Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 14

[He had long felt that London gave the best opportunities for a scientific career, and it was on his advice that Tyndall had left Queenwood College for the Royal Inst.i.tution, where he was elected Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1853:--]

6 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, February 25, 1853.

My dear Tyndall,

Having rushed into more responsibility than I wotted of, I have been ruminating and taking counsel what advice to give you. When I wrote I hardly knew what kind of work you had in your present office, but Francis has since enlightened me. I thought you had more leisure. One thing is very clear--you must come out of that. Your Pegasus is quite out of place ploughing. You are using yourself up in work that comes to nothing, and so far as I can see cannot be worse off.

Now what are your prospects? Why, as I told you before, you have made a succes here and must profit by it. The other night your name was mentioned at the Philosophical Club (the most influential scientific body in London) with great praise. Ga.s.siot, who has great influence, said in so many words, "you had made your fortune," and I frankly tell you I believe so too, if you can only get over the next three years. So you see that quoad position, like Quintus Curtius, there is a "fine opening" ready for you, only mind you don't spoil it by any of your horrid modesty.

So much for glory--now for economics. I have been trying to ferret out more nearly your chances of a post, and here are my results (which, I need not tell you, must be kept to yourself).

At the Museum in Jermyn Street, Playfair, Forbes, Percy and I think Sir Henry would do anything to get you, and eliminate --; but, so far as I can judge, the probability of his going is so small that it is not worth your while to reckon upon it. Nevertheless it may be comforting to you to know that in case of anything happening these men will help you tooth and nail. Cultivate Playfair when you have a chance--he is a good fellow, wishes you well, has great influence, and will have more. Entre nous, he has just got a new and important post under Government.

Next, the Royal Inst.i.tution. This is where, as I told you, you ought to be looking to Faraday's place. Have no scruple about your chemical knowledge; you won't be required to train a college of students in abstruse a.n.a.lyses; and if you were, a year's work would be quite enough to put you at ease. What they want, and what you have, are CLEAR POWERS OF EXPOSITION--so clear that people may think they understand even if they don't. That is the secret of Faraday's success, for not a t.i.the of the people who go to hear him really understand him.

However, I am afraid that a delay must occur before you can get placed at the Royal Inst.i.tution, as you cannot hold the Professorship until you have given a course of lectures there, and it would seem that there is no room for you this year. However, I must try and learn more about this.

Under these circ.u.mstances the London Inst.i.tution looks tempting. I have been talking over the matter with Forbes, whose advice I look upon as first-rate in all these things, and he is decidedly of the opinion that you should take the London Inst.i.tution if it is offered you. He says that lecturing there and lecturing at other Inst.i.tutions, and writing, you could with certainty make more than you at present receive, and that you would have the command of a capital laboratory and plenty of time.

Then as to position--of which I was doubtful--it appears that Grove has made it a good one.

It is of great importance to look to this point in London--to be unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the highest places, and it was only my fear on this head that made me advise you to hesitate about the London Inst.i.tution. More consideration leads me to say, take that, if it will bring you up to London at once, so that you may hammer your reputation while it is hot.

However, consider all these things well, and don't be hasty. I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly. Write to me if there is anything you want done, supposing always there is n.o.body who will do it better--which is improbable.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[But this year of victory was not to pa.s.s away without one last blow from fate. On November 18, Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had found a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and sincerity as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh. The strong but delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon intellectual affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong characters, where each subordinated interest to ideal, and treated others by the measure of his own self-respect. As early as March 1851 he had written:--]

I wish you knew my friend Professor Forbes. He is the best creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways. A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific men. Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend. He is one of the few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a particle of independence or self-respect.

[The following from a letter to Hooker, announcing Forbes'death, is a striking testimony to his worth:--]

I think I have never felt so crushed by anything before. It is one of those losses which cannot be replaced either to the private friend or to science. To me especially it is a bitter loss. Without the aid and sympathy he has always given me from first to last, I should never have had the courage to persevere in the course I have followed. And it was one of my greatest hopes that we should work in harmony for long years at the aims so dear to us both.

But it is otherwise, and we who remain have nothing left but to bear the inevitable as we best may.

[And again a few days later:--]

I have had no time to write to you again till now, but I write to say how perfectly you express my own feeling about our poor friend. One of the first things I thought of was that medal business, and I never rejoiced in anything more than that I had not been deterred by any moral cowardice from acting as I did.

As it is I reckon that letter (which I will show you some day) among my most precious possessions.

[Huxley's last tribute to his dead friend was the organising a memorial fund, part of which went to getting a bust of him made, part to establishing an Edward Forbes medal, to be competed for by the students of his old school in Jermyn Street.

As Huxley had been Forbes' successor at Jermyn Street, so now he seemed to many marked out to succeed him at Edinburgh. In November he writes to Hooker:--]

People have been at me about the Edinburgh chair. If I could contrive to stop here, between you and I, I would prefer it to half a dozen Edinburgh chairs, but there is a mortal difference between 200 and 1000 pounds sterling a year. I have written to say that if the Professors can make up their minds they wish me to stand, I will--if not, I will not.

For my own part, I believe my chances would be very small, and I think there is every probability of their dividing the chair, in which case I certainly would not go. However, I hate thinking about the thing.

[And also to his sister:--]

November 26, 1854.

My dearest Lizzie,

I feel I have been silent very long--a great deal too long--but you would understand if you knew how much I have to do; why, with every disposition to do otherwise, I now write hardly any but business letters. Even Nettie comes off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as I have done, with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea of life in London, with the determination to MAKE the influence and the position and the money which he hasn't got, you may depend upon it that the fierce wants and interests of his present and immediate circle leave him little time to think of anything else, whatever old loves and old memories may be smouldering as warmly as ever below the surface. So, sister mine, you must not imagine because I do not write that therefore I do not think of you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten up with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the thing that the moment calls for.

The last year has been eventful for me. There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks one's self on. Thank G.o.d I think I may say I have weathered mine--not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side.

At the commencement of this year my affairs came to a crisis. The Government, notwithstanding all the representations which were made to them, would neither give nor refuse the grant for the publication of my work, and by way of cutting short all further discussion the Admiralty called upon me to serve. A correspondence ensued, in which, as commonly happens in these cases, they got the worst of it in logic and words, and I in reality and "tin." They answered my syllogism by the irrelevant and absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did not serve at once. Here was a pretty business! However, it was no use turning back when so much had been sacrificed for one's end, so I put their Lordships' letter up on my mantelpiece and betook myself to scribbling for my bread. They, on the other hand, removed my name from the List. So there was an interregnum when I was no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had already joined the "Westminster Review," and had inured myself to the labour of translation--and I could get any amount of scientific work I wanted--so there was a living, though a scanty one, and amazingly hard work for it.

My pen is not a very facile one, and what I write costs me a good deal of trouble.

In the spring of this year, however, a door opened. My poor lost friend Professor Forbes--whose steady attachment and aid had always been of the utmost service to me--was called to fill the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh at a moment's notice. It is a very valuable appointment, and he was obliged to fill it at once. Of course he left a number of vacancies behind, among them one at the Government School of Mines in Jermyn Street, where he lectured on Natural History. I was called upon to take up his lectures where he left off, in the same sudden way, and the upshot of it all was that I became permanently attached--with 200 pounds sterling a year pay. In other ways I can make a couple of hundred a year more even now, and I hope by-and-by to do better. In fact, a married man, as I hope soon to be, cannot live at all in the position which I ought to occupy under less than six hundred a year. If I keep my health, however, I have every hope of being able to do this--but, as the jockeys say, the pace is severe. Nettie is coming over in the spring, and if I have any luck at all, I mean to have paid off my debts and to be married by this time next year. ([He writes on July 21, 1851:--]"I commenced life upon nothing at all, and I had to borrow in the ordinary way from an agent for the necessary expenses of my outfit. I sent home a great deal of money, but notwithstanding, from the beautiful way they have of acc.u.mulating interest and charges of one description and another, I found myself 100 pounds sterling in debt when I returned--besides something to my brother, about which, however, I do not suppose I need trouble myself just at present. As you may imagine, living in London, my pay now hardly keeps me, to say nothing of paying off my old scores. I could get no account of how things were going on with my agent while I was away,and therefore I never could tell exactly how I stood.")

In the meanwhile, strangely enough--and very painfully for me--new possibilities have sprung up. My poor friend Forbes died only a week ago, just as he was beginning his course and entering upon as brilliant a career as ever was opened to any scientific man in this country.

I cannot tell you how deeply this has shocked me. I owe him so much, I loved him so well, and I have so very very few friends in the true sense of the word, that it has been perhaps a greater loss to me than to any one--although there never was a man so widely lamented. One could trust him so thoroughly! However, he has gone, poor fellow, and there is nothing for it but to shut one's self up again--and I was only going to say that his death leaves his post vacant, and I have been strongly urged to become a candidate for it by several of the most influential Edinburgh Professors. I am greatly puzzled what to do. I do not want to leave London, nor do I think much of my own chances of success if I become a candidate--though others do. On the other hand, a stipend which varies between 800 and 1200 pounds sterling a year is not to be pooh-poohed.

We shall see. If I can carry out some arrangements which are pending with the Government to increase my pay to 400 pounds sterling a year, I shall be strongly tempted to stop in London. It is THE place, the centre of the world.

In the meanwhile, as things always do come in heaps, I obtained my long-fought-for Grant--though indirectly--from the Government, which is, I think, a great triumph and vindication of the family motto--tenax propositi. Like many long-sought-for blessings, however, it is rather a bore now that I have it, as I don't see how I am to find time to write the book. But things "do themselves" in a wonderful way. I'll tell you how many irons I have in the fire at this present moment:--(1) a manual of Comparative Anatomy for Churchill; (2) my "Grant" book; (3) a book for the British Museum people (half done); (4) an article for Todd's "Cyclopaedia" (half done); (5) sundry memoirs on Science; (6) a regular Quarterly article in the "Westminster"; (7) lectures at Jermyn Street in the School of Mines; (8) lectures at the School of Art, Marlborough House; (9) lectures at the London Inst.i.tution, and odds and ends. Now, my dearest Lizzie, whenever you feel inclined to think it unkind I don't write, just look at that list, and remember that all these things require strenuous attention and concentration of the faculties, and leave one not very fit for anything else. You will say that it is bad to be so entirely absorbed in these things, and to that I heartily say Amen!--but you might as well argue with a man who has just mounted the favourite for the "Oaks" that it is a bad thing to ride fast. He admits that, and is off like a shot when the bell rings nevertheless. My bell has rung some time, and thank G.o.d the winning post is in sight.

Give my kindest regards to the doctor and special love to all the children. I send a trifle for my G.o.dson and some odds and ends in the book line, among other things a Shakespeare for yourself, dear Liz.

Believe me, ever your affectionate brother,

T.H. Huxley.

[In December the Edinburgh chair was practically offered to him undivided; but by that time the London authorities thought they had better make it worth his while to stay at Jermyn Street, and with negotiations begun for this end he refused to stand for Edinburgh. In the following spring, however, he was again approached from Edinburgh--not so much to withdraw his refusal and again become a candidate, as to let it be made known that he would accept the chair if it were offered him. But his position in London was now established; and he preferred to live in London on a bare sufficiency rather than to enjoy a larger income away from the centre of things.

Two letters to Tyndall, which refer to the division of labour in the science reviews for the "Westminster," indicate very clearly the high pressure at which Huxley had already begun to work:--]

Tenby, South Wales, October 22, 1854.

My dear Tyndall,

I was rejoiced to find you entertaining my proposition at all. No one believes how hard you work more than I, but I was not going to be such a bad diplomatist as to put that at the head of my letter, and if I had thought that what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto, I think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But really and truly, so long as it is confined to our own department it is no great affair. You make me laugh at the long face you pull about the duties, based on my phrase. The fact is, you notice what you like, and what you do not you leave undone, unless you get an editorial request to say something about a particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your own hands--at least it is in mine--as I went upon my principle of having a row at starting...

Now here is an equitable proposition. Look at my work. I have a couple of monographs, odds and ends of papers for journals, a manual and some three courses of lectures to provide for this winter. "My necessities are as great as thine," as Sir Philip Sidney didn't say, so be a brick, split the difference, and say you will be ready for the April number. I will write and announce the fact to Chapman.

What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this pace. I almost repent me of tempting you--after all--so I promise to hold on if you really think you will be overdoing it.

With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps. I have not, now, nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both, and if I work the latter, not even the fresh breezes of this place will keep the former in order. That is a discovery I have made here, and though highly instructive, it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results that have turned up.

Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my man. The poor fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article, which has appeared in the last "Westminster," as his forlorn vale! to the world.