 |
I am grieved to have such accounts of Ethel, and have lectured her accordingly. She threatens reprisals on you—and altogether is in a more saucy and irrepressible state than when she left.
M— is still in bed, though better—I am afraid she won't be able to go to Court next week. You see we are getting grand.
I hear great accounts of the children (Ria and Buzzer) and mean to cut out T'other Governor when you bring them up.
As we did not see Fred the other day, the family is inclined to think that the salmon disagreed with him!
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, May 10, 1883.
My dear Mrs. Tyndall,
If you will give me a bit of mutton at one o'clock I shall be very much your debtor, but as I have business to attend to afterwards at the Home Office I must stipulate that my intellect be not imperilled by those seductive evil genii who are apt to make their appearance at your lunch table. [This is accompanied by a sketch of a champagne bottle in the character of a demon.]
M. is getting better, but I cannot let her be out at night yet. She thinks she is to be allowed to go to the International Exhibition business on Saturday; but if the temperature does not rise very considerably I shall have two words to say to that.
Ever yours very sincerely,
T.H. Huxley.
I shall be alone. Do you think that I am "subdued to that I work in," and like an oyster, carry my brood about beneath my mantle?
CHAPTER 2.15.
1884.
[From this time forward the burden of ill-health grew slowly and steadily. Dyspepsia and the hyperchondriacal depression which follows in its train, again attacked Huxley as they had attacked him twelve years before, though this time the physical misery was perhaps less. His energy was sapped; when his official work was over, he could hardly bring himself to renew the investigations in which he had always delighted. To stoop over the microscope was a physical discomfort; he began to devote himself more exclusively to the reading of philosophy and critical theology. This was the time of which Sir M. Foster writes that "there was something working in him which made his hand, when turned to anatomical science, so heavy that he could not lift it. Not even that which was so strong within him, the duty of fulfilling a promise, could bring him to the work."
Up to the beginning of October, he went on with his official work, the lectures at South Kensington, the business as President of the Royal Society, and ex officio Trustee of the British Museum; the duties connected with the Inspectorship of Fisheries, the City and Guilds Technical Education Committee, and the University of London, and delivered the opening address at the London Hospital Medical School, on "The State and the Medical Profession" ["Collected Essays" 3 323), his health meanwhile growing less and less satisfactory. He dropped minor offices, such as the Presidency of the National Association of Science Teachers, which, he considered, needed more careful supervision than he was able to give, and meditated retiring from part at least of his main duties, when he was ordered abroad at a moment's notice for first one, then another, and yet a third period of two months. But he did not definitely retire until this rest had proved ineffectual to fit him again for active work.
The President of the Royal Society is, as mentioned above, an ex officio Trustee of the British Museum, so that now, as again in 1888, circumstances at length brought about the state of affairs which Huxley had once indicated—half jestingly—to Robert Lowe, who inquired of him what would be the best course to adopt with respect to the Natural History collections of the British Museum:—] "Make me a Trustee and Flower director." [At this moment, the question of an official residence for the Director of the Natural History Museum was under discussion with the Treasury, and he writes:—]
February 29, 1884.
My dear Flower,
I am particularly glad to hear your news. "Ville qui parle et femme qui ecoute se rendent," says the wicked proverb—and it is true of Chancellors of the Exchequer.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A pendent to this is a letter of congratulation to Sir Henry Roscoe on his knighthood:—]
Science and Art Department, South Kensington, July 7, 1884.
My dear Roscoe,
I am very glad to see that the Government has had the grace to make some acknowledgment of their obligation to you, and I wish you and "my lady" long enjoyment of your honours. I don't know if you are gazetted yet, so I don't indicate them outside.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.
I wrote some weeks ago to the Secretary of the National Association of Science Teachers to say that I must give up the Presidency. I had come to the conclusion that the Association wants sharp looking after, and that I can't undertake that business.
P.S. 2.
Shall I tell you what your great affliction henceforward will be? It will be to hear yourself called Sr'enery Roscoe by the flunkies who announce you.
Her Ladyship will please take note of this crumpled rose leaf—I am sure of its annoying her.
[The following letter, with its comparison of life to a whirlpool and its acknowledgment of the widespread tendency in mankind to make idols, was written in answer to some inquiries from Lady Welby:—]
April 8, 1884.
Your letter requires consideration, and I have had very little leisure lately. Whether motion disintegrates or integrates is, I apprehend, a question of conditions. A whirlpool in a stream may remain in the same spot for any imaginable time. Yet it is the effect of the motion of the particles of the water in that spot which continually integrate themselves into the whirlpool and disintegrate themselves from it. The whirlpool is permanent while the conditions last, though its constituents incessantly change. Living bodies are just such whirlpools. Matter sets into them in the shape of food,—sets out of them in the shape of waste products. Their individuality lies in the constant maintenance of a characteristic form, not in the preservation of material identity. I do not know anything about "vitality" except as a name for certain phenomena like "electricity" or "gravitation." As you get deeper into scientific questions you will find that "Name ist Schall und Rauch" even more emphatically than Faust says it is in Theology. Most of us are idolators, and ascribe divine powers to the abstractions "Force," "Gravity," "Vitality," which our own brains have created. I do not know anything about "inert" things in nature. If we reduce the world to matter and motion, the matter is not "inert," inasmuch as the same amount of motion affects different kinds of matter in different ways. To go back to my own illustration. The fabric of the watch is not inert, every particle of it is in violent and rapid motion, and the winding-up simply perturbs the whole infinitely complicated system in a particular fashion. Equilibrium means death, because life is a succession of changes, while a changing equilibrium is a contradiction in terms. I am not at all clear that a living being is comparable to a machine running down. On this side of the question the whirlpool affords a better parallel than the watch. If you dam the stream above or below, the whirlpool dies; just as the living being does if you cut off its food, or choke it with its own waste products. And if you alter the sides or bottom of the stream you may kill the whirlpool, just as you kill the animal by interfering with its structure. Heat and oxidation as a source of heat appear to supply energy to the living machine, the molecular structure of the germ furnishing the "sides and bottom of the stream," that is, determining the results which the energy supplied shall produce.
Mr. Ashby writes like a man who knows what he is talking about. His exposition appears to me to be essentially sound and extremely well put. I wish there were more sanitary officers of the same stamp. Mr. Spencer is a very admirable writer, and I set great store by his works. But we are very old friends, and he has endured me as a sort of "devil's advocate" for thirty-odd years. He thinks that if I can pick no holes in what he says he is safe. But I pick a great many holes, and we agree to differ.
[Between April and September, Fishery business took him out of London for no less than forty-three days, first to Cornwall, then in May to Brixham, in June to Cumberland and Yorkshire, in July to Chester, and in September to South Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. A few extracts from his letters home may be given. Just before starting, he writes from Marlborough Place to Rogate, where his wife and one of his daughters were staying:—]
April 8.
The weather turned wonderfully muggy here this morning, and turned me into wet paper. But I contrived to make a "neat and appropriate" in presenting old Hird with his testimonial. Fayrer and I were students under him forty years ago, and as we stood together it was a question which was the greyest old chap.
April 14.
I have almost given up reading the Egyptian news, I am so disgusted with the whole business. I saw several pieces of land to let for building purposes about Falmouth, but did not buy. [This was to twit his wife with her constant desire that he should buy a bit of land in the country to settle upon in their old age.]
April 18.
You don't say when you go back, so I direct this to Rogate. I shall expect to see you quite set up. We must begin to think seriously about getting out of the hurly-burly a year or two hence, and having an Indian summer together in peace and quietness.
April 15, Sunday, Falmouth.
I went out at ten o'clock this morning, and did not get back till near seven. But I got a cup of tea and some bread and butter in a country village, and by the help of that and many pipes supported nature. There was a bitter east wind blowing, but the day was lovely otherwise, and by judicious dodging in coves and creeks and sandy bays, I escaped the wind and absorbed a prodigious quantity of sunshine.
I took a volume of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" with me. I had not read the famous 15th and 16th chapters for ages, and I lay on the sands and enjoyed them properly. A lady came and spoke to me as I returned, who knew L. at Oxford very well—can't recollect her name—and her father and mother are here, and I have just been spending an hour with them. Also a man who sat by me at dinner knew me from Jack's portrait. So my incognito is not very good. I feel quite set up by my day's wanderings.
May 11, Torquay.
We went over to Brixham yesterday to hold an inquiry, getting back here to an eight o'clock or nearer nine dinner...Dalhousie has discovered that the officer now in command of the "Britannia" is somebody whom he does NOT know, so we gave up going to Dartmouth and agreed to have a lazy day here. It is the most exquisite summer weather you can imagine, and I have been basking in the sun all the morning and dreamily looking over the view of the lovely bay which is looking its best—but take it all round it does not come up to Lynton. Dalhousie is more likeable than ever, and I am just going out for a stroll with him.
June 24.
I left Keswick this morning for Cockermouth, took the chair at my meeting punctually at twelve, sat six mortal hours listening to evidence, nine-tenths of which was superfluous—and turning my lawyer faculty to account in sifting the grains of fact out of the other tenth.
June 25, Leeds.
...We had a long drive to a village called Harewood on the Wharfe. There is a big Lord lives there—Earl of Harewood—and he and his ancestors must have taken great care of their tenants, for the labourers' houses are the best I ever saw...I cut out the enclosed from the "Standard" the other day to amuse you, but have forgotten to send it before [Apparently announcing that he was about to accept a title. I have not been able to trace the paragraph.] I think we will be "Markishes," the lower grades are getting common.
June 27.
...I had a long day's inspection of the Wharfe yesterday, attended a meeting of the landed proprietors at Ottley to tell them what they must do if they would get salmon up their river...
I shall leave here to-morrow morning, go on to Skipton, whence seven or eight miles' drive will take me to Linton where there is an obstruction in the river I want to see. In the afternoon I shall come home from Skipton, but I don't know exactly by what train. As far as I see, I ought to be home by about 10.30, and you may have something light for supper, as the "course of true feeding is not likely to run smooth"—to-morrow.
[In August he went again to the corner of Surrey which he had enjoyed so much the year before. Here, in the intervals of suffering under the hands of the dentist, he worked at preparing a new edition of the "Elementary Physiology" with Sir M. Foster, alternating with fresh studies in critical theology.
The following letters reflect his occupations at this time, together with his desire, strongly combated by his friend, of resigning the Presidency of the Royal Society immediately.]
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, August 9, 1884.
My dear Foster,
I had to go up to town on Friday, and yesterday I went and had all my remaining teeth out, and came down here again with a shrewd suspicion that I was really drunk and incapable, however respectable I might look outwardly. At present I can't eat at all, and I CAN'T SMOKE WITH ANY COMFORT. For once I don't mind using italics.
Item.—I send the two cuts.
Heaven be praised! I had brought down no copy of Physiology with me, so could not attend to your proof. Got it yesterday, so I am now at your mercy.
But I have gone over the proofs now, and send you a deuce of a lot of suggestions.
Just think over additions to smell and taste to bring these into harmony.
The Saints salute you. I am principally occupied in studying the gospels.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, August 26, 1884.
Dearly Beloved,
I have been going over the ear chapter this morning, and, as you will see, have suggested some additions. Those about the lamina spiralis are certainly necessary—illus. substitution of trihedral for triangular. [(On September 8, he writes:—] "I have been laughing over my 'trihedron.' It is a regular bull.") I want also very much to get into heads of students that in sensation it is all modes of motion up to and in sensorium, and that the generation of feeling is the specific reaction of a particle of the sensorium when stimulated, just as contraction, etc., is the specific reaction of a muscular fibre when stimulated by its nerve. The psychologists make the fools of themselves they do because they have never mastered this elementary fact. But I am not sure whether I have put it well, and I wish you would give your mind to it. As for me I have not had much mind to give lately—a fortnight's spoon-meat reduced me to inanity, and I am only just picking up again. However, I walked ten miles yesterday afternoon, so there is not much the matter.
I will see what I can do about the histology business. ("Most of our examinees" [he writes on September 5] "have not a notion of what histology means at present. I think it will be good for other folks to get it into their heads that it is not all sections and carmine.") I wanted to re-write it, but I am not sure yet whether I shall be able.
Between ourselves, I have pretty well made up my mind to clear out of everything next year, Royal Society included. I loathe the thought of wasting any more of my life in endless distractions—and so long as I live in London there is no escape for me. I have half a mind to live abroad for six months in the year.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
I enclose letter from Deutsch lunatic to go before Council and be answered by Foreign Secretary.
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, August 29, 1884.
Dearly Beloved,
I enclose the proofs, having mustered up volition enough to go over them at once. I think the alterations will be great improvements. I see you interpret yourself about the movements of the larynx.
As to the histology, I shall have a shot at it, but if I do not send you manuscript in a week's time, go ahead. I am perplexed about the illustrations, but I see nothing for it but to have new ones in all the cases which you have marked. Have you anybody in Cambridge who can draw the things from preparations?
You are like Trochu with your "plan," and I am anxious to learn it. But have you reflected, 1st, that I am getting deafer and deafer, and that I cannot hear what is said at the council table and in the Society's rooms half the time people are speaking? and 2nd, that so long as I am President, so long must I be at the beck and call of everything that turns up in relation to the interests of science. So long as I am in the chair, I cannot be a faineant or refuse to do anything and everything incidental to the position.
My notion is to get away for six months, so as to break with the "world, the flesh, and the devil" of London, for all which I have conceived a perfect loathing. Six months is long enough for anybody to be forgotten twice over by everybody but personal friends.
I am contemplating a winter in Italy, but I shall keep on my house for Harry's sake and as a pied a terre in London, and in the summer come and look at you at Burlington House, as the old soap-boiler used to visit the factory. I shall feel like the man out of whom the legion of devils departed when he looked at the gambades of the two thousand pigs going at express speed for the waters of Tiberias.
By the way, did you ever read that preposterous and immoral story carefully? It is one of the best attested of the miracles...
When I have retired from the chair (which I must not scandalise) I shall write a lay sermon on the text. It will be impressive.
My wife sends her love, and says she has her eye on you. She is all for retirement.
Ever yours,
I am very sorry to hear of poor Mangles' death, but I suppose there was no other chance.
T.H.H.
[In September he hails with delight some intermission of the constant depression under which he has been labouring, and writes:—]
So long as I sit still and write or read I am all right, otherwise not good for much, which is odd, considering that I eat, drink, and sleep like a top. I suppose that everybody starts with a certain capital of life-stuff, and that expensive habits have reduced mine.
[And again:—]
I have been very shaky for the last few weeks, but I am picking up again, and hope to come up smiling for the winter's punishment.
There was nothing to drink last night, so I had some tea! with my dinner—smoked a pipe or two—slept better than usual, and woke without blue devils for the first time for a week!!! Query, is that the effect of tea or baccy? I shall try them again. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, especially in the stomach—which is altogether past finding out.
[Still, his humour would flash out in the midst of his troubles; he writes in answer to a string of semi-official inquiries from Sir J. Donnelly:—]
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming.
Sir,
In reply to your letter of the 9th August (666), I have the honour to state:—
1. That I am here.
2. That I have (a) had all my teeth out; (b) partially sprained my right thumb; (c) am very hot; (d) can't smoke with comfort; whence I may leave even official intelligence to construct an answer to your second inquiry.
3. Your third question is already answered under 2a. Not writing might be accounted for by 2b, but unfortunately the sprain is not bad enough—and "laziness, sheer laziness" is the proper answer.
I am prepared to take a solemn affidavit that I told you and Macgregor where I was coming many times, and moreover that I distinctly formed the intention of leaving my address in writing—according to those official instructions which I always fulfil.
If the intention was not carried out, its blood be upon its own head—I wash my hands of it, as Pilate did.
4. As to the question whether I WANT my letters I can sincerely declare that I don't—would in fact much rather not see them. But I suppose for all that they had better be sent.
5. I hope Macgregor's question is not a hard one—spoon-meat does not carry you beyond words of one syllable.
On Friday I signalised my last dinner for the next three weeks by going to meet the G.O.M. I sat next him, and he was as lively as a bird.
Very sorry to hear about your house. You will have to set up a van with a brass knocker and anchor on our common.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[By the beginning of September he had made up his mind that he ought before long to retire from active life. The first person to be told of his resolution was the head of the Science and Art Department, with whom he had worked so long at South Kensington.]
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, September 3, 1884.
My dear Donnelly,
I was very glad to have news of you yesterday. I gather you are thriving, notwithstanding the appalling title of your place of refuge. I should have preferred "blow the cold" to "Cold blow"—but there is no accounting for tastes.
I have been going and going to write to you for a week past to tell you of a notion that has been maturing in my mind for some time, and that I ought to let you know of before anybody else. I find myself distinctly aged—tired out body and soul, and for the first time in my life fairly afraid of the work that lies before me in the next nine months. Physically, I have nothing much to complain of except weariness—and for purely mental work, I think I am good for something yet. I am morally and mentally sick of society and societies—committees, councils—bother about details and general worry and waste of time.
I feel as if more than another year of it would be the death of me. Next May I shall be sixty, and have been thirty-one mortal years in my present office in the School. Surely I may sing my nunc dimittis with a good conscience. I am strongly inclined to announce to the Royal Society in November that the chair will be vacant that day twelve month—to resign my Government posts at mid-summer, and go away and spend the winter in Italy—so that I may be out of reach of all the turmoil of London.
The only thing I don't like is the notion of leaving you without such support as I can give in the School. No one knows better than I do how completely it is your work and how gallantly you have borne the trouble and responsibility connected with it. But what am I to do? I must give up all or nothing—and I shall certainly come to grief if I do not have a long rest.
Pray tell me what you think about it all.
My wife has written to Mrs. Donnelly and told her the news.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Read Hobbes if you want to get hard sense in good English.
Highcroft House, Milford, Godalming, September 10, 1884.
My dear Donnelly,
Many thanks for your kind letter. I feel rather like a deserter, and am glad of any crumbs of comfort.
Cartwright has done wonders for me, and I can already eat most things (I draw the line at tough crusts). I have not even my old enemy, dyspepsia—but eat, drink, and sleep like a top.
And withal I am as tired as if I were hard at work, and shirk walking.
So far as I can make out there is not the slightest sign of organic disease anywhere, but I will get Clark to overhaul me when I go back to town. Sometimes I am inclined to suspect that it is all sham and laziness—but then why the deuce should I want to sham and be lazy.
Somebody started a charming theory years ago—that as you get older and lose volition, primitive evil tendencies, heretofore mastered, come out and show themselves. A nice prospect for venerable old gentlemen!
Perhaps my crust of industry is denuded, and the primitive rock of sloth is cropping out.
But enough of this egotistical invalidism.
How wonderfully Gordon is holding his own. I should like to see him lick the Mahdi into fits before Wolseley gets up. You despise the Jews, but Gordon is more like one of the Maccabees of Bar-Kochba than any sort of modern man.
My wife sends love to both of you, and says you are (in feminine language) "a dear thing in friends."
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Home Office, September 18, 1884.
My dear Donnelly,
We have struck our camp at Milford, and I am going down to Devonshire and Cornwall to-morrow—partly on Fishery business, partly to see if I can shake myself straighter by change of air. I am possessed by seven devils—not only blue, but of the deepest indigo—and I shall try to transplant them into a herd of Cornish swine.
The only thing that comforts me is Gordon's telegrams. Did ever a poor devil of a Government have such a subordinate before? He is the most refreshing personality of this generation.
I shall be back by 30th September—and I hope in better condition for harness than now.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Replying to General Donnelly's arguments against his resigning all his official posts, he writes:—]
Dartmouth, September 21, 1884.
My dear Donnelly,
Your letters, having made a journey to Penzance (where I told my wife I should go last Friday, but did not, and brought up here instead) turned up this morning.
I am glad to have seen Lord Carlingford's letter, and I am very much obliged to him for his kind expressions. Assuredly I will not decide hastily.
Now for your letter—I am all for letters in these matters. Not that we are either of us "impatient and irritable listeners"—oh dear, no! "I have my faults," as the miser said, "but AVARICE is not one of them"—and we have our faults too, but notoriously they lie in the direction of long-suffering and apathy.
Nevertheless there is a good deal to be said for writing. MINE is itself a discipline in patience for my correspondent.
Imprimis. I scorn all your chaff about Society. My great object for years has been to keep out of it, not to go into it. Just you wait till the Misses Donnelly grow up—I trust there may be five or ten of them—and see what will happen to you. But apart from this, so long as I live in London, so long will it be practically impossible for me to keep out of dining and giving of dinners—and you know that just as well as I do.
2nd. I mean to give up the Presidency, but don't see my way to doing so next St. Andrew's Day. I wish I could—but I must deal fairly by the Society.
3rd. The suggestion of the holiday at Christmas is the most sensible thing you have said. I could get six weeks under the new arrangement ("Botany," January and half February) without interfering with my lectures at all. But then there is the blessed Home Office to consider. There might be civil war between the net men and the rod men in six weeks, all over the country, without my mild influence.
4th. I must give up my Inspectorship. The mere thought of having to occupy myself with the squabbles of these idiots of country squireens and poachers makes me sick—and is, I believe, the chief cause of the morbid state of my mucous membranes.
All this week shall I be occupied in hearing one Jackass contradict another Jackass about questions which are of no importance.
I would almost as soon be in the House of Commons.
Now see how reasonable I am. I agree with you (a) that I must get out of the hurly-burly of society; (b) that I must get out of the Presidency; (c) that I must get out of the Inspectorship, or rather I agree with myself on that matter, you having expressed no opinion.
That being so, it seems to me that I must, willy-nilly, give up South Kensington. For—and here is the point you had in your mind when you lamented your possible impatience about something I might say—I swear by all the gods that are not mine, nothing shall induce me to apply to the Treasury for anything but the pound of flesh to which I am entitled.
Nothing ever disgusted me more than being the subject of a battle with the Treasury over the Home Office appointment—which I should have thrown up if I could have done so with decency to Harcourt.
It's just as well for me I couldn't, but it left a nasty taste.
I don't want to leave the School, and should be very glad to remain as Dean, for many reasons. But what I don't see is how I am to do that and make my escape from the thousand and one entanglements—which seem to me to come upon me quite irrespectively of any office I hold—or how I am to go on living in London as a (financially) decayed philosopher.
I really see nothing for it but to take my pension and go and spend the winter of 1885-86 in Italy. I hear one can be a regular swell there on 1000 pounds a year.
Six months' absence is oblivion, and I shall take to a new line of work, and one which will greatly meet your approval.
As to X— I am not a-going to—not being given to hopeless enterprises. That rough customer at Dublin is the only man who occurs to me. I can't think of his name, but that is part of my general unfitness.
...I suppose I shall chaff somebody on my death-bed. But I am out of heart to think of the end of the lunches in the sacred corner.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[On the 21st he writes home about the steps he had begun to take with respect to giving up part of his official work.]
I have had a long letter from Donnelly. He had told Lord Carlingford of my plans, and encloses a letter from Lord Carlingford to him, trusting I will not hastily decide, and with some pretty phrases about "support and honour" I give to the School. Donnelly is very anxious I should hold on to the School, if only as Dean, and wants me in any case to take two months' holiday at Christmas. Of course he looks on the Royal Society as the root of all evil. Foster per contra looks on the School as the deuce, but would have me stick by the Royal Society like grim death.
The only moral obligation that weighs with me is that which I feel under, to deal fairly by Donnelly and the School. You must not argue against this, as rightly or wrongly I am certain that if I deserted the School hastily, or if I did not do all that I can to requite Donnelly for the plucky way in which he has stood by it and me for the last dozen years, I should never shake off the feeling that I had behaved badly. And as I am much given to brooding over my misdeeds, I don't want you to increase the number of my hell-hounds. You must help me in this...and if I am Quixotic, play Sancho for the nonce.
CHAPTER 2.16.
1884-1885.
[Towards the end of September he went to the West country to try to improve his health before the session began again in London. Thus he writes, on September 26, to Mr. W.F. Collier, who had invited him to Horrabridge, and on the 27th to Sir M. Foster:—]
Fowey, September 26, 1884.
Many thanks for the kind offer in your letter, which has followed me here. But I have not been on the track you might naturally have supposed I had followed. I have been trying to combine hygiene with business, and betook myself, in the first place, to Dartmouth, afterwards to Totnes, and then came on here. From this base of operations I could easily reach all my places of meeting. To-morrow I have to go to Bodmin, but I shall return here, and if the weather is fine (raining cats and dogs at present), I may remain a day or two to take in stock of fresh air before commencing the London campaign.
I am very glad to hear that your health has improved so much. You must feel quite proud to be such an interesting "case." If I set a good example myself I would venture to warn you against spending five shillings worth of strength on the ground of improvement to the extent of half-a-crown.
I am not quite clear as to the extent to which my children have colonised Woodtown at present. But it seems to me that there must be three or four Huxleys (free or in combination, as the chemists say) about the premises. Please give them the paternal benediction; and with very kind remembrances to Mrs. Collier, believe me,
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Fowey Hotel, Fowey, Cornwall, September 27, 1884.
My dear Foster,
I return your proof, with a few trifling suggestions here and there...
I fancy we may regard the award as practically settled, and a very good award it will be.
The address is beginning to loom in the distance. I have half a mind to devote some part of it to a sketch of the recent novelties in histology touching the nucleus question and molecular physiology.
My wife sent me your letter. By all means let us have a confabulation as soon as I get back and settle what is to be done with the "aged P."
I am not sure that I shall be at home before the end of the week. My lectures do not begin till next week, and the faithful Howes can start the practical work without me, so that if I find myself picking up any good in these parts, I shall probably linger here or hereabouts. But a good deal will depend on the weather—inside as well as outside. I am convinced that the prophet Jeremiah (whose works I have been studying) must have been a flatulent dyspeptic—there is so much agreement between his views and mine.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[But the net result of this holiday is summed up in a note, of October 5, to Sir M. Foster:—]
I got better while I was in Cornwall and Wales, and, at present, I don't think there is anything the matter with me except a profound disinclination to work. I never before knew the proper sense of the term "vis inertiae."
[And writing in the same strain to Sir J. Evans, he adds:]
But I have a notion that if I do not take a long spell of absolute rest before long I shall come to grief. However, getting into harness again may prove a tonic—it often does, e.g. in the case of cab-horses.
[Three days later he found himself ordered to leave England immediately, under pain of a hopeless breakdown.]
4 Marlborough Place, October 8, 1884.
My dear Foster,
We shall be very glad to see you on Friday. I came to the conclusion that I had better put myself in Clark's hands again, and he has been here this evening overhauling me for an hour.
He says there is nothing wrong except a slight affection of the liver and general nervous depression, but that if I go on the latter will get steadily worse and become troublesome. He insists on my going away to the South and doing nothing but amuse myself for three or four months.
This is the devil to pay, but I cannot honestly say that I think he is wrong. Moreover, I promised the wife to abide by his decision.
We will talk over what is to be done.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Athenaeum Club, October 13, 1884.
My dear Morley,
I heartily wish I could be with you on the 25th, but it is aliter visum to somebody, whether Dis or Diabolis, I can't say.
The fact is, the day after I saw you I had to put myself in Clark's hands, and he ordered me to knock off work and go and amuse myself for three or four months, under penalties of an unpleasant kind.
So I am off to Venice next Wednesday. It is the only tolerably warm place accessible to any one whose wife will not let him go within reach of cholera just at present.
If I am a good boy I am to come back all sound, as there is nothing organic the matter; but I have had enough of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and shall extricate myself from that Trinity as soon as may be. Perhaps I may get within measurable distance of Berkeley ("English Men of Letters" edited by J.M.) before I die!
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Athenaeum Club, October 18, 1884.
My dear Foster,
Best thanks for your letter and route. I am giving you a frightful quantity of trouble; but as the old woman (Irish) said to my wife, when she gave her a pair of my old trousers for her husband, "I hope it may be made up to ye in a better world."
She is clear, and I am clear, that there is no reason on my part for not holding on if the Society really wishes I should. But, of course, I must make it easy for the Council to get rid of a faineant President, if they prefer that course.
I wrote to Evans an unofficial letter two days ago, and have had a very kind, straightforward letter from him. He is quite against my resignation. I shall see him this afternoon here. I had to go to my office (Fishery).
Clark's course of physic is lightening my abdominal troubles, but I am preposterously weak with a kind of shabby broken-down indifference to everything.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The "Indian summer" to which he looked forward was not to be reached without passing through a season of more than equinoctial storms and tempests. His career had reached its highest point only to be threatened with a speedy close. He himself did not exceed more than two or three years' longer lease of life, and went by easy stages to Venice, where he spent eight days.] "No place," [he writes,] "could be better fitted for a poor devil as sick in body and mind as I was when I got there."]
Venice itself [he writes to Dr. Foster] just suited me. I chartered a capital gondolier, and spent most of my time exploring the Lagoons. Especially I paid a daily visit to the Lido, and filled my lungs with the sea air, and rejoiced in the absence of stinks. For Venice is like her population (at least the male part of it), handsome but odorous. Did you notice how handsome the young men are and how little beauty there is among the women?
I stayed eight days in Venice and then returned by easy stages first to Padua, where I wanted to see Giotto's work, then to Verona, and then here (Lugano). Verona delighted me more than anything I have seen, and we will spend two other days there as we go back.
As for myself, I really have no positive complaint now. I eat well and I sleep well, and I should begin to think I was malingering, if it were not for a sort of weariness and deadness that hangs about me, accompanied by a curious nervous irritability.
I expect that this is the upshot of the terrible anxiety I have had about my daughter M—.
I would give a great deal to be able to escape facing the wedding, for my nervous system is in the condition of that of a frog under opium.
But my R. must not go off without the paternal benediction.
[For the first three weeks he was alone, his wife staying to make preparations for the third daughter's wedding on November 6th, for which occasion he was to return, afterwards taking her abroad with him. Unfortunately, just as he started, news was brought him at the railway station that his second daughter, whose brilliant gifts and happy marriage seemed to promise everything for her future, had been stricken by the beginnings of an insidious and, as he too truly feared, hopeless disease. Nothing could have more retarded his own recovery. It was a bitter grief, referred to only in his most intimate letters, and, indeed, for a time kept secret even from the other members of the family. Nothing was to throw a shade over the brightness of the approaching wedding.
But on his way home, he writes of that journey:—]
I had to bear my incubus, not knowing what might come next, until I reached Luzern, when I telegraphed for intelligence, and had my mind set at ease as to the measures which were being adopted.
I am a tough subject, and have learned to bear a good deal without crying out; but those four-and-twenty hours between London and Luzern have taught me that I have yet a good deal to learn in the way of "grinning and bearing."
[And although he writes,] "I would give a good deal not to face a lot of people next week,"..."I have the feelings of a wounded wild beast and hate the sight of all but my best friends," [he hid away his feelings, and made this the occasion for a very witty speech, of which, alas! I remember nothing but a delightfully mixed polyglot exordium in French, German, and Italian, the result, he declared, of his recent excursion to foreign parts, which had obliterated the recollection of his native speech.
During his second absence he appointed his youngest daughter secretary to look after necessary correspondence, about which he forwarded instructions from time to time.
The chief matters of interest in the letters of this period are accounts of health and travel, sometimes serious, more often jesting, for the letters were generally written in the bright intervals between his dark days: business of the Royal Society, and the publication of the new edition of the "Lessons in Elementary Physiology," upon which he and Dr. Foster had been at work during the autumn. But the four months abroad were not productive of very great good; the weather was unpropitious for an invalid—] "as usual, a quite unusual season" [—while his mind was oppressed by the reports of his daughter's illness. Under these circumstances recovery was slow and travel comfortless; all the Englishman's love of home breaks out in his letter of April 8, when he set foot again on English soil.]
Hotel de Londres, Verona, November 18, 1884.
Dearest Babs,
1. Why, indeed, do they ask for more? Wait till they send a letter of explanation, and then say that I am out of the country and not expected back for several years.
2. I wholly decline to send in any name to Athenaeum. But don't mention it.
3. Society of Arts be bothered, also —.
4. Write to Science and Art Club to engage three of the prettiest girls as partners for evening. They will look very nice as wallflowers.
5. Penny dinners? declined with thanks.
6. Ask the meeting of Herts N.H. Society to come here after next Thursday, when we shall be in Bologna.
Business first, my sweet girl secretary with the curly front; and now for private affairs, though as your mother is covering reams with them, I can only mention a few of the more important which she will forget.
The first is that she has a habit of hiding my shirts so that I am unable to find them when we go away, and the chambermaid comes rushing after us with the garment shamefully displayed.
The second is that she will cover all the room with her things, and I am obliged to establish a military frontier on the table.
The third is that she insists on my buying an Italian cloak. So you will see your venerable pater equipped in this wise. [Sketch of a cloaked figure like a brigand of melodrama.] except in these two particulars, she behaves fairly well to me.
In point of climate, so far, Italy has turned out a fraud. We dare not face Venice, and Mr. Fenili will weep over my defection; but that is better than that we should cough over his satisfaction.
I am quite pleased to hear of the theological turn of the family. It must be a drop of blood from one of your eight great-grandfathers, for none of your ancestors that I have known would have developed in this way.
...Best love to Nettie and Harry. Tell the former that cabbages do not cost 5 shillings apiece, and the latter that 11 P.M. is the cloture.
Ever your affectionate Pater.
Hotel Brittanique, Naples, November 30, 1884.
My dear Foster,
Which being St. Andrew's Day, I think the expatriated P. ought to give you some account of himself.
We had a prosperous journey to Locarno, but there plumped into bitter cold weather, and got chilled to the bone as the only guests in the big hotel, though they did their best to make us comfortable. I made a shot at bronchitis, but happily failed, and got all right again.
Pallanza was as bad. At Milan temperature at noon 39 degrees F., freezing at night. Verona much the same. Under these circumstances, we concluded to give up Venice and made for Bologna. There found it rather colder. Next Ravenna, where it snowed. However, we made ourselves comfortable in the queer hotel, and rejoiced in the mosaics of that sepulchral marsh.
At Bologna I had assurances that the Sicilian quarantine was going to be taken off at once, and as the reports of the railway travelling and hotels in Calabria were not encouraging, I determined to make for Naples, or rather, by way of extra caution, for Castellamare. All the way to Ancona the Apennines were covered with snow, and much of the plain also. Twenty miles north of Ancona, however, the weather changed to warm summer, and we rejoiced accordingly. At Foggia I found that the one decent hotel that used to exist was non-extant, so we went on to Naples.
Arriving at 10.30 very tired, got humbugged by a lying Neapolitan, who palmed himself off as the commissaire of the Hotel Bristol, and took us into an omnibus belonging to another hotel, that of the Bristol being, as he said, "broke." After a drive of three miles or so got to the Bristol and found it shut up! After a series of adventures and a good deal of strong language on my part, knocked up the people here, who took us in, though the hotel was in reality shut up like most of those in Naples. [Owing to the cholera and consequent dearth of travellers.]
As usual the weather is "unusual"—hot in the sun, cold round the corner and at night. Moreover, I found by yesterday's paper that the beastly Sicilians won't give up their ten days' quarantine. So all chance of getting to Catania or Palermo is gone. I am not sure whether we shall stay here for some time or go to Rome, but at any rate we shall be here a week.
Dohrn is away getting subsidies in Germany for his new ship. We inspected the Aquarium this morning. Eisig and Mayer are in charge. Madame is a good deal altered in the course of the twelve years that have elapsed since I saw her, but says she is much better than she was.
As for myself, I got very much better when in North Italy in spite of the piercing cold. But the fatigue of the journey from Ancona here, and the worry at the end of it, did me no good, and I have been seedy for a day or two. However, I am picking up.
I see one has to be very careful here. We had a lovely drive yesterday out Pausilippo, but the wife got chilled and was shaky this morning. However, we got very good news of our daughter this evening, and that has set us both up.
My blessing for to-morrow will reach you after date. Let us hear how everything went off.
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 nutshell...
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 nobility.
[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 Cumae, 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 Assistant 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.
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
Hotel Victoria, Via dei due Macelli, January 16, 1885.
My dear Foster,
It seems to me that I am giving my friends a world of trouble...
I have had a bad week of it, and the night before last was under the impression that I was about to succumb shortly to a complication of maladies, and moreover, that a wooden box that my wife had just had made would cost thousands of pounds in the way of payment for extra luggage before we reached home. I do not know which hypochondriacal possession was the most depressing. I can laugh at it now, but I really was extraordinarily weak and ill.
We had made up our minds to bolt from Rome to Florence at once, when I suddenly got better, and to-day am all right. So as we hear of snow at Florence we shall stop where we are. It has been raining cats and dogs here, and the Tiber rose 40 feet and inundated the low grounds. But "cantabit elevatus"; it can't touch us, and at any rate the streets are washed clean.
The climate is mild here. We have a capital room and all the sunshine that is to be had, plus a good fire when needful, and at worst one can always get a breezy walk on the Pincio hard by.
However, about the leave. Am I to do anything or nothing? I am dying to get back to steady occupation and English food, and the sort of regimen one can maintain in one's own house. On the other hand, I stand in fear of the bitter cold of February and early March, and still more of the thousand and one worries of London outside one's work. So I suppose it will be better if I keep away till Easter, or at any rate to the end of March. But I must hear something definite from the Home Office. I have written to Donnelly to the same effect. My poor Marian's relapse did not do us any good, for all that I expected it. However the last accounts are very favourable.
I wrote to Evans the other day about a re-arrangement of the duties of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary. I thought it was better to write to him than to you on that subject, and I begged him to discuss the matter with the officers. It is quite absurd that Stokes and you should waste your time in press drudgery.
We are very prudent here, and the climate suits us both, especially my wife, who is so vigorous that I depute her to go and see the Palazzi, and tell me all about them when she comes back. Old Rome is endlessly interesting to me, and I can always potter about and find occupation. I think I shall turn antiquary—it's just the occupation for a decayed naturalist, though you need not tell the Treasure I say so.
With our love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Hotel Victoria, Via dei due Macelli, January 18, 1885.
My dear Donnelly,
Official sentence of exile for two months more (up to May 12) arrived yesterday. So if my lords will be so kind as to concur I shall be able to disport myself with a clear conscience. I hope their lordships won't think that I am taking things too easy in not making a regular application, and I will do so if you think it better. But if it had rested with me I think I should have got back in February and taken my chance. That energetic woman that owns me, and Michael Foster, however, have taken the game out of my hands, and I have nothing to do but to submit.
On the whole I feel it is wise. I shall have more chance if I escape not only the cold but the bother of London for a couple of months more.
I was very bad a week ago, but I have taken to dosing myself with quinine, and either that or something else has given me a spurt for the last two days, so that I have been more myself than any time since I left, and begin to think that there is life in the old dog yet. If one could only have some fine weather! To-day there is the first real sunshine we have been favoured with for a week.
We are just back from a great function at St. Peter's. It is the festa of St. Peter's chair, and the ex-dragoon Cardinal Howard has been fugleman in the devout adorations addressed to that venerable article of furniture, which, as you ought to know, but probably don't, is inclosed in a bronze double and perched up in a shrine of the worst possible taste in the Tribuna of St. Peter's. The display of man-millinery and lace was enough to fill the lightest-minded woman with envy, and a general concert—some of the music very good—prevented us from feeling dull, while the ci-devant guardsman—big, burly, and bullet-headed—made God and then eat him.
[A reminiscence of Browning in "The Bishop Orders his Tomb":—
And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long.]
I must have a strong strain of Puritan blood in me somewhere, for I am possessed with a desire to arise and slay the whole brood of idolators whenever I assist at one of these ceremonies. You will observe that I am decidedly better, and have a capacity for a good hatred still.
The last news about Gordon is delightful. The chances are he will rescue Wolseley yet.
With our love.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[To his eldest son.]
Rome, January 20, 1885.
I need hardly tell you that I find Rome wonderfully interesting, and the attraction increases the longer one stays. I am obliged to take care of myself and do but little in the way of sight-seeing, but by directing one's attention to particular objects one can learn a great deal without much trouble. I begin to understand Old Rome pretty well, and I am quite learned in the Catacombs, which suit me, as a kind of Christian fossils out of which one can reconstruct the body of the primitive Church. She was a simple maiden enough and vastly more attractive than the bedizened old harridan of the modern Papacy, so smothered under the old clothes of Paganism which she has been appropriating for the last fifteen centuries that Jesus of Nazareth would not know her if he met her.
I have been to several great papistical functions—among others to the festa of the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter's last Sunday, and I confess I am unable to understand how grown men can lend themselves to such elaborate tomfooleries—nothing but mere fetish worship—in forms of execrably bad taste, devised, one would think, by a college of ecclesiastical man-milliners for the delectation of school-girls. It is curious to notice that intellectual and aesthetic degradation go hand in hand. You have only to go from the Pantheon to St. Peter's to understand the great abyss which lies between the Roman of paganism and the Roman of the papacy. I have seen nothing grander than Agrippa's work—the popes have stripped it to adorn their own petrified lies, but in its nakedness it has a dignity with which there is nothing to compare in the ill-proportioned, worse decorated tawdry stone mountain on the Vatican.
The best thing, from an aesthetic point of view, that could be done with Rome would be to destroy everything except St. Paolo fuori le Mure, of later date than the fourth century.
But you will have had enough of my scrawl, and your mother wants to add something. She is in great force, and is gone prospecting to some Palazzo or other to tell me if it is worth seeing.
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
Hotel Victoria, Rome, Via dei due Macelli, January 25, 1885.
My dear Donnelly,
Best thanks for the telegram which arrived the day before yesterday and set my mind at ease.
I have been screwing up the old machine which I inhabit, first with quinine and now with a form of strychnia (which Clark told me to take) for the last week, and I have improved a good deal—whether post hoc or proper hoc in the present uncertainty of medical science I decline to give any opinion.
The weather is very cold for Rome—ice an eighth of an inch thick in the Ludovisi Garden the other morning, and every night it freezes, but mostly fine sunshine in the day. (This is a remarkable sentence in point of grammar, but never mind.) The day before yesterday we came out on the Campagna, and it then was as fresh and bracing a breeze as you could get in Northumberland.
We are very comfortable and quiet here, and I hold on—till it gets warmer. I am told that Florence is detestable at present. As for London, our accounts make us shiver and cough.
News about the dynamiting gentry just arrived. A little more mischief and there will be an Irish massacre in some of our great towns. If an Irish Parnellite member were to be shot for every explosion I believe the thing would soon stop. It would be quite just, as they are practically accessories.
I think — would do it if he were Prime Minister. Nothing like a thorough Radical for arbitrary acts of power!
I must be getting better, as my disgust at science has ceased, and I have begun to potter about Roman geology and prehistoric work. You may be glad to learn that there is no evidence that the prehistoric Romans had Roman noses. But as I cannot find any particular prevalence of them among the modern—or ancient except for Caesar—Romani, the fact is not so interesting as it might appear, and I would not advise you to tell — of it.
Behold a Goak—feeble, but promising of better things.
My wife unites with me with love to Mrs. Donnelly and yourself.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letter refers to the fourth edition of the "Lessons in Elementary Physiology," in the preparation of which Dr. Foster had been helping during the summer:—]
Hotel Victoria, Rome, Via dei due Macelli, February 1, 1885.
My dear Foster,
Anything more disgraceful than the way in which I have left your letter of more than a fortnight ago unanswered, I don't know. I thought the wife had written about the leave (and she thought I had, as she has told you), but I knew I had not answered the questions about the title, still less considered the awful incubus (x 10,000 dinners by hepatic deep objection) of the preface.
There is such a thing as justice in this world—not much of it, but still some—and it is partly on that ground and partly because I want you, in view of future eventualities, to have a copyright in the book, that I proposed we should join our names.
Of course, if you would really rather not, for any good reason you may have, I have nothing further to say. But I don't think that the sentimental reason is a good one, and unless you have a better, I wish you would let the original proposal stand.
However, having stated the case afresh I leave it for you to say yes or no, and shall abide by your decision without further discussion.
As to the Preface. If I am to write it, please send me the old Preface. I think the book was published in 1864, or was it 1866? [In 1866.] and it ought to be come of age or nearly so.
You might send me the histological chapter, not that I am going to alter anything, but I should like to see how it looks. I will knock the Preface off at once, as soon as I hear from you.
The fact is, I have been much better in the course of the last few days. The weather has been very sunshiny but cool and bracing, and I have taken to quinine. Tried Clark's strychnine, but it did not answer so well.
I am in hopes that I have taken a turn for the better, and that there may yet be the making of something better than a growling hypochondriacal old invalid about me. But I am most sincerely glad that I am not obliged to be back 10 days hence—there is not much capital accumulated yet.
I find that the Italians have been doing an immense deal in prehistoric archaeology of late years, and far more valuable work than I imagined. But it is very difficult to get at, and as Loescher's head man told me the other day when I asked for an Italian book published in Rome, "Well, you see it is so difficult to get Roman books in Rome."
I am ashamed to be here two months without paying my respects to the Lincei, and I am going to-day. The unaccountable creatures meet at 1 o'clock—lunch time!
Best love from my wife and self to Mrs. Foster and yourself.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Rome, February 14, 1885.
My dear Foster,
Voila the preface—a work of great labour! and which you may polish and alter as you like, ALL BUT THE LAST PARAGRAPH. You see I have caved in. I like your asking to have your own way "for once." My wife takes the same line, does whatever she pleases, and then declares I leave her no initiative.
If I talk of public affairs, I shall simply fall a-blaspheming. I see the "Times" holds out about Gordon, and does not believe he is killed. Poor fellow! I wish I could believe that his own conviction (as he told me) is true, and that death only means a larger government for him to administer. Anyhow, it is better to wind up that way than to go growling out one's existence as a ventose hypochondriac, dependent upon the condition of a few square inches of mucous membrane for one's heaven or hell.
As to private affairs, I think I am getting solidly, but very slowly, better. In fact, I can't say there is much the matter with me, except that I am weaker than I ought to be, and that a sort of weary indolence hangs about me like a fog. M— is wonderfully better, and her husband has taken a house for them at Norwood. If I could be rejoiced at anything, I should be at that; but it seems to me as if since that awful journey when I first left England, "the springs was broke," as that vagabond tout said at Naples.
It has turned very cold here, and we are uncertain when to leave for Florence, but probably next week. The Carnival is the most entirely childish bosh I have ever met with among grown people. Want to finish this now for post, but will write again speedily. Moseley's proposition is entirely to my mind, and I have often talked to it. The Royal Society rooms ought to be house-of-call and quasi-club for all F.R.S. in London.
Wife is bonny, barring a cold. It is as much as I can do to prevent her sporting a mask and domino!
With best love,
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Hotel Victoria, Rome, Via dei due Macelli, February 16, 1885.
My dear Donnelly,
I have had it on my mind to write to you for the last week—ever since the hideous news about Gordon reached us. But partly from a faint hope that his wonderful fortune might yet have stood him in good stead, and partly because there is no great satisfaction in howling with rage, I have abstained.
Poor fellow! I wonder if he has entered upon the "larger sphere of action" which he told me was reserved for him in case of such a trifling accident as death. Of all the people whom I have met with in my life, he and Darwin are the two in whom I have found something bigger than ordinary humanity—an unequalled simplicity and directness of purpose—a sublime unselfishness.
Horrible as it is to us, I imagine that the manner of his death was not unwelcome to himself. Better wear out than rust out, and better break than wear out. The pity is that he could not know the feeling of his countrymen about him.
I shall be curious to see what defence the super-ingenious Premier has to offer for himself in Parliament. I suppose, as usual, the question will drift into a brutal party fight, when the furious imbecility of the Tories will lead them to spoil their case. That is where we are; on the one side, timid imbecility "waiting for instructions from the constituencies"; furious imbecility on the other, looking out for party advantage. Oh! for a few months of William Pitt.
I see you think there may be some hope that Gordon has escaped yet. I am afraid the last telegram from Wolseley was decisive. We have been watching the news with the greatest anxiety, and it has seemed only to get blacker and blacker.
...
[Touching a determined effort to alter the management of certain Technical Education business.]
I trust he may succeed, and that the unfitness of these people to be trusted with anything may be demonstrated. I regret I am not able to help in the good work. Get the thing out of their hands as fast as possible. The prospect of being revenged for all the beastly dinners I sat out and all the weary discussions I attended to no purpose, really puts a little life into me. Apropos of that, I am better in various ways, but curiously weak and washed out; and I am afraid that not even the prospect of a fight would screw me up for long. I don't understand it, unless I have some organic disease of which nobody can find any trace (and in which I do not believe myself), or unless the terrible trouble we have had has accelerated the advent of old age. I rather suspect that the last speculation is nearest the truth. You will be glad to hear that my poor girl is wonderfully better, and, indeed, to all appearance quite well. They are living quietly at Norwood.
I shall be back certainly by the 12th April, probably before. We have found very good quarters here, and have waited for the weather to get warmer before moving; but at last we have made up our minds to begin nomadising again next Friday. We go to Florence, taking Siena, and probably Pisa, on our way, and reaching Florence some time next week. Address—Hotel Milano, Via Cerretani.
For the last week the Carnival has been going on. It strikes me as the most elaborate and dreariest tomfoolery I have ever seen, but I doubt if I am in the humour to judge it fairly. It is only just to say that it entertains my vigorous wife immensely. I have been expecting to see her in mask and domino, but happily this is the last day, and there is no sign of any yet. I have never seen any one so much benefited by rest and change as she is, and that is a good thing for both of us.
After Florence we shall probably make our way to Venice, and come home by the Lago di Garda and Germany. But I will let you know when our plans are settled.
With best love from we two to you two.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[To his youngest daughter.]
Siena, February 23, 1885.
Dearest Ethel,
The cutting you sent me contains one of the numerous "goaks" of a Yankee performing donkey who is allowed to disport himself in one of the New York papers. I confess it is difficult to see the point of the joke, but there is one if you look close. I don't think you need trouble to enlighten the simple inquirer. He probably only wanted the indignant autograph which he won't get.
The Parker Museum must take care of itself. The public ought to support it, not the men of science.
As a grandfather, I am ashamed of my friends who are of the same standing; but I think they would take it as a liberty if, in accordance with your wish, I were to write to expostulate.
After your mother had exhausted the joys of the Carnival, she permitted me to leave Rome for this place, where we arrived last Friday evening. My impression is that if we had stayed in Rome much longer we should never have left. There is something idle and afternoony about the air which whittles away one's resolution.
The change here is wonderfully to the good. We are perched more than a thousand feet above the sea, looking over the Tuscan hills for twenty or thirty miles every way. It is with them enough sit with the window wide open and yet the air is prior and more bracing than in any place we have visited. Moreover, the hotel (Grande Albergo) is very comfortable.
Then there is one of the most wonderful cathedrals to be seen in all North Italy—free from all the gaudy finery and atrocious bad taste which have afflicted me all over South Italy. The town is the quaintest place imaginable—built of narrow streets on several steep hills to start with, and then apparently stirred up with a poker to prevent monotony of effect.
Moreover, there is Catherine of Siena, of whom I am reading a delightful Catholic life by an Italian father of the Oratory. She died 500 years ago, but she was one of twenty-five children, and I think some of them must have settled in Kent and allied themselves with the Heathorns. Otherwise, I don't see why her method of writing to the Pope should have been so much like the way my daughters (especially the youngest) write to their holy father.
I wish she had not had the stigmata—I am afraid there must have been a LEETLE humbug about the business—otherwise she was a very remarkable person, and you need not be ashamed of the relationship.
I suppose we shall get to Florence some time this week; the address was sent to you before we left Rome—Hotel Milano, Via Cerretani. But I am loth to leave this lovely air in which, I do believe, I am going to pick up at last. The misfortune is that we did not intend to stay here more than three days, and so had letters sent to Florence. Everybody told us it would be very cold, and, as usual, everybody told taradiddles.
M— unites in fondest love to you all.
Ever your loving father,
T.H. Huxley.
[To his son.]
Siena, February 25, 1885.
...If you had taken to physical science it would have been delightful for me for us to have worked together, and I am half inclined to take to history that I may earn that pleasure. I could give you some capital wrinkles about the physical geography and prehistoric history (excuse bull) of Italy for a Roman History primer! Joking apart, I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it a process of evolution—intelligible to the young. The Italians have been doing wonders in the last twenty years in prehistoric archaeology, and I have been greatly interested in acquainting myself with the general results of their work.
We moved here last Friday, and only regret that the reports of the weather prevented us from coming sooner. More than 1000 feet above the sea, in the midst of a beautiful hill country, and with the clearest and purist air we have met with in Italy, Siena is perfectly charming. The window is wide open and I look out upon a vast panorama, something like that of the Surrey hills, only on a larger scale—"Raw Siena," "Burnt Siena," in the foreground, where the colour of the soil is not hidden by the sage green olive foliage, purple mountains in the distance.
The old town itself is a marvel of picturesque crookedness, and the cathedral a marvel. M. and I have been devoting ourselves this morning to St. Catarina and Sodoma's pictures.
I am reading a very interesting life of her by Capecelatro, and if my liver continues out of order, may yet turn Dominican.
However, the place seems to be doing me good, and I may yet, like another person, decline to be a monk.
[To his daughter, Mrs. Roller.]
March 8.
The great merit of Rome is that you have never seen the end of it. M. and I have not worked very hard at our galleries and churches, but I have got so far as a commencing dislike for the fine arts generally. Perhaps after a week or two I shall take to science out of sheer weariness.
Hotel de Milano, Florence, March 12, 1885.
My dear Foster,
My wife and I send you our hearty good wishes (antedated by four days). I am not sure we ought not to offer our best thanks to your mother for providing us with as staunch a friend as people ever were blessed with. It is possible that she did not consider that point nine and forty years ago; but we are just as grateful as if she had gone through it all on our own account.
We start on our way homeward to-morrow or next day, by Bologna to Venice, and then to England by the way we came—taking it easy. The Brenner is a long way round and I hear very cold. I think we may stay a few days at Lugano, which I liked very much when there before. Florence is very charming, but there is not much to be said for the climate. My wife has been bothered with sore throat, to which she is especially liable, ever since we have been here. Old residents console her with the remark that Florentine sore throat is a regular thing in the spring. The alternations of heat and cold are detestable. So we stand thus—Naples, bad for both—Rome, good for her, bad for me—Florence, bad for her, baddish for me. Venice has to be tried, but stinks and mosquitoes are sure to render it impossible as soon as the weather is warm. Siena is the only place that suited both of us, and I don't think that would exactly answer to live in. Nothing like foreign travel for making one content with home.
I shall have to find a country lot suited to my fortunes when I am paid off. Couldn't you let us have your gardener's cottage? my wife understands poultry and I shall probably have sufficient strength to open the gate and touch my hat to the Dons as they drive up. I am afraid E. is not steady enough for waiting-maid or I would offer her services.
...I am rejoiced to hear that the lessons and the questions are launched. [The new edition of the "Elementary Physiology."] They loom large to me as gigantic undertakings, in which a dim and speculative memory suggests I once took part, but probably it is a solar myth, and I am too sluggish to feel much compunction for the extra trouble you have had.
Perhaps I shall revive when my foot is on my native heath in the shady groves of the Evangelist. [St. John's Wood.]
My wife is out photograph hunting—nothing diminishes her activity—otherwise she would join in love and good wishes to Mrs. Foster and yourself.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[The two worst and most depressing periods of this vain pilgrimage in pursuit of health were the stay at Rome and at Florence. At the latter town he was inexpressibly ill and weak; but his daily life was brightened by the sympathy and active kindness of Sir Spencer Walpole, who would take him out for short walks, talking as little as possible, and shield him from the well-meant but tactless attentions of visitors who would try to] "rouse him and do him good" [by long talks on scientific questions.
His physical condition, indeed, was little improved.]
As for my unsatisfactory carcass [he writes on March 6, to Sir J. Donnelly], there seems nothing the matter with it now except that the brute objects to work. I eat well, drink well, sleep well, and have no earthly ache, pain or discomfort. I can walk for a couple of hours or more without fatigue. But half an hour's talking wearies me inexpressibly, and "saying a few words," would finish me for the day. For all that, I do not mean to confess myself finally beaten till I have had another try.
[That is to say, he was still bent upon delivering his regular course of lectures at South Kensington as soon as he returned, in spite of the remonstrances of his wife and his friends.
In the same letter he contrasts Florence with Siena and its] "fresh, elastic air," [its] "lovely country that reminds one of a magnified version of the Surrey weald." [The Florentine climate was trying. (A week later he writes to Sir J. Evans—] "I begin to look forward with great satisfaction to the equability of English weather—to that dear little island where doors and windows shut close—where fires warm without suffocating—where the chief business of the population in the streets is something else than expectoration—and where I shall never see fowl with salad again. You perceive I am getting better by this prolonged growl...But half an hour's talking knocks me up, and I am such an effete creature that I think of writing myself p.R.S. With a small p.") "And then there is the awful burden of those miles of 'treasures of art.'" [He had been to the Uffizii;] "and there is the Pitti staring me in the face like drear fate. Why can't I have the moral courage to come back and say I haven't seen it? I should be the most distinguished of men."
[There is another reference to Gordon:—]
What an awful muddle you are all in in the bright little, tight little island. I hate the sight of the English papers. The only good thing that has met my eye lately is a proposal to raise a memorial to Gordon. I want to join in whatever is done, and unless it will be time enough when I return, I shall be glad if you will put me down for 5 pounds to whatever is the right scheme.
[The following to his daughter, Mrs. Roller, describes the stay in Florence.]
Hotel de Milano, Florence, March 7, 1885.
We have been here more than a week and have discovered two things, first that the wonderful "art treasures," of which all the world has heard, are a sore burden to the conscience if you don't go to see them, and an awful trial to the back and legs if you do; and thirdly, that the climate is productive of a peculiar kind of relaxed throat. M.'s throat discovered it, but on inquiry, it proved to be a law of nature, at least, so the oldest inhabitants say. We called on them to-day.
But it is a lovely place for all that, far better than Rome as a place to live in, and full of interesting things. We had a morning at the Uffizii the other day, and came back with minds enlarged and backs broken. To-morrow we contemplate attacking the Pitti, and doubt not the result will be similar. By the end of the week our minds will probably be so large, and the small of the back so small that we should probably break if we stayed any longer, so think it prudent to be off to Venice. Which Friday is the day we go, reaching Venice Saturday or Sunday. Pension Suisse, Canal Grande, as before. And mind we have letters waiting for us there, or your affectionate Pater will emulate the historical "cocky." |
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