Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 63

N.B.--As my meaning seems to have been misunderstood I wish, if you have the chance, you would make it clear that I do not want three brick and mortar museums--but one public museum--containing a threefold collection of typical forms, a biological Trinity in Unity in fact.

It might conciliate the clerics if you adopted this ill.u.s.tration. But as YOUR OWN, mind. I should not like them to think me capable of it.

[However, even Ilkley was not an infallible cure. Thus he writes to Sir M. Foster:--]

May 17.

I am ashamed of myself for not going to town to attend the Government Grant Committee and Council, but I find I had better stop here till the end of the month, when I must return for a while anyhow.

I have improved very much here, and so long as I take heaps of exercise every day I have nothing to complain of beyond a fit of blue devils when I wake in the morning.

But I don't want to do any manner of work, still less any manner of play, such as is going on in London at this time of year, and I think I am wise to keep out of it as long as I can.

I wish I knew what is the matter with me. I feel always just on the verge of becoming an absurd old hypochondriac, and as if it only wanted a touch to send me over.

May 27.

...The blue devils worry me far less than they did. If there were any herd of swine here I might cast them out altogether, but I expect they would not go into blackfaced sheep.

I am disposed to stop not more than ten days in London, but to come back here and bring some work with me. In fact I do not know that I should return yet if it were not that I do not wish to miss our usual visit to Balliol, and that my Spanish daughter is coming home for a few months...

I am overwhelmed at being taken at my word about scientific federation. [I.e. a federation between the Royal Society and scientific societies in the colonies.] "Something will transpire" as old Gutzlaff [This worthy appears to have been an admiral on the China station about 1840.] said when he flogged plaintiff, defendant and witnesses in an obscure case.

P.S.--I have had an invitation from -- to sign "without committing myself to details" an approbation of his grand scheme. [For the reorganisation of the Fisheries Department.] A stupendous array of names appear thus committed to the "principle of the Bill." I prefer to be the Hartington of the situation.

[During this first stay in London he wrote twice to Mr. Herbert Spencer, from whom he had received not only some proofs, as before, on biological points, but others from his unpublished autobiography.

After twice reading these, Huxley had merely marked a couple of paragraphs containing personal references which might possibly be objectionable] "to the 'heirs, administrators and a.s.signs,' if there are any, or to the people themselves if they are living still." [He continues, June 1:--]

You will be quite taken aback at getting a proof from me with so few criticisms, but even I am not so perverse as to think that I can improve your own story of your own life!

I notice a curious thing. If Ransom [Dr. Ransom of Nottingham.] had not overworked himself, I should probably not be writing this letter.

For if he had worked less hard I might have been first and he second at the Examination at the University of London in 1845. In which case I should have obtained the Exhibition, should not have gone into the navy, and should have forsaken science for practice...

[Again on June 4:--]

My dear Spencer,

Here's a screed for you! I wish you well through it.

Mind I have no a priori objection to the transmission of functional modifications whatever. In fact, as I told you, I should rather like it to be true.

But I argued against the a.s.sumption (with Darwin as I do with you) of the operation of a factor which, if you will forgive me for saying so, seems as far off support by trustworthy evidence now as ever it was.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On the same day he wrote to Mr., afterwards Sir John, Skelton:--]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., June 4, 1886.

My dear Skelton,

A civil question deserves a civil answer--Yes. I am sorry to say I know--n.o.body better--"what it is to be unfit for work." I have been trying to emerge from that condition, first at Bournemouth, and then at Ilkley, for the last five months, with such small success that I find a few days in London knocks me up, and I go back to the Yorkshire moors next week.

We have no water-hens there--nothing but peewits, larks, and occasional grouse--but the air and water are of the best, and the hills quite high enough to bring one's muscles into play.

I suppose that Nebuchadnezzar was quite happy so long as he grazed and kept clear of Babylon; if so, I can hold him for my Scripture parallel.

I wish I could accept your moral Number 2, but there is amazingly little evidence of "reverential care for unoffending creation" in the arrangements of nature, that I can discover. If our ears were sharp enough to hear all the cries of pain that are uttered in the earth by men and beasts, we should be deafened by one continuous scream!

And yet the wealth of superfluous loveliness in the world condemns pessimism. It is a hopeless riddle.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

Please remember me to Mrs. Skelton.

[The election of a new Headmaster (Dr. Warre) at Eton, where he was a member of the Governing Body, was a matter of no small concern to him at this moment. Some parts of the existing system seemed impossible to alter, though a reform in the actual scheme and scope of teaching seemed to him both possible and necessary for the future well-being of the school. He writes to his eldest son on July 6, 1886:--]

The whole system of paying the Eton masters by the profits of the boarding-houses they keep is detestable to my mind, but any attempt to alter it would be fatal.

...I look to the new appointment with great anxiety. It will make or mar Eton. If the new Headmaster has the capacity to grasp the fact that the world has altered a good deal since the Eton system was invented, and if he has the sense to adapt Eton to the new state of things, without letting go that which was good in the old system, Eton may become the finest public school in the country.

If on the contrary he is merely a vigorous representative of the old system pure and simple, the school will go to the dogs.

I think it is not unlikely that there may be a battle in the Governing Body over the business, and that I shall be on the losing side. But I am used to that, and shall do what I think right nevertheless.

[The same letter contains his reply to a suggestion that he should join a society whose object was to prevent a railway from being run right through the Lake district.]

I am not much inclined to join the "Lake District Defence Society." I value natural beauty as much as most people--indeed I value it so much, and think so highly of its influence that I would make beautiful scenery accessible to all the world, if I could. If any engineering or mining work is projected which will really destroy the beauty of the Lakes, I will certainly oppose it, but I am not disposed, as Goschen said, to "give a blank cheque" to a Defence Society, the force of which is pretty certain to be wielded by the most irrational fanatics amongst its members.

Only the other day I walked the whole length of Ba.s.senthwaite from Keswick and back, and I cannot say that the little line of rails which runs along the lake, now coming into view and now disappearing, interfered with my keen enjoyment of the beauty of the lake any more than the macadamised road did. And if it had not been for that railway I should not have been able to make Keswick my headquarters, and I should have lost my day's delight.

People's sense of beauty should be more robust. I have had apocalyptic visions looking down Oxford Street at a sunset before now.

Ever, dear lad, your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

[After this he took his wife to Harrogate,] "just like Clapham Common on a great scale," [where she was ordered to drink the waters. For himself, it was as good as Ilkley, seeing that he needed] "nothing but fresh air and exercise, and just as much work that interests me as will keep my mind from getting 'blue mouldy.'" [The work in this case was the chapter in the Life of Charles Darwin, which he had promised Mr. F. Darwin to finish before going abroad.

On July 10, he writes to Sir M. Foster on the rejection of the Home Rule Bill:--]

The smashing of the G.O.M. appears to be pretty complete, though he has unfortunately enough left to give him the means of playing an ugly game of obstruction in the next Parliament.

You have taken the shine out of my exultation at Lubbock's majority--though I confess I was disheartened to see so many educated men going in for the disruption policy. If it were not for Randolph I should turn Tory, but that fellow will some day oust Salisbury as Dizzy ousted old Derby, and sell his party to Parnell or anybody else who makes a good bid.