Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 49

My dear Donnelly,

I was very glad to have news of you yesterday. I gather you are thriving, notwithstanding the appalling t.i.tle of your place of refuge.

I should have preferred "blow the cold" to "Cold blow"--but there is no accounting for tastes.

I have been going and going to write to you for a week past to tell you of a notion that has been maturing in my mind for some time, and that I ought to let you know of before anybody else. I find myself distinctly aged--tired out body and soul, and for the first time in my life fairly afraid of the work that lies before me in the next nine months. Physically, I have nothing much to complain of except weariness--and for purely mental work, I think I am good for something yet. I am morally and mentally sick of society and societies--committees, councils--bother about details and general worry and waste of time.

I feel as if more than another year of it would be the death of me.

Next May I shall be sixty, and have been thirty-one mortal years in my present office in the School. Surely I may sing my nunc dimittis with a good conscience. I am strongly inclined to announce to the Royal Society in November that the chair will be vacant that day twelve month--to resign my Government posts at mid-summer, and go away and spend the winter in Italy--so that I may be out of reach of all the turmoil of London.

The only thing I don't like is the notion of leaving you without such support as I can give in the School. No one knows better than I do how completely it is your work and how gallantly you have borne the trouble and responsibility connected with it. But what am I to do? I must give up all or nothing--and I shall certainly come to grief if I do not have a long rest.

Pray tell me what you think about it all.

My wife has written to Mrs. Donnelly and told her the news.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Read Hobbes if you want to get hard sense in good English.

Highcroft House, Milford, G.o.dalming, September 10, 1884.

My dear Donnelly,

Many thanks for your kind letter. I feel rather like a deserter, and am glad of any crumbs of comfort.

Cartwright has done wonders for me, and I can already eat most things (I draw the line at tough crusts). I have not even my old enemy, dyspepsia--but eat, drink, and sleep like a top.

And withal I am as tired as if I were hard at work, and shirk walking.

So far as I can make out there is not the slightest sign of organic disease anywhere, but I will get Clark to overhaul me when I go back to town. Sometimes I am inclined to suspect that it is all sham and laziness--but then why the deuce should I want to sham and be lazy.

Somebody started a charming theory years ago--that as you get older and lose volition, primitive evil tendencies, heretofore mastered, come out and show themselves. A nice prospect for venerable old gentlemen!

Perhaps my crust of industry is denuded, and the primitive rock of sloth is cropping out.

But enough of this egotistical invalidism.

How wonderfully Gordon is holding his own. I should like to see him lick the Mahdi into fits before Wolseley gets up. You despise the Jews, but Gordon is more like one of the Maccabees of Bar-Kochba than any sort of modern man.

My wife sends love to both of you, and says you are (in feminine language) "a dear thing in friends."

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Home Office, September 18, 1884.

My dear Donnelly,

We have struck our camp at Milford, and I am going down to Devonshire and Cornwall to-morrow--partly on Fishery business, partly to see if I can shake myself straighter by change of air. I am possessed by seven devils--not only blue, but of the deepest indigo--and I shall try to transplant them into a herd of Cornish swine.

The only thing that comforts me is Gordon's telegrams. Did ever a poor devil of a Government have such a subordinate before? He is the most refreshing personality of this generation.

I shall be back by 30th September--and I hope in better condition for harness than now.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Replying to General Donnelly's arguments against his resigning all his official posts, he writes:--]

Dartmouth, September 21, 1884.

My dear Donnelly,

Your letters, having made a journey to Penzance (where I told my wife I should go last Friday, but did not, and brought up here instead) turned up this morning.

I am glad to have seen Lord Carlingford's letter, and I am very much obliged to him for his kind expressions. a.s.suredly I will not decide hastily.

Now for your letter--I am all for letters in these matters. Not that we are either of us "impatient and irritable listeners"--oh dear, no!

"I have my faults," as the miser said, "but AVARICE is not one of them"--and we have our faults too, but notoriously they lie in the direction of long-suffering and apathy.

Nevertheless there is a good deal to be said for writing. MINE is itself a discipline in patience for my correspondent.

Imprimis. I scorn all your chaff about Society. My great object for years has been to keep out of it, not to go into it. Just you wait till the Misses Donnelly grow up--I trust there may be five or ten of them--and see what will happen to you. But apart from this, so long as I live in London, so long will it be practically impossible for me to keep out of dining and giving of dinners--and you know that just as well as I do.

2nd. I mean to give up the Presidency, but don't see my way to doing so next St. Andrew's Day. I wish I could--but I must deal fairly by the Society.

3rd. The suggestion of the holiday at Christmas is the most sensible thing you have said. I could get six weeks under the new arrangement ("Botany," January and half February) without interfering with my lectures at all. But then there is the blessed Home Office to consider. There might be civil war between the net men and the rod men in six weeks, all over the country, without my mild influence.

4th. I must give up my Inspectorship. The mere thought of having to occupy myself with the squabbles of these idiots of country squireens and poachers makes me sick--and is, I believe, the chief cause of the morbid state of my mucous membranes.

All this week shall I be occupied in hearing one Jacka.s.s contradict another Jacka.s.s about questions which are of no importance.

I would almost as soon be in the House of Commons.

Now see how reasonable I am. I agree with you (a) that I must get out of the hurly-burly of society; (b) that I must get out of the Presidency; (c) that I must get out of the Inspectorship, or rather I agree with myself on that matter, you having expressed no opinion.

That being so, it seems to me that I must, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, give up South Kensington. For--and here is the point you had in your mind when you lamented your possible impatience about something I might say--I swear by all the G.o.ds that are not mine, nothing shall induce me to apply to the Treasury for anything but the pound of flesh to which I am ent.i.tled.

Nothing ever disgusted me more than being the subject of a battle with the Treasury over the Home Office appointment--which I should have thrown up if I could have done so with decency to Harcourt.

It's just as well for me I couldn't, but it left a nasty taste.

I don't want to leave the School, and should be very glad to remain as Dean, for many reasons. But what I don't see is how I am to do that and make my escape from the thousand and one entanglements--which seem to me to come upon me quite irrespectively of any office I hold--or how I am to go on living in London as a (financially) decayed philosopher.

I really see nothing for it but to take my pension and go and spend the winter of 1885-86 in Italy. I hear one can be a regular swell there on 1000 pounds a year.