Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 39

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[This letter refers to the death of his old friend Dean Stanley. The Dean had long kept in touch with the leaders of scientific thought, and it is deeply interesting to know that on her death-bed, five years before, his wife said to him as one of her parting counsels, "Do not lose sight of the men of science, and do not let them lose sight of you." "And then," writes Stanley to Tyndall, "she named yourself and Huxley."

Strangely enough, the death of the Dean involved another invitation to Huxley to quit London for Oxford. By the appointment of Dean Bradley to Westminster, the Mastership of University College was left vacant.

Huxley, who was so far connected with the college that he had examined there for a science Fellowship, was asked if he would accept it, but after careful consideration declined. He writes to his son, who had heard rumours of the affair in Oxford:--]

4 Marlborough Place, November 4, 1881.

My dear Lens,

There is truth in the rumour; in so far as this that I was asked if I would allow myself to be nominated for the Mastership of University, that I took the question into serious consideration and finally declined.

But I was asked to consider the communication made to me confidential, and I observed the condition strictly. The leakage must have taken place among my Oxford friends, and is their responsibility, but at the same time I would rather you did not contribute to the rumour on the subject. Of course I should have told you if I had not been bound to reticence.

I was greatly tempted for a short time by the prospect of rest, but when I came to look into the matter closely there were many disadvantages. I do not think I am cut out for a Don nor your mother for a Donness--we have had thirty years' freedom in London, and are too old to put in harness.

Moreover, in a monetary sense I should have lost rather than gained.

My astonishment at the proposal was unfeigned, and I begin to think I may yet be a Bishop.

Ever your loving father,

T.H. Huxley.

[His other occupations this year were the Medical Acts Commission, which sat until the following year, and the International Medical Congress.

The Congress detained him in London this summer later than usual. It lasted from the 3rd to the 9th of August, on which day he delivered a concluding address on "The Connection of the Biological Sciences with Medicine" ("Collected Essays" 3 page 347). He showed how medicine was gradually raised from mere empiricism and based upon true pathological principles, through the independent growth of physiological knowledge, and its correlation to chemistry and physics.] "It is a peculiarity,"

[he remarks,] "of the physical sciences that they are independent in proportion as they are imperfect." [Yet] "there could be no real science of pathology until the science of physiology had reached a degree of perfection unattained, and indeed unattainable, until quite recent times." [Historically speaking, modern physiology, he pointed out, began with Descartes' attempt to explain bodily phenomena on purely physical principles; but the Cartesian notion of one controlling central mechanism had to give way before the proof of varied activities residing in various tissues, until the cell-theory united something of either view. "The body is a machine of the nature of an army, not that of a watch or of a hydraulic apparatus." On this a.n.a.logy, diseases are derangements either of the physiological units of the body, or of their coordinating machinery: and the future of medicine depends on exact knowledge of these derangements and of the precise alteration of the conditions by the administration of drugs or other treatment, which will redress those derangements without disturbing the rest of the body.

A few extracts from letters to his wife describe his occupation at the Congress, which involved too much "society" for his liking.]

August 4.

The Congress began with great eclat yesterday, and the latter part of Paget's address was particularly fine. After, there was the lunch at the Paget's with the two Royalties. After that, an address by Virchow.

After that, dinner at Sanderson's, with a confused splutter of German to the neighbours on my right. After that a tremendous soiree at South Kensington, from which I escaped as soon as I could, and got home at midnight. There is a confounded Lord Mayor's dinner this evening ("The usual turtle and speeches to the infinite bewilderment and delight of the foreigners," August 6), and to-morrow a dinner at the Physiological Society. But I have got off the Kew party, and mean to go quietly down to the Spottiswoodes [i.e. at Sevenoaks] on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and get out of the way of everything except the College of Surgeons' Soiree, till Tuesday. Commend me for my prudence.

[On the 5th he was busy all day with Government Committees, only returning to correct proofs of his address before the social functions of the evening. Next morning he writes:--]

I have been toiling at my address this morning. It is all printed, but I must turn it inside out, and make a speech of it if I am to make any impression on the audience in St. James' Hall. Confound all such bobberies.

August 9.

I got through my address to-day as well as I ever did anything. There was a large audience, as it was the final meeting of the Congress, and to my surprise I found myself in excellent voice and vigour. So there is life in the old dog yet. But I am greatly relieved it is over, as I have been getting rather shaky.

[When the Medical Congress was over, he joined his family at Grasmere for the rest of August. In September he attended the British a.s.sociation at York, where he read a paper on the "Rise and Progress of Palaeontology," and ended the month with fishery business at Aberystwith and Carmarthen.

The above paper is to be found in "Collected Essays," 4 page 24. In it he concludes an historical survey of the views held about fossils by a comparison of the opposite hypothesis upon which the vast store of recently acc.u.mulated facts may be interpreted; and declaring for the hypothesis of evolution, repeats the remarkable words of the "Coming of Age of the Origin of Species," that] "the paleontological discoveries of the last decade are so completely in accordance with the requirements of this hypothesis that, if it had not existed, the paleontologist would have had to invent it."

[In February died Thomas Carlyle. Mention has already been made of the influence of his writings upon Huxley in strengthening and fixing once for all, at the very outset of his career, that hatred of shams and love of veracity, which were to be the chief principle of his whole life. It was an obligation he never forgot, and for this, if for nothing else, he was ready to join in a memorial to the man. In reply to a request for his support in so doing, he wrote to Lord Stanley of Alderley on March 9:--]

Anything I can do to help in raising a memorial to Carlyle shall be most willingly done. Few men can have dissented more strongly from his way of looking at things than I; but I should not yield to the most devoted of his followers in grat.i.tude for the bracing wholesome influence of his writings when, as a very young man, I was essaying without rudder or compa.s.s to strike out a course for myself.

[Mention has already been made of his ill-health at the end of the year, which was perhaps a premonition of the breakdown of 1883. An indication of the same kind may be found in the following letter to Mrs. Tyndall, who had forwarded a doc.u.ment which Dr. Tyndall had meant to send himself with an explanatory note.]

4 Marlborough Place, March 25, 1881.

My dear Mrs. Tyndall,

But where is his last note to me? That is the question on which I have been anxiously hoping for light since I received yours and the enclosure, which contains such a very sensible proposition that I should like to know how it came into existence, abiogenetically or otherwise.

As I am by way of forgetting everything myself just now, it is a comfort to me to believe that Tyndall has forgotten he forgot to send the letter of which he forgot the inclosure. The force of disremembering could no further go.

In affectionate bewilderment, ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[His general view of his health, however, was much more optimistic, as appears from a letter to Mrs. May (wife of the friend of his boyhood) about her son, whose strength had been sapped by typhoid fever, and who had gone out to the Cape to recruit.]

4 Marlborough Place, June 10, 1881.

My dear Mrs. May,

I promised your daughter the other day that I would send you the Bishop of Natal's letter to me. Unfortunately I had mislaid it, and it only turned up just now when I was making one of my periodical clearances in the chaos of papers that acc.u.mulates on my table.

You will be pleased to see how fully the good Bishop appreciates Stuart's excellent qualities, and as to the physical part of the business, though it is sad enough that a young man should be impeded in this way, I think you should be hopeful. Delicate young people often turn out strong old people--I was a thread paper of a boy myself, and now I am an extremely tough old personage...

With our united kind regards to Mr. May and yourself,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[Perhaps if he had been able each year to carry out the wish expressed in the following letter, which covered an introduction to Dr. Tyndall at his house on the Bel Alp, the breakdown of 1883 might have been averted.]

4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., July 5 [1881?].

My dear Skelton,

It is a great deal more than I would say for everybody, but I am sure Tyndall will be very much obliged to me for making you known to him; and if you, insignificant male creature, how very much more for the opportunity of knowing Mrs. Skelton!

For which last pretty speech I hope the lady will make a prettier curtsey. So go boldly across the Aletsch, and if they have a knocker (which I doubt), knock and it shall be opened unto you.

I wish I were going to be there too; but Royal Commissions are a kind of endemic in my const.i.tution, and I have a very bad one just now.

[The Medical Acts Commission 1881-2.]

With kind remembrances to Mrs. Skelton,