Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 52

Gossip of the Town.

"Professor Huxley receives 200 guineas for each of his articles for the 'Nineteenth Century'."

My dear Knowles,

I have always been satisfied with the "Nineteenth Century" in the capacity of paymaster, but I did not know how much reason I had for my satisfaction till I read the above!

Totting up the number of articles and multiplying by 200 it strikes me I shall be behaving very handsomely if I take 2000 pounds for the balance due.

So sit down quickly, take thy cheque-book, and write five score, and let me have it at breakfast time to-morrow. I once got a cheque for 1000 pounds at breakfast, and it ruined me morally. I have always been looking out for another.

I hope you are all flourishing. We are the better for Maloja, but more dependent on change of weather and other trifles than could be wished.

Yet I find myself outlasting those who started in life along with me.

Poor Andrew Clark and I were at Haslar together in 1846, and he was the younger by a year and a half.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

All my time is spent in the co-ordination of my eruptions when I am an active volcano.

I hope you got the volumes which I told Macmillan to send you.

[The following letter to Professor Romanes, whose failing eyesight was a premonitory symptom of the disease which proved fatal the next year, reads, so to say, as a solemn prelude to the death of three old friends this autumn--of Andrew Clark, his old comrade at Haslar, and cheery physician for many years; of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, whose acquaintance he had first made in 1851 at the Stanleys' at Harrow, and with whom he kept up an intimacy to the end of his life, visiting Balliol once or twice every year; and, heaviest blow, of John Tyndall, the friend and comrade whose genial warmth of spirit made him almost claim a brother's place in early struggles and later success, and whose sudden death was all the more poignant for the cruel touch of tragedy in the manner of it.]

Hodeslea, September 28, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

We are very much grieved to hear such a bad account of your health.

Would that we could achieve something more to the purpose than a.s.suring you and Mrs. Romanes of our hearty sympathy with you both in your troubles. I a.s.sure you, you are much in our thoughts, which are sad enough with the news of Jowett's, I fear, fatal attack.

I am almost ashamed to be well and tolerably active when young and old friends are being thus prostrated.

However, you have youth on your side, so do not give up, and wearisome as doing nothing may be, persist in it as the best of medicines.

At my time of life one should be always ready to stand at attention when the order to march comes; but for the rest I think it well to go on doing what I can, as if F. M. General Death had forgotten me. That must account for my seeming presumption in thinking I may some day "take up the threads" of late evolutionary speculation.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

My wife joins with me in love and kind wishes to you both.

[At the request of his friends, Huxley wrote for the "Nineteenth Century" a brief appreciation of his old comrade Tyndall--the tribute of a friend to a friend--and, difficult task though it was, touched on the closing scene, if only from a chivalrous desire to do justice to the long devotion which accident had so cruelly wronged:--]

I am comforted [he writes to Sir J. Hooker on January 3] by your liking the Tyndall article. You are quite right, I shivered over the episode of the "last words," but it struck me as the best way of getting justice done to her, so I took a header. I am glad to see by the newspaper comments that it does not seem to have shocked other people's sense of decency.

[The funeral took place on Sat.u.r.day, December 9. There was no storm nor fog to make the graveside perilous for the survivors. In the Haslemere churchyard the winter sun shone its brightest, and the moorland air was crisp with an almost Alpine freshness as this lover of the mountains was carried to his last resting-place. But though he took no outward harm from that bright still morning, Huxley was greatly shaken by the event]: "I was very much used up," [he writes to Sir M. Foster on his return home two days later], "to my shame be it said, far more than my wife"; [and on December 30 to Sir John Donnelly:--]

Your kind letter deserved better than to have been left all this time without response, but the fact is, I came to grief the day after Christmas Day (no, we did NOT indulge in too much champagne). Lost my voice, and collapsed generally, without any particular reason, so I went to bed and stayed there as long as I could stand it, and now I am picking up again. The fact is, I suppose I had been running up a little account over poor old Tyndall. One does not stand that sort of wear and tear so well as one gets ancient.

[On the same day he writes to Sir J.D. Hooker:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, December 30, 1893.

My dear Hooker,

You gave the geographers some uncommonly sane advice. I observe that the words about the "stupendous ice-clad mountains" you saw were hardly out of your mouth when -- coolly a.s.serts that the Antarctic continent is a table-land! "comparatively level country." It really is wrong that men should be allowed to go about loose who fill you with such a strong desire to kick them as that little man does.

I send herewith a spare copy of "Nineteenth" with my paper about Tyndall. It is not exactly what I could wish, as I was hurried over it, and knocked up into the bargain, but I have tried to give a fair view of him. Tell me what you think of it.

I have been having a day or two on the sick list. Nothing discernible the matter, only flopped, as I did in the spring. However, I am picking up again. The fact is, I have never any blood pressure to spare, and a small thing humbugs the pump.

However, I have some kicks left in me, vide the preface to the fourth volume of Essays; ditto Number 5 when that appears in February.

Now, my dear old friend, take care of yourself in the coming year '94.

I'll stand by you as long as the fates will let me, and you must be equally "Johnnie." With our love to Lady Hooker and yourself.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

CHAPTER 3.13.

1894.

[The completion early in 1894 of the ninth volume of "Collected Essays"

was followed by a review of them in "Nature" (February 1), from the pen of Professor Ray Lankester, emphasising the way in which the writer's personality appears throughout the writing:--

There is probably no lover of apt discourse, of keen criticism, or of scientific doctrine who will not welcome the issue of Professor Huxley's "Essays" in the present convenient shape. For my own part, I know of no writing which by its mere form, even apart from the supreme interest of the matters with which it mostly deals, gives me so much pleasure as that of the author of these essays. In his case, more than that of his contemporaries, it is strictly true that the style is the man. Some authors we may admire for the consummate skill with which they transfer to the reader their thought without allowing him, even for a moment, to be conscious of their personality. In Professor Huxley's work, on the other hand, we never miss his fascinating presence; now he is gravely shaking his head, now compressing the lips with emphasis, and from time to time, with a quiet twinkle of the eye, making unexpected apologies or protesting that he is of a modest and peace-loving nature. At the same time, one becomes accustomed to a rare and delightful phenomenon. Everything which has entered the author's brain by eye or ear, whether of recondite philosophy, biological fact, or political programme, comes out again to us--clarified, sifted, arranged, and vivified by its pa.s.sage through the logical machine of his strong individuality.

Of the artist in him it continues:--

He deals with form not only as a mechanical engineer in partibus (Huxley's own description of himself), but also as an artist, a born lover of forms, a character which others recognise in him though he does not himself set it down in his a.n.a.lysis.

The essay on "Animal Automatism" suggested a reminiscence of Professor Lankester's as to the way in which it was delivered, and this in turn led to Huxley's own account of the incident in the letter given in volume 2.

About the same time there is a letter acknowledging Mr. Bateson's book "On Variation", which is interesting as touching on the latter-day habit of speculation apart from fact which had begun to prevail in biology:--]

Hodeslea, February 20, 1894.

My dear Mr. Bateson,

I have put off thanking you for the volume "On Variation" which you have been so good as to send me in the hope that I should be able to look into it before doing so.

But as I find that impossible, beyond a hasty glance, at present, I must content myself with saying how glad I am to see from that glance that we are getting back from the region of speculation into that of fact again.