Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 52

Your return in May project is really impracticable on account of the Fishery Report. I cannot be so long absent from the Home Office whatever I might manage with South Kensington.

With our love to Mrs. Foster and you.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This letter, as he says a week later, was written when he] "was rather down in the mouth from the wretched cold weather, and the wife being laid up with a bad cold," [besides his own ailments.]

I find I have to be very careful about night air, but nothing does me so much good as six or seven miles' walk between breakfast and lunch--at a good sharp pace. So I conclude that there cannot be much the matter, and yet I am always on the edge, so to speak, of that infernal hypochondria.

We have settled down here very comfortably, and I do not think we shall care to go any further south. Madame Dohrn and all the people at the stazione are very kind, and want to do all sorts of things for us.

The other day we went in the launch to Capri, intending next day to go to Amalfi. But it threatened bad weather, so we returned in the evening. The journey knocked us both up, and we had to get out of another projected excursion to Ischia to-day. The fact is, I get infinitely tired with talking to people and can't stand any deviation from regular and extremely lazy habits. Fancy my being always in bed by ten o'clock and breakfasting at nine!

[On the 10th, writing to Sir John Evans, who as Vice-President, was acting in his stead at the Royal Society, he says:--]

In spite of snow on the ground we had three or four days at Ravenna--which is the most interesting deadly lively sepulchre of a place I was ever in in my life. The evolution of modern from ancient art is all there in a nutsh.e.l.l...

I lead an altogether animal life, except that I have renewed my old love for Italian. At present I am rejoicing in the Autobiography of that delightful sinner, Benvenuto Cellini. I have some notion that there is such a thing as science somewhere. In fact I am fitting myself for Neapolitan n.o.bility.

[To his youngest daughter.]

Hotel Brittanique, Naples, December 22, 1884.

But we have had no letters from home for a week...Moreover, if we don't hear to-day or to-morrow we shall begin to speculate on the probability of an earthquake having swallowed up 4 Marlborough Place "with all the young barbarians at play--And I their sire trying to get a Roman holiday" (Byron). For we are going to Rome to-morrow, having had enough of Naples, the general effect of which city is such as would be produced by the sight of a beautiful woman who had not washed or dressed her hair for a month. Climate, on the whole, more variable than that of London.

We had a lovely drive three days ago to c.u.mae, a perfect summer's day; since then sunshine, heat, cold wind, calms all durcheinander, with thunder and lightning last night to complete the variety.

The thermometer and barometer are not fixed to the walls here, as they would be jerked off by the sudden changes. At first, it is odd to see them dancing about the hall. But you soon get used to it, and the porter sees that they don't break themselves.

With love to Nettie and Harry, and hopes that the pudding will be good.

Ever your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

[In January 1885 he went to Rome, whence he writes:--]

Hotel Victoria, Via dei due Macelli, Rome, January 8, 1885.

My dear Foster,

We have been here a fortnight very well lodged--south aspect, fireplace, and all the rest of the essentials except sunshine. Of this last there is not much more than in England, and the grey skies day after day are worthy of our native land. Sometimes it rains cats and dogs all day by way of a change--as on Christmas Day--but it is not cold. "Quite exceptional weather," they tell us, but that seems to be the rule everywhere. We have done a respectable amount of gallery-slaving, and I have been amusing myself by picking up the topography of ancient Rome. I was going to say Pagan Rome, but the inappropriateness of the distinction strikes me, papal Rome being much more stupidly and childishly pagan than imperial. I never saw a sadder sight than the kissing a wretched bedizened doll of a Bambino that went on in the Ara Coeli on Twelfth Day. Your puritan soul would have longed to arise and slay...

As to myself, though it is a very unsatisfactory subject and one I am very tired of bothering my friends about, I am like the farmer at the rent-dinner, and don't find myself much "forrarder." That is to say, I am well for a few days and then all adrift, and have to put myself right by dosing with Clark's pills, which are really invaluable. They will make me believe in those pills I saw advertised in my youth, and which among other things were warranted to cure "the indecision of juries." I really can't make out my own condition. I walked seven or eight miles this morning over Monte Mario and out on the Campagna without any particular fatigue, and yesterday I was as miserable as an owl in sunshine. Something perhaps must be put down to the relapse which our poor girl had a week ago, and which became known to us in a terrible way. She had apparently quite recovered, and arrangements were made for their going abroad, and now everything is upset. I warned her husband that this was very likely, but did not sufficiently take the warning to myself.

You are taking a world of trouble for me, and Donnelly writes I am to do as I like so far as they are concerned. I have heard nothing from the Home Office, and I suppose it would be proper for me to write if I want any more leave. I really hardly know what to do. I can't say I feel very fit for the hurly-burly of London just now, but I am not sure that the wholesomest thing for me would not be at all costs to get back to some engrossing work. If my poor girl were well, I could perhaps make something of the dolce far niente, but at present one's mind runs to her when it is not busy in something else.

I expect we shall be here a week or ten days more--at any rate, this address is safe--afterwards to Florence.

What am I to do in the Riviera? Here and at Florence there is always some distraction. You see the problem is complex.

My wife, who is very lively, thanks you for your letter (which I have answered) and joins with me in love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Writing on the same day to Sir J. Evans, he proposed a considerable alteration in the duties of the a.s.sistant Secretary of the Royal Society.]

You know that I served a seven years' apprenticeship as Secretary, and that experience gave me very solid grounds for the conviction that, with the present arrangements, a great deal of the time of the Secretaries is wasted over the almost mechanical drudgery of proof-reading.

[He suggests new arrangements, and proceeds:--]

At the same time it would be very important to adopt some arrangement by which the "Transactions" papers can be printed independently of one another.

Why should not the papers be paged independently and be numbered for each year. Thus--"Huxley Idleness and Incapacity in Italy." "Phil.

Trans." 1885 6.

People grumble at the delay in publication, and are quite right in doing so, though it is impossible under the present system to be more expeditious, and it is not every senior secretary who would slave at the work as Stokes does...

But it is carrying coals to Newcastle to talk of such business arrangements as these to you.

The only thing I am strong about, is the folly of going on cutting blocks with our Secretarial razors any longer.

I am afraid I cannot give a very good account of myself.

The truth of the answer to Mallock's question "Is life worth living?"--that depends on the liver--is being strongly enforced upon me in the hepatic sense of liver, and I must confess myself fit for very little. A week hence we shall migrate to Florence and try the effect of the more bracing air. The Pincio is the only part of Rome that is fit to live in, and unfortunately the Government does not offer to build me a house there.

However, I have got a great deal of enjoyment out of ancient Rome--papal Rome is too brutally pagan (and in the worst possible taste too) for me.

[To his daughter, Mrs. Roller.]

January 11, 1885.

We have now had nearly three weeks in Rome. I am sick of churches, galleries, and museums, and meanly make M-- go and see them and tell me about them. As we are one flesh, it is just the same as if I had seen them.

Since the time of Constantine there has been nothing but tawdry rubbish in the shape of architecture [For his appreciation of the great dome of the Pantheon, see below.]--the hopeless bad taste of the Papists is a source of continual gratification to me as a good Protestant (and something more). As for the skies, they are as changeable as those of England--the only advantage is the absence of frost and snow--(raining cats and dogs this Sunday morning).

But down to the time of Constantine, Rome is endlessly interesting, and if I were well I should like to spend some months in exploring it.

As it is, I do very little, though I have contrived to pick up all I want to know about pagan Rome and the Catacombs, which last are my especial weakness.

My master and physician is bothered a good deal with eczema--otherwise very lively. All the chief collections in Rome are provided with a pair of her spectacles, which she leaves behind. Several new opticians' shops are set up on the strength of the purchases in this line she is necessitated to make.

I want to be back at work, but I am horribly afraid I should be no good yet. We are thinking of going to Florence at the end of this week to see what the drier and colder air there will do.

With our dear love to you all--we are wae for a sight of you.