Chapter 10

another I have but just finished it. I assure you I am very proud of having my name connected with such a thorough piece of work, no less than touched by the kindness of the dedication.

Looking back from the aged point of view, the life which cost so much wear and tear in the living seems to have effected very little, and it is cheering to be reminded that one has been of some use.

Some years of continued ill-health, involving constant travelling about in search of better conditions than London affords, and long periods of prostration, have driven me quite out of touch with science. And indeed except for a certain toughness of constitution I should have been driven out of touch with terrestrial things altogether.

It is almost indecent in a man at my time of life who has had two attacks of pleurisy, followed by a dilated heart, to be not only above ground but fairly vigorous again. However, I am obliged to mind my P's and Q's; avoid everything like hard work, and live in good air.

The last condition we have achieved by setting up a house close to the downs here; and I begin to think with Candide that "cultivons notre jardin" comprises the whole duty of man.

I was just out of the way of hearing anything about the University College chair; and indeed, beyond attending the Council of the school when necessary, and meetings of Trustees of the British Museum, I rarely go to London.

I have had my innings, and it is now for the younger generation to have theirs.

With best wishes, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[As for being no longer in touch with the world of science, he says the same thing in a note to Sir M. Foster, forwarding an inquiry after a scientific teacher (August 1).]

Please read the enclosed, and if you know of anybody suitable please send his name to Mr. Thomas.

I have told him that I am out of the way of knowing, and that you are physiologically omniscient, so don't belie the character!

[This year a number of Huxley's essays were translated into French. "Nature" for July 23, 1891 (volume 44 page 272),--notes the publication of "Les Sciences Naturelles et l'Education," with a short preface by himself, dwelling upon the astonishing advance which had been made in the recognition of science as an instrument of education, but warning the younger generation that the battle is only half won, and bidding them beware of relaxing their efforts before the place of science is entirely assured. In the issue for December 31 ("Nature" 46 397), is a notice of "La Place de l'Homme dans la Nature," a re-issue of a translation of more than twenty years before, together with three ethnological essays, newly translated by M. H. de Varigny, to whom the following letters are addressed.]

To H. De Varigny.

May 17, 1891.

I am writing to my publishers to send you "Lay Sermons", "Critiques", "Science and Culture", and "American Addresses", pray accept them in expression of my thanks for the pains you are taking about the translation. "Man's Place in Nature" has been out of print for years, so I cannot supply it.

I am quite conscious that the condensed and idiomatic English into which I always try to put my thoughts must present many difficulties to a translator. But a friend of mine who is a much better French scholar than I am, and who looked over two or three of the essays, told me he thought you had been remarkably successful.

The fact is that I have a great love and respect for my native tongue, and take great pains to use it properly. Sometimes I write essays half-a-dozen times before I can get them into the proper shape; and I believe I become more fastidious as I grow older.

November 25, 1891.

I am very glad you have found your task pleasant, for I am afraid it must have cost you a good deal of trouble to put my ideas into the excellent French dress with which you have provided them. It fits so well that I feel almost as if I might be a candidate for a seat among the immortal forty!

As to the new volume, you shall have the refusal of it if you care to have it. But I have my doubts about its acceptability to a French public which I imagine knows little about Bibliolatry and the ways of Protestant clericalism, and cares less.

These essays represent a controversy which has been going on for five or six years about Genesis, the deluge, the miracle of the herd of swine, and the miraculous generally, between Gladstone, the ecclesiastical principal of King's College, various bishops, the writer of "Lux Mundi", that spoilt Scotch minister the Duke of Argyll, and myself.

My object has been to stir up my countrymen to think about these things; and the only use of controversy is that it appeals to their love of fighting, and secures their attention.

I shall be very glad to have your book on "Experimental Evolution". I insisted on the necessity of obtaining experimental proof of the possibility of obtaining virtually infertile breeds from a common stock in 1860 (in one of the essays you have translated). Mr. Tegetmeier made a number of experiments with pigeons some years ago, but could obtain not the least approximation to infertility.

From the first, I told Darwin this was the weak point of his case from the point of view of scientific logic. But, in this matter, we are just where we were thirty years ago, and I am very glad you are going to call attention to the subject.

Sending a copy of the translation soon after to Sir J. Hooker, he writes:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, January 11, 1892.

My dear Hooker,

We have been in the middle of snow for the last four days. I shall not venture to London, and if you deserve the family title of the "judicious," I don't think you will either.

I send you by this post a volume of the French translation of a collection of my essays about Darwinism and Evolution, 1860-76, for which I have written a brief preface. I was really proud of myself when I discovered on re-reading them that I had nothing to alter.

What times those days were! Fuimus.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.H. Huxley.

[The same subject of experimental evolution reappears in a letter to Professor Romanes of April 29. A project was on foot for founding an institution in which experiments bearing upon the Darwinian theory could be carried out. After congratulating Professor Romanes upon his recent election to the Athenaeum Club, he proceeds:--]

In a review of Darwin's "Origin" published in the "Westminster" for 1860 ("Lay Sermons" pages 323-24), you will see that I insisted on the logical incompleteness of the theory so long as it was not backed by experimental proof that the cause assumed was competent to produce all the effects required. (See also "Lectures to Working Men" 1863 pages 146 and 147.) In fact, Darwin used to reproach me sometimes for my pertinacious insistence on the need of experimental verification.

But I hope you are going to choose some other title than "Institut transformiste," which implies that the Institute is pledged to a foregone conclusion, that it is a workshop devoted to the production of a particular kind of article. Moreover, I should say that as a matter of prudence, you had better keep clear of the word "experimental." Would not "Biological Observatory" serve the turn? Of course it does not exclude experiment any more than "Astronomical Observatory" excludes spectrum analysis.

Please think over this. My objection to "Transformist" is very strong.

[In August his youngest daughter wrote to him to find out the nature of various "objects of the seashore" which she had found on the beach in South Wales. His answers make one wish that there had been more questions.]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, August 14, 1891.

Dearest Babs,

1. "Ornary" or not "ornary" B is merely A turned upside down and viewed with the imperfect appreciation of the mere artistic eye!

2. Your little yellow things are, I expect, egg-cases of dog whelks. You will find a lot of small eggs inside them, one or two of which grow faster than the rest, and eat up their weaker brothers and sisters.

The dog whelk is common on the shores. If you look for something like this [sketch of a terrier coming out of a whelk shell], you will be sure to recognise it.

3. Starfish are NOT born in their proper shape and don't come from your whitish yellow lumps. The thing that comes out of a starfish egg is something like this [sketch], and swims about by its cilia. The starfish proper is formed inside, and it is carried on its back this-uns.

Finally starfish drops off carrying with it t'other one's stomach, so that the subsequent proceedings interest t'other one no more.

4. The ropy sand tubes that make a sort of banks and reefs are houses of worms, that they build up out of sand, shells, and slime. If you knock a lot to pieces you will find worms inside.

5. Now, how do I know what the rooks eat? But there are a lot of unconsidered trifles about and if you get a good telescope and watch, you will have a glimpse as they hover between sand and rooks' beaks.

It has been blowing more or less of a gale here from the west for weeks--usually cold, often foggy--so that it seems as if summer were going to be late, probably about November.

But we thrive fairly well. L. and J. and their chicks are here and seem to stand the inclemency of the weather pretty fairly. The children are very entertaining.

M-- has been a little complaining, but is as active as usual.

My love to Joyce, and tell her I am glad to hear she has not forgotten her astronomy.

In answer to your inquiry, Leonard says that Trevenen has twenty-five teeth. I have a sort of notion this can be hardly accurate, but never having been a mother can't presume to say.

Our best love to you all.

Ever your loving Pater.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, August 26, 1891.

Dearest Babs,

'Pears to me your friend is a squid or pen-and-ink fish, Loligo among the learned. Probably Loligo media which I have taken in that region. They have ten tentacles with suckers round their heads, two much longer than the others. They are close to cuttlefish, but have a thin horny shell inside them instead of the "cuttle-bone." If you can get one by itself in a tub of water, it is pretty to see how they blush all over and go pale again, owing to little colour-bags in the skin, which expand and contract. Doubtless they took you for a heron, under the circumstances [sketch of a wader].

With slight intervals it has been blowing a gale from the west here for some months, the memory of man indeed goeth not back to the calm. I have not been really warm more than two days this so-called summer. And everybody prophesied we should be roasted alive here in summer.

We are all flourishing, and send our best love to Jack and you. Tell Joyce the wallflowers have grown quite high in her garden.

Ever your loving Pater.

[Politics are not often touched upon in the letters of this period, but an extract from a letter of October 25, 1891, is of interest as giving his reason for supporting a Unionist Government, many of whose tendencies he was far from sympathising with:--]

The extract from the "Guardian" is wonderful. The Gladstonian tee-to-tum cannot have many more revolutions to make. The only thing left for him now, is to turn Agnostic, declare Homer to be an old bloke of a ballad-monger, and agitate for the prohibition of the study of Greek in all universities...

It is just because I do not want to see our children involved in civil war that I postpone all political considerations to keeping up a Unionist Government.

I may be quite wrong; but right or wrong, it is no question of party. "Rads delight not me nor Tories neither," as Hamlet does not say.

The following letter to Sir M. Foster shows how little Huxley was now able to do in the way of public business without being knocked up:--]

Hodeslea, October 20, 1891.

My dear Foster,

If I had known the nature of the proceedings at the College of Physicians yesterday, I should have braved the tedium of listening to a lecture I could not hear in order to see you decorated. Clark had made a point of my going to the dinner [I.e. at the College of Physicians.], and, worse luck, I had to "say a few words" after it, with the result that I am entirely washed out to-day, and only able to send you the feeblest of congratulations.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The same thing appears in the following to Sir W.H. Flower, which is also interesting for his opinion on the question of promotion by seniority:--]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, October 23, 1891.

My dear Flower,

My "next worst thing" was promoting a weak man to a place of responsibility in lieu of a strong one, on the mere ground of seniority.

Caeteris paribus, or with even approximate equality of qualifications, no doubt seniority ought to count; but it is mere ruin to any service to let it interfere with the promotion of men of marked superiority, especially in the case of offices which involve much responsibility.

I suppose as trustee I may requisition a copy of Woodward's Catalogue. I should like to look a little more carefully at it...We are none the worse for our pleasant glimpse of the world (and his wife) at your house; but I find that speechifying at public dinners is one of the luxuries that I must utterly deny myself. It will take me three weeks' quiet to get over my escapade.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.