the wine and water business--I had my
doubts--but it was too tempting. All the teetotalers would have been on
my side.

There is no more curious example of the influence of education than the
respect with which this poor bit of conjuring is regarded. Your genuine
pietist would find a mystical sense in thimblerig. I trust you have
properly enjoyed the extracts from Newman. That a man of his intellect
should be brought down to the utterance of such drivel--by Papistry, is
one of the strongest of arguments against that damnable perverter of
mankind, I know of.

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