Chapter 14

for show" and t'other de par amours.

Don't ruin me with Mrs. Skelton by repeating this, but please remember me very kindly to her.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The following letter to Tyndall was called forth by an incident in connection with the starting of the "Nineteenth Century." Huxley had promised to help the editor by looking over the proofs of a monthly article on contemporary science. But his advertised position as merely adviser in this to the editor was overlooked by some who resented what they supposed to be his assumption of the role of critic in general to his fellow-workers in science. At a meeting of the x Club, Tyndall made a jesting allusion to this; Huxley, however, thought the mere suggestion too grave for a joke, and replied with all seriousness to clear himself from the possibility of such misconception. And the same evening he wrote to Tyndall:--]

Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall, S.W., December 2, 1880.

My dear Tyndall,

I must tell you the ins and outs of this "Nineteenth Century" business. I was anxious to help Knowles when he started the journal, and at his earnest and pressing request I agreed to do what I have done. But being quite aware of the misinterpretation to which I should be liable if my name "sans phrase" were attached to the article, I insisted upon the exact words which you will find at the head of it; and which seemed, and still seem to me, to define my position as a mere adviser of the editor.

Moreover, by diligently excluding any expression of opinion on the part of the writers of the compilation, I thought that nobody could possibly suspect me of assuming the position of an authority even on the subjects with which I may be supposed to be acquainted, let alone those such as physics and chemistry, of which I know no more than any one of the public may know.

Therefore your remarks came upon me to-night with the sort of painful surprise which a man feels who is accused of the particular sin of which he flatters himself he is especially NOT GUILTY, and "roused my corruption" as the Scotch have it. But there is no need to say anything about that, for you were generous and good as I have always found you. Only I pray you, if hereafter it strikes you that any doing of mine should be altered or amended, tell me yourself and privately, and I promise you a very patient listener, and what is more a very thankful one.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Tyndall replied with no less frankness, thanking him for the friendly promptitude of his letter, and explaining that he had meant to speak privately on the matter, but had been forestalled by the subject coming up when it did. And he wound up by declaring that it would be too absurd to admit the power of such an occasion "to put even a momentary strain upon the cable which has held us together for nine and twenty years."

At the very end of the year, George Eliot died. A proposal was immediately set on foot to inter her remains in Westminster Abbey, and various men of letters pressed the matter on the Dean, who was unwilling to stir without a very strong and general expression of opinion. To Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had urged him to join in memorialising the Dean, Huxley replied as follows:--]

4 Marlborough Place, December 27, 1880.

My dear Spencer,

Your telegram which reached me on Friday evening caused me great perplexity, inasmuch as I had just been talking with Morley, and agreeing with him that the proposal for a funeral in Westminster Abbey had a very questionable look to us, who desired nothing so much as that peace and honour should attend George Eliot to her grave.

It can hardly be doubted that the proposal will be bitterly opposed, possibly (as happened in Mill's case with less provocation), with the raking up of past histories, about which the opinion even of those who have least the desire or the right to be pharisaical is strongly divided, and which had better be forgotten.

With respect to putting pressure on the Dean of Westminster, I have to consider that he has some confidence in me, and before asking him to do something for which he is pretty sure to be violently assailed, I have to ask myself whether I really think it a right thing for a man in his position to do.

Now I cannot say I do. However much I may lament the circumstance, Westminster Abbey is a Christian Church and not a Pantheon, and the Dean thereof is officially a Christian priest, and we ask him to bestow exceptional Christian honours by this burial in the Abbey. George Eliot is known not only as a great writer, but as a person whose life and opinions were in notorious antagonism to Christian practice in regard to marriage, and Christian theory in regard to dogma. How am I to tell the Dean that I think he ought to read over the body of a person who did not repent of what the Church considers mortal sin, a service not one solitary proposition in which she would have accepted for truth while she was alive? How am I to urge him to do that which, if I were in his place, I should most emphatically refuse to do?

You tell me that Mrs. Cross wished for the funeral in the Abbey. While I desire to entertain the greatest respect for her wishes, I am very sorry to hear it. I do not understand the feeling which could create such a desire on any personal grounds, save those of affection, and the natural yearning to be near even in death to those whom we have loved. And on public grounds the wish is still less intelligible to me. One cannot eat one's cake and have it too. Those who elect to be free in thought and deed must not hanker after the rewards, if they are to be so called, which the world offers to those who put up with its fetters.

Thus, however I look at the proposal it seems to me to be a profound mistake, and I can have nothing to do with it.

I shall be deeply grieved if this resolution is ascribed to any other motives than those which I have set forth at more length than I intended.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.