"to a fact which has been overlooked in all the notices I have seen, and which I regard as one of the greatest claims of his splendid work on the recognition of zoologists. I refer to his discovery that the body of the Medusae is essentially composed of two membranes, an outer and an inner, and his recognition of these as the homologues of the two primary germinal leaflets in the vertebrate embryo. Now this discovery stands at the very basis of a philosophic zoology, and of a true conception of the affinities of animals. It is the ground on which Haeckel has founded his famous Gastraea Theory, and without it Kowalesky could never have announced his great discovery of the affinity of the Ascidians and Vertebrates, by which zoologists had been startled.">[
CHAPTER 1.4.
1848-1850.
[The whole cruise of the "Rattlesnake" lasted almost precisely four years, her stay in Australian waters nearly three. Of this time altogether eleven months were spent at Sydney, namely, July 16 to October 11, 1847; January 14 to February 2, and March 9 to April 29, 1848; January 24 to May 8, 1849; and February 14 to May 2, 1850. The three months of the first northern cruise were spent in the survey of the Inshore Passage—the passage, that is, within the Great Barrier Reef for ships proceeding from India to Sydney. In 1848, while waiting for the right season to visit Torres Straits, a short cruise was made in February and March, to inspect the lighthouses in Bass' Straits. It was on this occasion that Huxley visited Melbourne, then an insignificant town, before the discovery of gold had brought a rush of immigrants.
The second northern cruise of 1848, which lasted nine months, had for its object the completion of the survey of the Inner Passage as far as New Guinea and the adjoining archipelago. The third cruise in 1849-50 again lasted nine months, and continued the survey in Torres Straits, the Louisiade archipelago, and the south-eastern part of New Guinea. After this the original plan was to make a fourth cruise, filling up the charts of the Inner Passage on the east coast, and surveying the straits of Alass between Lombok and Sumbawa in the Malay Archipelago; then, instead of returning to Sydney, to proceed to Singapore and so home by the Cape. But these plans were altered by the untimely death of Captain Stanley on March 13, and the "Rattlesnake" sailed for England direct in May 1850.
There was a great monotony about these cruises, particularly to those who were not constantly engaged in the active work of surveying. The ship sailed slowly from place to place, hunting out reefs and islets; a stay of a few days would be made at some lonely island, while charting expeditions went out in the boats or supplies of water and fresh fruits were laid in. On the second expedition there were two cases of scurvy on board by the time the mail from Sydney reached the ship at Cape York with letters and lime-juice, the first reminder of civilisation for four months and a half. On this cruise there was an unusual piece of interest in Kennedy's ill-fated expedition, which the "Rattlesnake" landed in Rockingham Bay, and trusted to meet again at Cape York. Happy it was for Huxley that his duties forbade him to accept Kennedy's proposal to join the expedition. After months of weary struggles in the dense scrub, Kennedy himself, who had pushed on for help with his faithful black man Jacky, was speared by the natives when almost in sight of Cape York; Jack barely managed to make his way there through his enemies, and guided a party to the rescue of the two starved and exhausted survivors of the disease-stricken camp by the Sugarloaf Hill. It was barely time. Another hour, and they too would have been killed by the crowd of blackfellows who hovered about in hopes of booty, and were only dispersed for a moment by the rescue party.
On the third cruise there were a few adventures more directly touching the "Rattlesnake." Twice the landing parties, including Huxley, were within an ace of coming to blows with the islanders of the Louisiades, and on one occasion a portly member of the gun-room, being cut off by these black gentry, only saved his life by parting with all his clothes as presents to them, and keeping them amused by an impromptu dance in a state of nature under the broiling sun, until a party came to his relief. At Cape York also, a white woman was rescued who had been made prisoner by the blacks from a wreck, and had lived among them for several years. Here, too, Huxley and Macgillivray made a trip inland, and were welcomed by a native chief, who saw in the former the returning spirit of his dead brother.
Throughout the voyage Huxley was busy with his pencil, and many lithographs from his drawings illustrate the account of the voyage afterwards published. As to his scientific work, he was accumulating a large stock of observations, but felt rather sore about the papers which he had already sent home, for no word had reached him as to their fate, not even that they had been received or looked over by Forbes, to whom they had been consigned. As a matter of fact, they had not been neglected, as he was to find out on his return; but meanwhile the state of affairs was not reassuring to a man whose dearest hopes were bound up in the reception he could win for these and similar researches. Altogether, it was with no little joy that he turned his back on the sweltering heat of Torres Straits, on the great mountains of New Guinea, the Owen Stanley range, which had remained hidden from D'Urville in the "Astrolabe" to be discovered by the explorers on the "Rattlesnake," and the far stretching archipelago of the Louisiades, one tiny island in which still bears the name of Huxley, after the assistant-surgeon of the "Rattlesnake."
A few extracts from letters of the time will give a more vivid idea of what the voyage was like. The first is from a letter to his mother, dated February 1, 1849:—]
…I suppose you have wondered at the long intervals of my letters, but my silence has been forced. I wrote from Rockingham Bay in May, and from Cape York in October. After leaving the latter place we have had no communication with any one but the folks at Port Essington, which is a mere military post, without any certain means of communication with England. We were ten weeks on our passage from Port Essington to Sydney and touched nowhere, so that you may imagine we were pretty well tired of the sea by the time we reached Port Jackson.
Thank God we are now safely anchored in our old quarters, and for the next three months shall enjoy a few of those comforts that make life worth the living…
The only place we have visited since my last budget to you was Port Essington, a military post which has been an object of much attention for some time past in connection with the steam navigation between Sydney and India. It is about the most useless, miserable, ill-managed hole in Her Majesty's dominions. Placed fifteen miles inland on the swampy banks of an estuary out of reach of the sea breezes, it is the most insufferably hot and enervating place imaginable. The temperature of the water alongside the ship was from 88 to 90, i.e. about that of a moderately warm bath, so that you may fancy what it is on land. Added to this, the commandant is a litigious old fool, always at war with his officers, and endeavouring to make the place as much of a hell morally as it is physically. Little more than two years ago a detachment of sixty men came out to the settlement. At the parade on the Sunday I was there; there were just ten men present. The rest were invalided, dead, or sick. I have no hesitation in saying that half of this was the result of ill-management. The climate in itself is not particularly unhealthy. We were all glad to get away from the place.
[Another is to his sister, under date Sydney, March 14, 1849:—]
By the way, I may as well give you a short account of our cruise. We started from here last May to survey what is called the inner passage to India. You must know that the east coast of Australia has running parallel to it at distances of from five miles to seventy or eighty an almost continuous line of coral reefs, the Great Barrier as it is called. Outside this line is the great Pacific, inside is a space varying in width as above, and cut up by little islands and detached reefs. Now to get to India from Sydney, ships must go either inside or outside the Great Barrier. The inside passage has been called the Inner Route in consequence of its desirability for steamers, and our business has been to mark out this Inner Route safely and clearly among the labyrinth-like islands and reefs within the Barrier. And a parlous dull business it was for those who, like myself, had no necessary and constant occupation. Fancy for five mortal months shifting from patch to patch of white sand in latitude from 17 to 10 south, living on salt pork and beef, and seeing no mortal face but our own sweet countenances considerably obscured by the long beard and moustaches with which, partly from laziness and partly from comfort, we had become adorned. I cultivated a peak in Charles I style, which imparted a remarkably peculiar and triste expression to my sunburnt phiz, heightened by the fact that the aforesaid beard was, I regret to say it, of a very questionable auburn—my messmates called it red.
We convoyed a land expedition as far as the Rockingham Bay in 17 south under a Mr. Kennedy, which was to work its way up to Cape York in 11 south and there meet us. A fine noble fellow poor Kennedy was too. I was a good deal with him at Rockingham Bay, and indeed accompanied him in the exploring trips which he made for some four or five days in order to see how the land lay about him. In fact we got on so well together that he wanted me much to accompany him and join the ship again at Cape York, and if the Service would have permitted of my absence I should certainly have done so. But it was well I did not. Out of thirteen men composing the party but three remain alive. The rest have perished by starvation or the spears of the natives. Poor Kennedy himself had, in company with the black fellow attached to the party, by dint of incredible exertions, pushed on until he came within sight of the provision vessel waiting his arrival at Cape York. But here, within grasp of his object, a large party of natives attacked and killed him. The black fellow alone reached Cape York with the news. The other two men who were saved were the sole survivors of the party Kennedy left behind him at a spot near the coast, and were picked up by the provision vessel when she returned.
You may be sure I am not sorry to return home. I say home advisedly, for my friend Fanning's house is as completely my home as it well can be. And then Nettie had not heard anything of me for six months, so that I have been petted and spoiled ever since we came in…as I tell her I fear she has rested her happiness on a very insecure foundation; but she is full of hope and confidence, and to me her love is the faith that moveth mountains. We have, as you may be sure, a thousand difficulties in our way, but like Danton I take for my motto, "De l'audace et encore de l'audace et toujours de l'audace," and look forward to a happy termination, nothing doubting.
[To his mother (announcing the probable time of his return).]
Sydney, February 11, 1850.
I cannot at all realise the idea of our return. We have been leading such a semi-savage life for years past, such a wandering nomadic existence, that any other seems in a manner unnatural to me. Time was when I should have looked upon our return with unmixed joy; but so many new and strong ties have arisen to unite me with Sydney, that now when the anchor is getting up for England, I scarcely know whether to rejoice or to grieve. You must not be angry, my dear Mother; I have none the less affection for you or any other of those whom I love in England—only a very great deal for a certain little lassie whom I must leave behind me without clearly seeing when we are to meet again. You must remember the Scripture as my excuse, "A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his" (I wish I could add) wife. Our long cruises are fine times for reflection, and during the last I determined that we would be terribly prudent and get married about 1870, or the Greek Kalends, or, what is about the same thing, whenever I am afflicted with the malheur de richesses.
People talk about the satisfaction of an approving conscience. Mine approves me intensely; but I'll be hanged if I see the satisfaction of it. I feel much more inclined to swear "worse than our armies in Flanders."…So far as my private doings are concerned, I hear very satisfactory news of them. I heard from an old messmate of mine at Haslar the other day that Dr. MacWilliam, F.R.S., one of our deputy-inspectors, had been talking about one of my papers, and gave him to understand that it was to be printed. Furthermore, he is a great advocate for the claims of assistant surgeons to ward-room rank, and all that sort of stuff, and, I am told, quoted me as an example! Henceforward I look upon the learned doctor as a man of sound sense and discrimination! Without joking, however, I am glad to have come under his notice, as he may be of essential use to me. I find myself getting horribly selfish, looking at everything with regard to the influence it may have on my grand objects.
[Further descriptions of the voyage are to be drawn from an article in the "Westminster Review" for January 1854 (volume 5), in which, under the title of "Science at Sea," Huxley reviewed the "Voyage of the 'Rattlesnake'" by Macgillivray, the naturalist to the expedition, which had recently appeared. This book gave very few descriptions of the incidents and life on board, and so drew in many ways a colourless picture of the expedition. This defect the reviewer sought to remedy by giving extracts from the so-called "unpublished correspondence" of one of the officers—sketches apparently written for the occasion—as well as from an equally unpublished but more real journal kept by the same hand.
The description of the ship herself, of her inadequate equipment for the special purposes she was to carry out, of the officers' quiet contempt of scientific pursuits, which not even the captain's influence was able to subdue, of the illusory promises of help and advancement held out by the Admiralty to young investigators, makes a striking foil to the spirit in which the Government of thirty years later undertook a greater scientific expedition. Perhaps some vivid recollections of this voyage did something to better the conditions under which the later investigators worked.
Thus, page 100:]
In the year 1846, Captain Owen Stanley, a young and zealous officer, of good report for his capabilities as a scientific surveyor, was entrusted with the command of the "Rattlesnake," a vessel of six-and-twenty guns, strong and seaworthy, but one of that class unenviably distinguished in the war-time as a "donkey-frigate." To the laity it would seem that a ship journeying to unknown regions, when the lives of a couple of hundred men may, at any moment, depend upon her handiness in going about, so as to avoid any suddenly discovered danger, should possess the best possible sailing powers. The Admiralty, however, makes its selection upon other principles, and exploring vessels will be invariably found to be the slowest, clumsiest, and in every respect the most inconvenient ships which wear the pennant. In accordance with the rule, such was the "Rattlesnake"; and to carry out the spirit of the authorities more completely, she was turned out of Portsmouth dockyard in such a disgraceful state of unfitness, that her lower deck was continually under water during the voyage.
[Again, page 100:]
It is necessary to be provided with books of reference, which are ruinously expensive to a private individual, though a mere dewdrop in the general cost of the fitting out of a ship, especially as they might be kept in store, and returned at the end of a commission, like other stores. A hundred pounds sterling would have well supplied the "Rattlesnake"; but she sailed without a volume, an application made by her captain not having been attended to.
[Page 103:]
Of all those who were actively engaged upon the survey, the young commander alone was destined by inevitable fate to be robbed of his just reward. Care and anxiety, from the mobility of his temperament, sat not so lightly upon him as they might have done, and this, joined to the physical debility produced by the enervating climate of New Guinea, fairly wore him out, making him prematurely old before much more than half of the allotted span was completed. But he died in harness, the end attained, the work that lay before him honourably done. Which of us may dare to ask for more? He has raised an enduring monument in his works, and his epitaph shall be the grateful thanks of many a mariner threading his way among the mazes of the Coral Sea.
[Page 104:]
The world enclosed within the timbers of a man-of-war is a most remarkable community, hardly to be rendered vividly intelligible to the mere landsman in these days of constitutional government and freedom of the press.
[Then follows a vigorous sketch of sea life from Chamisso, suggesting that the type of one's relation to the captain is to be found in Jean Paul's "Biography of the Twins," who were united back to back. This sketch Huxley enforces by a passage from the imaginary journal aforesaid,] "indited apparently when the chains were yet new and somewhat galled the writer," [to judge from which] "little alteration would seem to have taken place in nautical life" [since Chamisso's voyage, thirty years before.]
You tell me [he writes], that you sigh for my life of freedom and adventure; and that, compared with mine, the conventional monotony of your own stinks in your nostrils. My dear fellow, be patient, and listen to what I have to say; you will then, perhaps, be a little more content with your lot in life, and a little less desirous of mine. Of all extant lives, that on board a ship-of-war is the most artificial—whether necessarily so or not is a question I will not undertake to decide; but the fact is indubitable.
How utterly disgusted you get with one another! Little peculiarities which would give a certain charm and variety to social intercourse under any other circumstances, become sources of absolute pain, and almost uncontrollable irritation, when you are shut up with them day and night. One good friend and messmate of mine has a peculiar laugh, whose iteration on our last cruise nearly drove me insane.
There is no being alone in a ship. Sailors are essentially gregarious animals, and don't at all understand the necessity under which many people labour—I among the rest—of having a little solitary converse with oneself occasionally.
Then, to a landsman fresh from ordinary society and its peculiarly undemonstrative ways, there is something very wonderful about naval discipline. I do not mean to say that the subordination kept up is more than is necessary, nor perhaps is it in reality greater than is to be found in a college, or a regiment, or a large mercantile house; but it is made so VERY obvious. You not only feel the bit, but you see it; and your bridle is hung with bells to tell you of its presence.
Your captain is a very different person, in relation to his officers, from the colonel of a regiment; he is a demi-god, a Dalai lama, living in solitary state; sublime, unapproachable; and the radiation of his dignity stretches through all the other members of the nautical hierarchy; hence all sorts of petty intrigues, disputes, grumblings, and jealousies, which, to the irreverent eye of an "idler," give to the whole little society the aspect of nothing so much as the court of Prinz Irenaeus in Kater Murr's inestimable autobiography.
[Page 107 sq.:
After describing the illusory promises of the Admiralty and their grudging spirit towards the scientific members of the expedition, he continues:—]
These are the FACILITIES AND ENCOURAGEMENT to science afforded by the Admiralty; and it cannot be wondered at if the same spirit runs through its subordinate officers.
Not that there is any active opposition—quite the reverse. But it is a curious fact, that if you want a boat for dredging, ten chances to one they are always actually or potentially otherwise disposed of; if you leave your towing-net trailing astern in search of new creatures, in some promising patch of discoloured water, it is, in all probability, found to have a wonderful effect in stopping the ship's way, and is hauled in as soon as your back is turned; or a careful dissection waiting to be drawn may find its way overboard as a "mess."
The singular disrespect with which the majority of naval officers regard everything that lies beyond the sphere of routine, tends to produce a tone of feeling very unfavourable to scientific exertions. How can it be otherwise, in fact, with men who, from the age of thirteen, meet with no influence but that which teaches them that the "Queen's regulations and instructions" are the law and the prophets, and something more?
It may be said, without fear of contradiction, that in time of peace the only vessels which are engaged in services involving any real hardship or danger are those employed upon the various surveys; and yet the men of easy routine—harbour heroes—the officers of REGULAR men-of-war, as they delight to be called, pretend to think surveying a kind of shirking—in sea-phrase, "sloping." It is to be regretted that the officers of the surveying vessels themselves are too often imbued with the same spirit; and though, for shame's sake, they can but stand up for hydrography, they are too apt to think an alliance with other branches of science as beneath the dignity of their divinity—the "Service."
[Page 112:]
Any adventures ashore were mere oases, separated by whole deserts of the most wearisome ennui. For weeks, perhaps, those who were not fortunate enough to be living hard and getting fatigued every day in the boats were yawning away their existence in an atmosphere only comparable to that of an orchid-house, a life in view of which that of Mariana in the moated grange has its attractions.
For instance, consider this extract from the journal of one of the officers, date August 1849:—
"Rain! rain! encore et toujours—I wonder if it is possible for the mind of man to conceive anything more degradingly offensive than the condition of us 150 men, shut up in this wooden box, and being watered with hot water, as we are now. It is no exaggeration to say HOT, for the temperature is that at which people at home commonly take a hot bath. It rains so hard that we have caught seven tons of water in one day, and it is therefore impossible to go on deck, though, if one did, one's condition would not be much improved. A HOT Scotch mist covers the sea and hides the land, so that no surveying can be done; moving about in the slightest degree causes a flood of perspiration to pour out; all energy is completely gone, and if I could help it I would not think even; it's too hot. The rain awnings are spread, and we can have no wind sails up; if we could, there is not a breath of wind to fill them; and consequently the lower and main decks are utterly unventilated: a sort of solution of man in steam fills them from end to end, and surrounds the lights with a lurid halo. It's too hot to sleep, and my sole amusement consists in watching the cockroaches, which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness. They manifest these feelings in a very remarkable manner—a sudden unanimous impulse seems to seize the obscene thousands which usually lurk hidden in the corners of my cabin. Out they rush, helter-skelter, and run over me, my table, and my desk; others, more vigorous, fly, quite regardless of consequences, until they hit against something, upon which, half spreading their wings, they make their heads a pivot and spin round in a circle, in a manner which indicates a temporary aberration of the cockroach mind. It is these outbreaks alone which rouse us from our lassitude. Knocks are heard resounding on all sides, and each inhabitant of a cabin, armed with a slipper, is seen taking ample revenge upon the disturbers of his rest and the destroyers of his body and clothes."
Here, on the other hand, is an oasis, a bartering scene at Bruny Island, in the Louisiade:—
"We landed at the same place as before, and this time the natives ran down prancing and gesticulating. Many of them had garlands of green leaves round their heads, knees, and ankles; some wore long streamers depending from their arms and ears and floating in the wind as they galloped along, shaking their spears and prancing just as boys do when playing at horses. They soon surrounded us, shouting 'Kelumai! Kelumai!' (their word for iron), and offering us all sorts of things in exchange. One very fine athletic man, "Kaioo-why-who-at' by name, was perfectly mad to get an axe, and very soon comprehended the arrangements that were made. Mr. Brady drew ten lines on the sand and laid an axe down by them, giving K— (I really can't write that long name all over again) to understand by signs that when there was a 'bahar' (yam) on every mark he should have the axe. He comprehended directly, and bolted off as fast as he could run, soon returning with his hands full of yams, which he deposited one by one on the appropriate lines; then fearful lest some of the others should do him out of the axe, he caught hold of Brady by the arm, and would not let him go until yams enough had been brought by the others to make up the number, and the axe was handed over to him.
"Then was there a yell of delight! He jumped up with the axe, flourished it, passed it to his companions, tumbled down and rolled over, kicking up his heels in the air, and finally, catching hold of me, we had a grand waltz, with various poses plasticques, for about a quarter of a mile. I daresay he was unsophisticated enough to imagine that I was filled with sympathetic joy, but I grieve to say that I was taking care all the while to direct his steps towards the village, which, as we had as yet examined none of their houses, I was most desirous of entering under my friend's sanction. I think he suspected something, for he looked at me rather dubiously when I directed our steps towards the entrance in the bush which led to the houses, and wanted me to go back; but I was urgent, so he gave way, and we both entered the open space, where we were joined by two or three others, and sat down under a cocoanut tree.
"I persuaded him to sit for his portrait (taking care first that my back was against the tree and my pistols handy), and we ate green cocoanuts together, at last attaining to so great a pitch of intimacy that he made me change names with him, calling himself 'Tamoo' (my Cape York name), and giving me to understand that I was to take his own lengthy appellation. When I did so, and talked to him as 'Tamoo,' nothing could exceed the delight of all around; they patted me as you would a child, and evidently said to one another, 'This really seems to be a very intelligent white fellow.'
"Like the Cape York natives, they were immensely curious to look at one's legs, asking permission, very gently but very pressingly, to pull up the trouser, spanning the calf with their hands, drawing in their breath and making big eyes all the while. Once, when the front of my shirt blew open, and they saw the white skin of my chest, they set up an universal shout. I imagine that as they paint THEIR faces black, they fancied that we ingeniously coloured ours white, and were astonished to see that we were really of that (to them) disgusting tint all over."
[On May 2, 1850, the "Rattlesnake" sailed for the last time out of Sydney harbour, bound for England by way of the Horn. In spite of his cheerful anticipations, Huxley was not to see his future wife again for five years more, when he was at length in a position to bid her come and join him. During the three years of their engagement in Australia, they had at least been able to see each other at intervals, and to be together for months at a time. In the long periods of absence, also, they had invented a device to cheat the sense of separation. Each kept a particular journal, to be exchanged when they met again, and only to be read, day by day, during the next voyage. But now it was very different, their only means of communication being the slow agency of the post, beset with endless possibilities of misunderstanding when it brought belated answers to questions already months old and out of date in the changed aspect of circumstances. These perils, however, they weathered, and it proves how deep in the moral nature of each the bond between them was rooted, that in the end they passed safely through the still greater danger of imperceptibly growing estranged from one another under the influences of such utterly different surroundings.
A kindly storm which forced the old ship to put into the Bay of Islands to repair a number of small leaks that rendered the lower deck uninhabitable, made it possible for Huxley to send back a letter that should reach Australia in one month instead of ten after his departure.
He utilized a week's stay here characteristically enough in an expedition to Waimate, the chief missionary station and the school of the native institutions (a sort of Normal School for native teachers), in order to judge of his own inspection what missionary life was like.]
I have been greatly surprised in these good people [he writes]. I had expected a good deal of "straight-hairedness" (if you understand the phrase) and methodistical puritanism, but I find it quite otherwise. Both Mr. and Mrs. Burrows seem very quiet and unpretending—straightforward folks desirous of doing their best for the people among whom they are placed.
[One touch must not be allowed to pass unnoticed in his appreciation of the missionaries' unstudied welcome to the belated travellers, whose proper host was unable to take them in:—"tea unlimited and a blazing fire, TOGETHER WITH A VERY NICE CAT."
By July 12, midwinter of course in the southern hemisphere, they had rounded the Horn, and Huxley writes from that most desolate of British possessions, the Falkland Islands:—]
I have great hopes of being able to send a letter to you, via California, even from this remote corner of the world. It is the Ultima Thule and no mistake. Fancy two good-sized islands with undulated surface and sometimes elevated hills, but without tree or bush as tall as a man. When we arrived the 8th inst. the barren uniformity was rendered still more obvious by the deep coating of snow which enveloped everything. How can I describe to you "Stanley," the sole town, metropolis, and seat of government? It consists of a lot of black, low, weatherboard houses scattered along the hillsides which rise round the harbour. One barnlike place is Government House, another the pensioners' barracks, rendered imposing by four field-pieces in front; others smaller are the residences of the colonel, surgeon, etc. In one particularly black and unpromising-looking house lives a Mrs. Sulivan, the wife of Captain Sulivan, who surveyed these islands, and has settled out here. (Captain Sulivan, who sailed with Darwin in the "Beagle," and served with great distinction in command of the southern division of the fleet in the battle of Obligado (Plate River), had surveyed the Falkland Islands many years before his temporary settlement there. During the Crimean War he was surveying officer to the Baltic fleet, and afterwards naval adviser to the Board of Trade. He was afterwards Admiral and K.C.B.) I asked myself if I could have had the heart to bring you to such a desolate place, and myself said "No." However, I believe she is very happy with her children. Sulivan is a fine energetic man, so I suppose if she loves him, well and good, and fancies (is she not a silly woman?) that she has her reward. Mrs. Stanley has gone to stay with them while the ship remains here, and I think I shall go and look them up under pretence of making a call. They say that the present winter is far more savage than the generality of Falkland Island winters, and it had need be, for I never felt anything so bitterly cold in my life. The thermometer has been down below 22, and shallow parts of the harbour even have frozen. Nothing to be done ashore. My rifle lies idle in its case; no chance of a shot at a bull, and one has to go away 20 miles to get hold even of the upland geese and rabbits. The only thing to be done is to eat, eat, eat, and the cold assists one wonderfully in that operation. You consume a pound or so of beefsteaks at breakfast and then walk the deck for an appetite at dinner, when you take another pound or two of beef or a goose, or some such trifle. By four o'clock it is dark night, and as it is too cold to read the only thing to be done is to vanish under blankets as soon as possible and take twelve or fourteen hours' sleep.
Mrs. Stanley's Bougirigards [The Australian love-bird; a small parrakeet.], which I have taken under my care during the cold weather, admire this sort of thing exceedingly and thrive under it, so I suppose I ought to.
The journey from New Zealand here has been upon the whole favourable; no gales—quite the reverse—but light variable winds and calms. The latter part of our voyage has, however, been very cold, snow falling in abundance, and the ice forming great stalactites about our bows. We have seen no icebergs nor anything remarkable. From all I can learn it is most probable that we shall leave in about a week and shall go direct to England without stopping at any other port. I wish it may be so. I want to get home and look about me.
We have had news up to the end of March. There is nothing of any importance going on. By the Navy list for April I see that I shall be as nearly as possible in the middle of those of my own rank, i.e. I shall have about 150 above and as many below me. This is about what I ought to expect in the ordinary run of promotion in eight years, and I have served four and a half of that time. I don't expect much in the way of promotion, especially in these economic times; but I do not fear that I shall be able to keep me in England for at least a year after our arrival, in order to publish my papers. The Admiralty have quite recently published a distinct declaration that they will consider scientific attainments as a claim to their notice, and I expect to be the first to remind them of their promise, and I will take care to have the reminder so backed that they must and shall take note of it. Even if they will not promote me at once, it would answer our purpose to have an appointment to some ship on the home station for a short time.
[The last of the Falklands was seen on July 25; the line was crossed in thirty-six days; another month, and water running short, it was found necessary to put in at the Azores for a week. Leaving Fayal on October 5, the "Rattlesnake" reached Plymouth on the 23rd, but next day proceeded to Chatham, which, thanks to baffling winds, was not reached till November 9, when the ship was paid off.
CHAPTER 1.5.
1850-1851.
[In the Huxley Lecture for 1898 ("Times," October 4) Professor Virchow takes occasion to speak of the effect of Huxley's service in the "Rattlesnake" upon his intellectual development:—
When Huxley himself left Charing Cross Hospital in 1846, he had enjoyed a rich measure of instruction in anatomy and physiology. Thus trained, he took the post of naval surgeon, and by the time that he returned, four years later, he had become a perfect zoologist and a keen-sighted ethnologist. How this was possible any one will readily understand who knows from his own experience how great the value of personal observation is for the development of independent and unprejudiced thought. For a young man who, besides collecting a rich treasure of positive knowledge, has practised dissection and the exercise of a critical judgment, a long sea-voyage and a peaceful sojourn among entirely new surroundings afford an invaluable opportunity for original work and deep reflection. Freed from the formalism of the schools, thrown upon the use of his own intellect, compelled to test each single object as the prevailing system and becomes, first a sceptic, and then an investigator. This change, which did not fail to affect Huxley, and through which arose that Huxley whom we commemorate to-day, is no unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted with the history, not only of knowledge, but also of scholars.
But he was not destined to find his subsequent path easy. Once in England, indeed, he did not lose any time. No sooner had the "Rattlesnake" touched at Plymouth than Commander Yule, who had succeeded Captain Stanley in the command of the ship, wrote to the head of the Naval Medical Department stating the circumstances under which Huxley's zoological investigations had been undertaken, and asking the sanction of the Admiralty for their publication. The hydrographer, in sending the formal permission, says:—
But I have to add that their Lordships will not allow any charge to be made upon the public funds towards the expense. You will, however, further assure Mr. Huxley that any assistance that can be supplied from this office shall be most cheerfully given to him, and that I heartily hope, from the capacity and taste for scientific investigation for which you give him credit, that he will produce a work alike creditable to himself, to his late Captain, by whom he was selected for it, and to Her Majesty's service.
Personally, the hydrographer took a great interest in science; but as for the department, Huxley somewhat bitterly interpreted the official meaning of this well-sounding flourish to be made: "Publish if you can, and give us credit for granting every facility except the one means of publishing."
Happily there was another way of publishing, if the Admiralty would grant him time to arrange his papers and superintend their publication. The Royal Society had at their disposal an annual grant of money for the publication of scientific works. If the Government would not contribute directly to publish the researches made under their auspices, the favourable reception which his preliminary papers had met with led Huxley to hope that his greater work would be undertaken by the Royal Society. If the leading men of science attested the value of his work, the Admiralty might be induced to let him stay in England with the nominal appointment as assistant surgeon to H.M.S. "Fisguard" at Woolwich, for "particular service," but with leave of absence from the ship so that he could live and pursue his avocations in London. There was a precedent for this course in the case of Dr. Hooker, when he had to work out the scientific results of the voyage of the "Erebus" and "Terror."
In this design he was fortified by his old Haslar friend, Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Watt Reid, who wrote: "They cannot, and, I am sure, will not wish to stand in your way at Whitehall." Meanwhile, the first person, naturally, he had thought of consulting was his old chief, Sir John Richardson, who had great weight at the Admiralty, and to him he wrote the following letter before leaving Plymouth.]
To Sir John Richardson.
October 31, 1850.
I regret very much that in consequence of our being ordered to be paid off at Chatham, instead of Portsmouth, as we always hoped and expected, I shall be unable to submit to your inspection the zoological notes and drawings which I have made during our cruise. They are somewhat numerous (over 180 sheets of drawings), and I hope not altogether valueless, since they have been made with as great care and attention as I am master of—and with a microscope, such as has rarely, if ever, made a voyage round the world before. A further reason for indulging in this hope consists in the fact that they relate for the most part to animals hitherto very little known, whether from their rarity or from their perishable nature, and that they bear upon many curious physiological points.
I may thus classify and enumerate the observations I have made:—
1. Upon the organs of hearing and circulation in some of the transparent Crustacea, and upon the structure of certain of the lower forms of Crustacea.
2. Upon some very remarkable new forms of Annelids, and especially upon the much contested genus Sagitta, which I have evidence to show is neither a Mollusc nor an Epizoon, but an Annelid.
3. Upon the nervous system of certain Mollusca hitherto imperfectly described—upon what appears to me to be an urinary organ in many of them—and upon the structure of Firola and Atlanta, of which latter I have a pretty complete account.
4. Upon two perfectly new (ordinally new) species of Ascidians.
5. Upon Pyrosoma and Salpa. The former has never been described (I think) since Savigny's time, and he had only specimens preserved in spirits. I have a great deal to add and alter. Then as to Salpa, whose mode of generation has always been so great a bone of contention, I have a long series of observations and drawings which I have verified over and over again, and which, if correct, must give rise to quite a new view of the matter. I may mention as an interesting fact that in these animals so low in the scale I have found a PLACENTAL CIRCULATION, rudimentary indeed, but nevertheless a perfect model on a small scale of that which takes place in the mammalia.
6. I have the materials for a monograph upon the Acalephae and Hydrostatic Acalephae. I have examined very carefully more than forty genera of these animals—many of them very rare, and some quite new. But I paid comparatively little attention to the collection of new species, caring rather to come to some clear and definite idea as to the structure of those which had indeed been long known, but very little understood. Unfortunately for science, but fortunately for me, this method appears to have been somewhat novel with observers of these animals, and consequently everywhere new and remarkable facts were to be had for the picking up.
It is not to be supposed that one could occupy one's self with the animals for so long without coming to some conclusion as to their systematic place, however subsidiary to observation such considerations must always be regarded, and it seems to me (although on such matters I can of course only speak with the greatest hesitation) that just as the more minute and careful observations made upon the old "Vermes" of Linnaeus necessitated the breaking up of that class into several very distinct classes, so more careful investigation requires the breaking up of Cuvier's "Radiata" (which succeeded the "Vermes" as a sort of zoological lumber-room) into several very distinct and well-defined new classes, of which the Acalephae, Hydrostatic Acalephae, actinoid and hydroid polypes, will form one. But I fear that I am trespassing beyond the limits of a letter. I have only wished to state what I have done in order that you may judge concerning the propriety or impropriety of what I propose to do. And I trust that you will not think that I am presuming too much upon your kindness if I take the liberty of thus asking your advice about my own affairs. In truth, I feel in a manner responsible to you for the use of the appointment you procured for me; and furthermore, Captain Stanley's unfortunate decease has left the interests of the ship in general and my own in particular without a representative.
Can you inform me, then, what chance I should have either (1) of procuring a grant for the publication of my papers, or (2) should that not be feasible, to obtain a nominal appointment (say to the "Fisguard" at Woolwich, as in Dr. Hooker's case) for such time as might be requisite for the publication of my papers and drawings in some other way?
I shall see Professors Owen and Forbes when I reach London, and I have a letter of introduction to Sir John Herschel (who has, I hear, a great penchant for the towing-net). Supposing I could do so, would it be of any use to procure recommendations from them that my papers should be published?
[Half-erased] To Sir F. Beaufort also I have a letter.] Would it not be proper also to write to Sir W. Burnett acquainting him with my views, and requesting his acquiescence and assistance?
Begging an answer at your earliest convenience, addressed either to the
"Rattlesnake" or to my brother, I remain, your obedient servant,
T.H. Huxley.
41 North Bank.
[He received a most friendly reply from "Old John." He was willing to do all in his power to help, but could recommend Government aid better if he had seen the drawings. Meantime a certificate should be got from Forbes, the best man in this particular branch of science, backed, if possible, by Owen. He would speak to some officials himself, and give Huxley introductions to others, and if he could get up to town, would try to see the collections and add his name to the certificate.
Both Forbes and Owen were ready to help. The former wrote a most encouraging letter, singling out the characteristics which gave a peculiar value to these papers:—
I have had very great pleasure in examining your drawings of animals observed during the voyage of the "Rattlesnake," and have also fully availed myself of the opportunity of going over the collections made during the course of the survey upon which you have been engaged. I can say without exaggeration that more important or more complete zoological researches have never been conducted during any voyage of discovery in the southern hemisphere. The course you have taken of directing your attention mainly to impreservable creatures, and to those orders of the animal kingdom respecting which we have least information, and the care and skill with which you have conducted elaborate dissections and microscopic examinations of the curious creatures you were so fortunate as to meet with, necessarily gives a peculiar and unique character to your researches, since thereby they fill up gaps in our knowledge of the animal kingdom. This is the more important, since such researches have been almost always neglected during voyages of discovery. The value of some of your notes was publicly acknowledged during your absence, when your memoir on the structure of the Medusae, communicated to the Royal Society, was singled out for publication in the "Philosophical Transactions." It would be a very great loss to science if the mass of new matter and fresh observation which you have accumulated were not to be worked out and fully published, as well as an injustice to the merits of the expedition in which you have served.
The latter offered to write to the Admiralty on his behalf, giving the weight of his name to the suggestion that the work to be done would take at least twelve months, and that therefore his appointment to the "Fisguard" should not be limited to any less period.] "They might be disposed," [wrote Huxley to him,] "to cut anything I request down—on principle." [Moreover, Owen, Forbes, Bell, and Sharpey, all members of the Committee of Recommendation of the Royal Society, had expressed themselves so favourably to his views that in his application he was able to relieve the economic scruples of the Admiralty by telling them that he had a means of publishing his papers through the Royal Society.
The result of his application, thus backed, was that he obtained his appointment on November 29. It was for six months, subject to extension if he were able to report satisfactory progress with his work.
A long letter to his sister, now settled in Tennessee, gives a good idea of his aims and hopes at this time.]
41 North Bank, Regent's Park.
November 21, 1850.
My dearest Lizzie,
We have been at home now nearly three weeks, and I have been a free man again twelve days. Her Majesty's ships have been paid off on the 9th of this month. Properly speaking, indeed, we have been at home longer, for we touched at Plymouth and trod English ground and saw English green fields on the 23rd of October, but we were allowed to remain only twenty-four hours, and to my great disgust were ordered round to Chatham to be paid off. The ill-luck which had made our voyage homeward so long (we sailed from Sydney on the 2nd of May) pursued us in the Channel, and we did not reach Chatham until the 2nd of November; and what do you think was one of the first things I did when we reached Plymouth? Wrote to Eliza K. asking news of a certain naughty sister of mine, from whom I had never heard a word since we had been away—and if perchance there should be any letter, begging her to forward it immediately to Chatham. And so, when at length we got there, I found your kind long letter had been in England some six or seven months; but hearing of the likelihood of our return, they had very judiciously not sent it to me.
Your letter, my poor Lizzie, justifies many a heartache I have had when thinking over your lot, knowing, as I well do, what emigrant life is in climates less trying than that in which you live. I have seen a good deal of bush life in Australia, and it enables me fully to sympathise with and enter into every particular you tell me—from the baking and boiling and pigs squealing, down to that ferocious landshark Mrs. Gunther, of whose class Australia will furnish fine specimens. Had I been at home, too, I could have enlightened the good folks as to the means of carriage in the colonies, and could have told them that the two or twenty thousand miles over sea is the smallest part of the difficulty and expense of getting anything to people living inland; as it is, I think I have done some good in the matter; their meaning was good but their discretion small. But the obtuseness of English in general about anything out of the immediate circle of their own experience is something wonderful.
I had heard here and there fractional accounts of your doings from Eliza K. and my mother—not of the most cheery description—and therefore I was right glad to get your letter, which, though it tells of sorrow and misfortune enough and to spare, yet shows me that the brave woman's heart you always had, my dearest Lizzie, is still yours, and that you have always had the warm love of those immediately around you, and now, as the doctor's letter tells us, you have one more source of joy and happiness, and this new joy must efface the bitterness—I do not say the memory, knowing how impossible that would be—of your great loss. [The death of her little daughter Jessie]. God knows, my dear sister, I could feel for you. It was as if I could see again a shadow of the great sorrow that fell upon us all years ago.
Nothing can bind me more closely to your children than I am already, but if the christening be not all over you must let me be godfather; and though I fear I am too much of a heretic to promise to bring him up a good son of the church—yet should ever the position which you prophesy, and of which I have an "Ahnung" (though I don't tell that to anybody but Nettie), be mine, he shall (if you will trust him to me) be cared for as few sons are. As things stand, I am talking half nonsense, but I mean it—and you know of old, for good and for evil, my tenacity of purpose.
Now, as to my own affairs—I am not married. Prudently, at any rate, but whether wisely or foolishly I am not quite sure yet, Nettie and I resolved to have nothing to do with matrimony for the present. In truth, though our marriage was my great wish on many accounts, yet I feared to bring upon her the consequences that might have occurred had anything happened to me within the next few years. We had a sad parting enough, and as is usually the case with me, time, instead of alleviating, renders more disagreeable our separation. I have a woman's element in me. I hate the incessant struggle and toil to cut one another's throat among us men, and I long to be able to meet with some one in whom I can place implicit confidence, whose judgment I can respect, and yet who will not laugh at my most foolish weaknesses, and in whose love I can forget all care. All these conditions I have fulfilled in Nettie. With a strong natural intelligence, and knowledge enough to understand and sympathise with my aims, with firmness of a man, when necessary, she combines the gentleness of a very woman and the honest simplicity of a child, and then she loves me well, as well as I love her, and you know I love but few—in the real meaning of the word, perhaps, but two—she and you. And now she is away, and you are away. The worst of it is I have no ambition, except as means to an end, and that end is the possession of a sufficient income to marry upon. I assure you I would not give two straws for all the honours and titles in the world. A worker I must always be—it is my nature—but if I had 400 pounds sterling a year I would never let my name appear to anything I did or shall ever do. It would be glorious to be a voice working in secret and free from all those personal motives that have actuated the best. But, unfortunately, one is not a "vox et praeterea nihil," but with a considerable corporality attached which requires feeding, and so while my inner man is continually indulging in these anchorite reflections, the outer is sedulously elbowing and pushing as if he dreamed of nothing but gold medals and professors' caps.
I am getting on very well—better I fear than I deserve. One of my papers was published in 1849 in the "Philosophical Transactions," another in the "Zoological Transactions," and some more may be published in the "Linnean" if I like—but I think I shall not like. Then I have worked pretty hard, and brought home a considerable amount of drawings and notes about new or rare animals, all particularly nasty slimy things, and they will most likely be published as a separate work by the Royal Society.
Owens, Forbes, Bell, and Sharpey (the doctor will tell you of what weight these names are) are all members of the committee which disposes of the money, and are all strongly in favour of my "valuable researches" (cock-a-doodle-doo!!) being published by the Society. From various circumstances I have taken a better position than I could have expected among these grandees, and I find them all immensely civil and ready to help me on, tooth and nail, particularly Professor Forbes, who is a right good fellow, and has taken a great deal of trouble on my behalf. Owen volunteered to write to the "First Lord" on my behalf, and did so. Sharpey, when I saw him, reminded me, as he always does, of my great contest with Stocks (do you remember throwing the shoe?), and promised me all the assistance in his power. Professor Bell, who is secretary to the Royal, and has great influence, promised to help me in every way, and asked me to dine with him and meet a lot of nobs. I take all these things quite as a matter of course, but am all the while considerably astonished. The other day I dined at the Geological Club and met Lyell, Murchison, de la B[eche] Horner, and a lot more, and last evening I dined with a whole lot of literary and scientific people.
Owen was, in my estimation, great, from the fact of his smoking his cigar and singing his song like a brick.
I tell you all these things to show you clearly how I stand. I am under no one's PATRONAGE, nor do I ever mean to be. I have never asked, and I never will ask, any man for his help from mere motives of friendship. If any man thinks that I am capable of forwarding the great cause in ever so small a way, let him just give me a helping hand and I will thank him, but if not, he is doing both himself and me harm in offering it, and if it should be necessary for me to find public expression to my thoughts on any matter, I have clearly made up my mind to do so, without allowing myself to be influenced by hope of gain or weight of authority.
There are many nice people in this world for whose praise or blame I care not a whistle. I don't know and I don't care whether I shall ever be what is called a great man. I will leave my mark somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct:
T.H.H., HIS MARK,
and free from the abominable blur of cant, humbug, and self-seeking which surrounds everything in this present world—that is to say, supposing that I am not already unconsciously tainted myself, a result of which I have a morbid dread. I am perhaps overrating myself. You must put me in mind of my better self, as you did in your last letter, when you write.
But I must come to the close of my epistle, as I have one to enclose from my mother. My next shall be longer, and I hope I shall then be able to tell you what I am doing. At any rate I hope to be in England for twelve months.
I am very much ashamed of myself for not having written to you for so long—open confession is good for the soul, they say, and I will honestly confess that I was half puzzled, half piqued, and altogether sulky at your not having answered my last letter containing my love story, of which I wrote you an account before anybody. You must not suppose my affection was a bit the less because I was half angry. Nettie, who knows you well, could tell you otherwise. Indeed, now that I know all, I consider myself a great brute, and I will give you leave, if you will but write soon, to scold me as much as you like. All the family are well. My father is the only one who is much altered, and that in mind and strength, not in bodily health, which is very good. My mother has lost her front teeth, but is otherwise just the same amusing, nervous, distressingly active old lady she always was.
Our cruisers visit New Orleans sometimes, and if ever I am on the West India station, who knows, I may take a run up to see you all. Kindest love to the children. Tell Florry that I could not get her the bird with the long tail, but that some day I will send her some pictures of copper-coloured gentlemen with great big wigs and no trousers, and tell her her old uncle loves her very much and never forgets her nor anybody else.
God bless you, dearest Lizzie. Write soon.
Ever your brother,
Tom.
[Thus within a month of landing in England, Huxley had secured his footing in the scientific world. He was freed for the time from the more irksome part of his profession; his service in the navy had become a stepping-stone to the pursuits in which his heart really was. He had long been half in despair over the work which he had sent out like the dove from the ark, if haply it might find him some standing ground in the world; no news of it had reached him till he was about to start on his homeward voyage, but he returned to discover that at a single stroke it had placed him in the front rank of naturalists.]
41 North Bank, Regent's Park.
January 3, 1851.
My progress [he writes (When not otherwise specified, the extracts in this chapter are from letters to his future wife.)], must necessarily be slow and uncertain. I cannot see two steps forwards. Much depends upon myself, much upon circumstances. Hitherto all has gone as well as I could wish. I have gained each object that I had set before myself—that is, I have my shore appointment, I have found a means of publishing what I have done creditably, and I have continued to come into communication with some of the first men in England in my department of science. But, as I have found to be the case in all things that are gained, from money to friendship, it is not so much getting as keeping. It is by no means difficult if you are decently introduced, have tolerably agreeable manners, and some smattering of science, to take a position among these folks, but it is a mighty different affair to keep it and turn it to account. Not like the man who, at the Enchanted Castle, had the courage to blow the horn but not to draw the sword, and was consequently shot forth from the mouth of the cave by which he entered with most ignominious haste,—one must be ready to fight immediately after one's arrival has been announced, or be blown into oblivion.
I HAVE drawn the sword, but whether I am in truth to beat the giants and deliver my princess from the enchanted castle is yet to be seen.
[For several months he lived with his brother George and his wife at
North Bank, St. John's Wood (the house was pulled down in 1896 for the
Great Central Railway), but the surroundings were too easy, and not
conducive to hard work.]
I must, I fear, emigrate to some "two pair back," which shall have the feel and manner of a workshop, where I can leave my books about and dissect a marine nastiness if I think fit, sallying forth to meet the world when necessary, and giving it no more time than necessary. If it were not for a fear that P. would take it unkindly I should go at once. I must summon up moral courage somehow (how difficult when it is to pain those we love!) and trust to her good sense for the rest.
[And later:—]
…I have been very busy looking about for the last two days, and have been in fifty houses if I have been in one. I want some place with a decent address, cheap, and beyond all things, clean. The dirty holes that some of these lodgings are! such tawdry finery and such servants, with their faces and hands not merely dirty, but absolutely macadamised. And they all make this confounded great Exhibition a plea for about doubling the rent.
[So in April 1851 he removed to lodgings hard by, at 1 Hanover Place, Clarence Gate, Regent's Park] ("which sounds grand, but means nothing more than a sitting-room and bedroom in a small house"), [then to St. Anne's Gardens, and after that to Upper York Place, while making a second home with his brother. His other great friends already in London were the Fannings, who had left Australia a few months before his own return. In the scientific world he soon made acquaintance with most of the leading men, and began a close friendship with Edward Forbes, with George Busk (then surgeon to H.M.S. "Dreadnought" at Greenwich, afterwards President of the College of Surgeons) and his accomplished wife, and later in the year with both Hooker and Tyndall. The Busks, indeed, showed him the greatest kindness throughout this period of struggle, and the sympathy and intellectual stimulus he received from their society were of the utmost help. They were always ready to welcome him at Greenwich, and he not only often ran down there for a week-end, but would spend part of his vacations with them at Lowestoft or Tenby, where naturalists could find plenty of occupation.
But from a worldly point of view, it was too soon clear that science was sadly unprofitable. There seemed no speedy prospect of making enough to marry on. As early as March 1851 he writes:—]
The difficulties of obtaining a decent position in England in anything like a reasonable time seem to me greater than ever they were. To attempt to live by any scientific pursuit is a farce. Nothing but what is absolutely practical will go down in England. A man of science may earn great distinction, but not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversaziones, but not enough income to pay his cab fare. A man of science in these times is like an Esau who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. Again, if one turns to practice, it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any chance of getting a decent livelihood. I am not at all sure if…it would be the most prudent thing to stick by the Service: there at any rate is certainty in health and in sickness.
[Nevertheless he was mightily encouraged in the work of bringing out his "Rattlesnake" papers by a notable success in a quarter where he scarcely dared to hope for it. The Royal Society had for some time set itself to become a body of working men of science; to exclude for the future all mere dilettanti, and to admit a limited number of men whose work was such as to deserve recognition. Thanks to the initiative of Forbes, he now found this recognition accorded to him on the strength of his "Medusa" paper. He writes in February:—]
The F.R.S. that you tell me you dream of being appended to my name is nearer than one might think, to my no small surprise…I had no idea that it was at all within my reach, until I found out the other day, talking with Mr. Bell, that my having a paper in the "Transactions" was one of the best of qualifications.
My friend Forbes, to whom I am so much indebted, has taken the matter in hand for me, and I am told I am sure of getting it this year or the next. I do not at all expect it this year, as there are a great many candidates, far better men than I…I shall think myself lucky if I get it next year. Don't say anything about the matter till I tell you…As the old proverb says, there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.
[There were thirty-eight candidates; of these the Council would select fifteen, and submit their names for election at a general meeting of the Society. He was not yet twenty-six years of age, and certainly the youngest and least known of the competitors. Others probably had been up before—possibly many times before; nevertheless, on this, his first candidature, he was placed among the selected. The formal election did not took place till June 5, but on a chance visit to Forbes he heard the great news. The F.R.S. was a formal attestation of the value of the work he had already done; it was a token of success in the present, an augury of greater success in the future. No wonder the news was exciting.]
To-day [he writes on April 14] I saw Forbes at the Museum of Practical Geology, where I often drop in on him. "Well," he said, "I am glad to be able to tell you you are all right for the Royal Society; the selection was made on Friday night, and I hear that you are one of the selected. I have not seen the list, but my authority is so good that you may make yourself easy about it." I confess to having felt a little proud, though I believe I spoke and looked as cool as a cucumber. There were thirty-eight candidates, out of whom only fifteen could be selected, and I fear that they have left behind much better men than I. I shall not feel certain about the matter until I receive some official announcement. I almost wish that until then I had heard nothing about it. Notwithstanding all my cucumbery appearance, I will confess to you that I could not sit down and read to-day after the news. I wandered hither and thither restlessly half over London…Whether I have it or not, I can say one thing, that I have left my case to stand on its own strength; I have not asked for a single vote, and there are not on my certificate half the names that there might be. If it be mine, it is by no intrigue.
[Again, on May 4, 1851]
I am twenty-six to-day…and it reminds me that I have left you now a whole year. It is perfectly frightful to think how the time is slipping by, and yet seems to bring us no nearer.
What have I done with my twenty-sixth year? Six months were spent at sea, and therefore may be considered as so much lost; and six months I have had in England. That, I may say, has not been thrown away altogether without fruit. I have read a good deal and I have written a good deal. I have made some valuable friends, and have found my work more highly estimated than I had ventured to hope. I must tell you something, because it will please you, even if you think me vain for doing so.
I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said that I imagined I had to thank him in great measure for the honour of the F.R.S. "No," he said, "you have nothing to thank but the goodness of your own work." For about ten minutes I felt rather proud of that speech, and shall keep it by me whenever I feel inclined to think myself a fool, and that I have a most mistaken notion of my own capacities. The only use of honours is as an antidote to such fits of the "blue devils." Of one thing, however, which is by no means so agreeable, my opportunities for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every day a stronger and stronger conviction. It is that there is no chance of living by science. I have been loth to believe it, but it is so. There are not more than four or five offices in London which a Zoologist or Comparative Anatomist can hold and live by. Owen, who has a European reputation, second only to that of Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor 300 pounds sterling a year! which is less than the salary of many a bank clerk. My friend Forbes, who is a highly distinguished and a very able man, gets the same from his office of Paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Now, these are first-rate men—men who have been at work for years laboriously toiling upward—men whose abilities, had they turned them into the many channels of money-making, must have made large fortunes. But the beauty of Nature and the pursuit of Truth allured them into a nobler life—and this is the result…In literature a man may write for magazines and reviews, and so support himself; but not so in science. I could get anything I write into any of the journals or any of the Transactions, but I know no means of thereby earning five shillings. A man who chooses a life of science chooses not a life of poverty, but, so far as I can see, a life of NOTHING, and the art of living upon nothing at all has yet to be discovered. You will naturally think, then, "Why persevere in so hopeless a course?" At present I cannot help myself. For my own credit, for the sake of gratifying those who have hitherto helped me on—nay, for the sake of truth and science itself, I must work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun. And when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest endeavour. Had I failed in attaining my wishes from an overweening self-confidence,—had I found that the obstacles after all lay within myself—I should have bitterly despised myself, and, worst of all, I should have felt that you had just ground of complaint.
So far as the acknowledgment of the value of what I have done is concerned, I have succeeded beyond my expectations, and if I have failed on the other side of the question, I cannot blame myself. It is the world's fault and not mine.
[A few months more, and he was able to report another and still more unexpected testimony to the value of his work—another encouragement to persevere in the difficult pursuit of a scientific life. He found himself treated as an equal by men of established reputation; and the first-fruits of his work ranked on a level with the maturer efforts of veterans in science. He was within an ace of receiving the Royal Medal, which was awarded him the following year. Of this, he writes:—]
November 7, 1851.
I have at last tasted what it is to mingle with my fellows—to take my place in that society for which nature has fitted me, and whether the draught has been a poison which has heated my veins or true nectar from the gods, life-giving, I know not, but I can no longer rest where I once could have rested. If I could find within myself that mere personal ambition, the desire of fame, present or posthumous, had anything to do with this restlessness, I would root it out. But in those moments of self-questioning, when one does not lie even to oneself, I feel that I can say it is not so—that the real pleasure, the true sphere, lies in the feeling of self-development—in the sense of power and of growing ONENESS with the great spirit of abstract truth.
Do you understand this? I know you do; our old oneness of feeling will not desert us here…
To-day a most unexpected occurrence came to my knowledge. I must tell you that the Queen places at the disposal of the Royal Society once a year a valuable gold medal to be given to the author of the best paper upon either a physical, chemical, or anatomical or physiological subject. One of these branches of science is chosen by the Royal Society for each year, and therefore for any given subject—say anatomy and physiology; it becomes a triennial prize, and is given to the best memoir in the "Transactions" for three years.
It happens that the Royal Medal, as it is called, is this year given in Anatomy and Physiology. I had no idea that I had the least chance of getting it, and made no effort to do so. But I heard this morning from a member of the Council that the award was made yesterday, and that I was within an ace of getting it. Newport, a man of high standing in the scientific world, and myself were the two between whom the choice rested, and eventually it was given to him, on account of his having a greater bulk of matter in his papers, so evenly did the balance swing. Had I only had the least idea that I should be selected they should have had enough and to spare from me. However, I do not grudge Newport his medal; he is a good sort and a worthy competitor, old enough to be my father, and has long had a high reputation. Except for its practical value as a means of getting a position I care little enough for the medal. What I do care for is the justification which the being marked in this position gives to the course I have taken. Obstinate and self-willed as I am…there are times when grave doubts overshadow my mind, and then such testimony as this restores my self-confidence.
To let you know the full force of what I have been saying, I must tell you that this "Royal Medal" is what such men as Owen and Faraday are glad to get, and is indeed one of the highest honours in England.
To-day I had the great pleasure of meeting my old friend Sir John Richardson (to whom I was mainly indebted for my appointment in the "Rattlesnake"). Since I left England he has married a third wife, and has taken a hand in joining in search of Franklin (which was more dreadful?), like an old hero as he is; but not a feather of him is altered, and he is as grey, as really kind, and as seemingly abrupt and grim, as ever he was. Such a fine old polar bear!
CHAPTER 1.6.
1851-1854.
[The course pursued by the Government in the matter of Huxley's papers is curious and instructive. The Admiralty minute of 1849 had promised either money assistance for publishing or speedy promotion as an encouragement to scientific research in the Navy, especially by the medical officers. On leave to publish the scientific results of the expedition being asked for, the Department forestalled any request for monetary aid by an intimation that none would be given. Strong representations, however, from the leading scientific authorities induced them to grant the appointment to the "Fisguard" for six months.
The sequel shows how the departmental representatives of science did their best for science in Huxley's case, so far as in their power lay:—]
June 6, 1851.
The other day I received an intimation that my presence was required at Somerset House. I rather expected the mandate, as six months' leave was up. Sir William was very civil, and told me that the Commander of the "Fisguard" had applied to the Admiralty to know what was to be done with me, as my leave had expired. "Now," said he, "go to Forest" (his secretary), "write a letter to me, stating what you want, and I will get it done for you." So away I went and applied for an indefinite amount of leave, on condition of reporting the progress of my work every six months, and as I suppose I shall get it, I feel quite easy on that head.
[In May 1851 he applied to the Royal Society for help from the Government Grant towards publishing the bulk of his work as a whole, for much of its value would be lost if scattered fragmentarily among the Transactions of various learned societies. Personally, the members of the committee were very willing to make the grant, but on further consideration it appeared that the money was to be applied for promoting research, not for assisting publication; and moreover, it was desirable not to establish a precedent for saddling the funds at the disposal of the Society with all the publications which it was the clear duty of the Government to undertake. On this ground the application was refused, but at the same time it was resolved that the Government be formally asked to give the necessary subvention towards bringing out these valuable papers.
A similar resolution was passed at the Ipswich meeting of the British Association in July 1851, and at a meeting of its Council in March 1852 the President declared himself ready to carry it into effect by asking the Treasury for the needful 300 pounds sterling. But at the July meeting he could only report a non possumus answer for the current year (1852) from the Government, and a resolution was passed recommending that application on the subject be renewed by the British Association in the following year.
Meanwhile, weary of official delay, Huxley had conceived the idea of writing direct to the Duke of Northumberland, then First Lord of the Admiralty, whom he knew to take an interest in scientific research. At the same time he stirred Lord Rosse, the President of the Royal Society, to repeat his application to the Treasury. Although the Admiralty in April 1852 again refused money help, and bade him apply to the Royal Society for a portion of the Government Grant (which the latter had already refused him), the Hydrographer was directed to make inquiries as to the propriety of granting him an extension of leave. To his question asking the exact amount of time still required for finishing the work of publication, Huxley returned what he described as a "savage reply," that his experience of engravers led him to think that the plates could be published in eight or nine months from the receipt of a grant; that he had reason to believe this grant might soon be promised, but that the long delay was solely due to the remissness of those whose duty it was to represent his claims to the Government; and finally, that he must ask for a year's extension of leave.
For these expressions his conscience smote him when, on June 12, at a soiree of the Royal Society, Lord Rosse took him aside and informed him that he had seen Sir C. Trevelyan, the Under Secretary to the Treasury, who said there would be no difficulty in the matter if it were properly laid before the Prime Minister, Lord Derby. To Lord Derby therefore he went, and was told that Mr. Huxley should go to the Treasury and arrange matters in person with Trevelyan. At the same time the indignant tone of his letter to the Hydrographer seemed to have done good; he was invited to explain matters in person, and was granted the leave he asked for.
Everything now seemed to point to a speedy solution of his difficulties. The promise of a grant, of course, did nothing immediate, but assured him a good position, and settled all the scruples of the Admiralty with regard to time.] "You have no notion," [he writes,]" of the trouble the grant has cost me. It died a natural death till I wrote to the Duke in March, and brought it to life again. The more opposition there is, the more determined I am to carry it through." [But he was doomed to a worse disappointment than before. Trevelyan received him very civilly, but had heard nothing on the matter from Lord Derby, and accordingly sent him in charge of his private secretary to see Lord Derby's secretary. The latter had seen no papers relating to any such matter, and supposed Lord Derby had not brought them from St. James' Square, "but promised to write to me as soon as anything was learnt. I look upon it as adjourned sine die." Parliament breaking up immediately after gave the officials a good excuse for doing nothing more.
When his year's leave expired in June 1853, he wrote the following letter to Sir William Burnett:—]
As the period of my leave of absence from H.M.S. "Fisguard" is about to expire, I have the honour to report that the duty on which I have been engaged has been carried out, as far as my means permit, by the publication of a "Memoir upon the Homologies of the Cephalous Mollusca," with four plates, which appeared in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1852 (published 1853), being the fourth memoir resulting from the observations made during the voyage of H.M.S. "Rattlesnake" which has appeared in these "Transactions."
I have the pleasure of being able to add that the President and Council of the Royal Society have considered these memoirs worthy of being rewarded by the Royal Medal in Physiology for 1852, which they did me the honour to confer in the November of that year.
I regret that no definite answer of any kind having as yet been given to the strong representations which were made by the Presidents both of the Royal Society and of the British Association in 1852 to H.M. Government—representations which have recently been earnestly repeated—in order to obtain a grant for the purpose of publishing the remainder of these researches in a separate form, I have been unable to proceed any further, and I beg to request a renewal of my leave of absence from H.M.S. "Fisguard," so that if H.M. Government think fit to give the grant applied for, it may be in my power to make use of it; or that, should it be denied, I may be enabled to find some other means of preventing the total loss of the labour of some years.
[Hereupon he was allowed six months longer, but with the intimation that no further leave would be granted. A final application from the scientific authorities resulted in fresh inquiries as to the length of time still required, and the deadlock between the two departments of State being unchanged, he replied to the same effect as before, but to no purpose. His formal application for leave in January 1854 was met by orders to join the "Illustrious" at Portsmouth. He appealed to the Admiralty that this appointment might be cancelled, giving a brief summary of the facts, and pointing out that it was the inaction of the Treasury which had absolutely prevented him from completing his work.]
I would therefore respectfully submit that, under these circumstances, my request to be permitted to remain on half-pay until the completion of the publication of the results of some years' toil is not wholly unreasonable. It is the only reward for which I would ask their Lordships, and indeed, considering the distinct pledge given in the minute to which I have referred, to grant it would seem as nearly to concern their Lordships' honour as my advantage.
[The counter to this bold stroke was crushing, if not convincing. He was ordered to join his ship immediately under pain of being struck off the Navy list. He was of course prepared for this ultimatum, and whether he could manage to pursue science in England or might be compelled to set up as a doctor in Sydney, he considered that he would be better off than as an assistant surgeon in the Navy. Accordingly he stood firm, and the threat was carried into effect in March 1854. An unexpected consequence followed. As long as he was in the navy, with direct claims upon a Government department for assistance in publishing his work, the Royal Society had not felt justified in allotting him any part of the Government Grant. But now that he had left the service, this objection was removed, and in June 1854 the sum of 300 pounds sterling was assigned for this purpose, while the remainder of the expense was borne by the Ray Society, which undertook the publication under the title of "Oceanic Hydrozoa." Thus he was able to record with some satisfaction how he at last has got the grant, though indirectly, from the Government, and considers it something of a triumph for the principle of the family motto, tenax propositi.
While these fruitless negotiations with the Admiralty were in progress, he had done a good deal, both in publishing what he could of his "Rattlesnake" work, and in trying to secure some scientific appointment which would enable him to carry out his two chief objects: the one his marriage, the other the unhampered pursuit of science. In addition to the papers sent home from the cruise—one on the Medusae, published in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" for 1849, and one on the Animal of Trigonia, published in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society" for the same year—he had reported to the Admiralty in June 1851 the publication of seven memoirs:—
1. On the Auditory Organs of the Crustacea. Published in the "Annals of Natural History."
2. On the Anatomy of the genus Tethea. Published in the "Annals of Natural History."
3. Report upon the Development of the Echinoderms. To appear in the "Annals" for July.
4. On the Anatomy and Physiology of the Salpae, with four plates. Read at the Royal Society, and to be published in the next part of the "Philosophical Transactions."
5. On two Genera of Ascidians, Doliolum and Appendicularia, with one plate. Read at the Royal Society, and to be published in the next part of the "Philosophical Transactions."
6. On some peculiarities in the Circulation of the Mollusca. Sent to M. Milne-Edwards, at his request, to be published in the "Annales des Sciences."
7. On the Generative Organs of the Physophoridae and Diphydae. Sent to Professor Muller of Berlin for publication in his "Archiv."
By the end of the year he had four more to report:—
1. On the Hydrostatic Acalephae; 2. On the genus Sagitta, both published in the "Report of the British Association" for 1851; 3. On Lacinularia socialis, a contribution to the anatomy and physiology of the Rotifera, in the "Transactions of the Microscopical Society" 4. On Thalassicolla, a new zoophyte, in the "Annals of Natural History." Next year he read before the British Association a paper entitled "Researches into the Structure of the Ascidians," and a very important one on the Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca, afterwards published in the "Philosophical Transactions." In addition he had prepared a great part of his longer work for publication; out of twenty-four or twenty-five plates, nineteen were ready for the engraver when he wrote his appeal to the Duke of Northumberland. In this same year, 1852, he was also awarded the Royal Medal in Physiology for the value of his contributions to the "Philosophical Transactions."
In 1853, besides seeing some of these papers through the press, he published one on the existence of Cellulose in the Tunic of Ascidians, read before the Microscopical Society, and two papers on the Structure of the Teeth; the latter, of course, like a paper of the previous year on Echinococcus, being distinct from the "Rattlesnake" work. The greater work on Oceanic Hydrozoa, over which the battle of the grant in aid had been waged so long, did not see the light until 1858, when his interest had been diverted from these subjects, and to return to them was more a burden than a pleasure.
In the second place, the years 1851-53, so full of profitless successes in pure science, and delusive hopes held out by the Government, were marked by an equally unsuccessful series of attempts to obtain a professorship. If a chair of Natural History had been established, as he hoped, in the projected university at Sydney, he would gladly have stood for it. Sydney was a second home to him; he would have been backed by the great influence of Macleay; and in his eyes a naturalist could not desire a finer field for his labours than the waters of Port Jackson. But this was not to be, and the first chair he tried for was the newly-instituted chair of Zoology at the University of Toronto. The vacancy was advertised in the summer of 1851; the pay of full 300 pounds sterling a year was enough to marry on; his friends reassured him as to his capacity to fill the post, which, moreover, did not debar him from the hope of returning some day to fill a similar post in England.]
1 Edward Street, St. John's Wood Terrace,
July 29 [1851].
My dear Henfrey,
I have been detained in town, or I hope we should long since have had our projected excursion.
What do you think of my looking out for a Professorship of Natural History at Toronto? Pay 350 pounds sterling, with chances of extra fees. I think that out there one might live comfortably upon that sum—possibly even do the domestic and cultivate the Loves and Graces as well as the Muses.
Seriously, however, I should like to know what you think of it. The choice of getting anything over here without devoting one's self wholly to Mammon, seems to me very small. At least it involves years of waiting.
Toronto is not very much out of the way, and the pay is decent and would enable me to devote myself wholly to my favourite pursuits. Were it in England, I could wish nothing better; and, as it is, I think it would answer my purpose very well for some years at any rate.
If they go fairly to work I think I shall have a very good chance of being elected; but I am told that these matters are often determined by petty intrigues.
Francis and I looked for you everywhere at the Botanic Gardens, and finding you were too wise to come, came here, grieving your absence, and had an aesthetic "Bier." [(Dr. William Francis, one of the editors of the "Philosophical Magazine," and a member of the publishing firm of Taylor and Francis.)
He obtained a remarkably strong set of testimonials from all the leading anatomists and physiologists in the kingdom, as well as one from Milne-Edwards in Paris.
I have put together [he writes] twelve or fourteen testimonials from the first men. I will have no other.
[His newly-obtained F.R.S. was a recommendation in itself. So that he writes:—]
There are, I learn, several other candidates, but no one I fear at all, if they only have fair play. There is no one of the others who can command anything like the scientific influence which is being exercised for me, whatever private influence they may have.
What makes all the big-wigs so marvellously zealous on my behalf I know not. I have sought none of them and flattered none of them, that I can say with a good conscience, and I think you know me well enough to believe it. I feel very grateful to them; and if it ever happens that I am able to help a young man on (when I am a big-wig myself!) I shall remember it.
[And again, September 23, 1851:—]
When I have once sent away my testimonials and done all that is to be done, I shall banish the subject from my mind and make myself quite easy as to results. For the present I confess to being somewhat anxious.
[Nevertheless, after many postponements, a near relative of an influential Canadian politician was at length appointed late in 1853. By an amusing coincidence, Huxley's newly-made friend, Tyndall, was likewise a candidate for a chair at Toronto, and likewise rejected. Two letters, concerning Tyndall's election to the Royal Society, contain references both to Toronto and to Sydney.]
4 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood
December 4 [1851].
My dear Sir,
I was greatly rejoiced to find I could be of service to you in any way, and I only regret, for your sake, that my name is not a more weighty one. Your election, I should think, can be a matter of no doubt.
As to Toronto, I confess I am not very anxious about it. Sydney would have been far more to my taste, and I confess I envy you what, as I hear, is the very good chance you have of going there.
It used to be our headquarters in the "Rattlesnake" and my home for three months in the year. Should you go, I should be very happy, if you like, to give you letters to some of my friends.
Greatly as I wish we had been destined to do our work together, I cannot but offer you the most hearty wishes for your success in Sydney.
Ever yours very faithfully,
Thomas H. Huxley.
John Tyndall, Esq.
41 North Bank, Regent's Park,
May 7, 1852.
My dear Tyndall,
Allow me to be one of the first to have the pleasure of congratulating you on your new honours. I had the satisfaction last night to hear your name read out as one of the selected of the Council of the Royal Society for election to the Fellowship this year, and you are therefore as good as elected.
I always made sure of your success, but I am not the less pleased that it is now a fait accompli.
I am, my dear Tyndall, faithfully yours,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—I have heard nothing of Toronto, and I begin to think that the whole affair, University and all, is a myth.
[His hopes of the Colonies failing, he tried each of the divisions of the United Kingdom in turn, with uniform ill-success; in 1852-53 at Aberdeen and at Cork; in 1853 at King's College, London. He had great hopes of Aberdeen at first; the appointment lay with the Home Secretary, a personal friend of Sir J. Clark, who was interested in Huxley though not personally acquainted with him. But no sooner had he written to urge the latter's claims than a change of ministry took place, and other influences commanded the field. It was cold comfort that Clark told him only to wait—something must turn up. There was still a great probability of the Toronto chair falling to a Cork professor; so with this in view, he gave up a trip to Chamounix with his brother, and attended the meeting of the British Association at Belfast in August 1852, in order to make himself known to the Irish men of science, for, as his friends told him, personal influence went for so much, and while most men's reputations were better than themselves, he might flatter himself that he was better than his reputation. But this, too, came to nothing, and the King's College appointment also went to the candidate who was backed by the most powerful influence.
A fatality seemed to dog his efforts; nevertheless he writes at the end of 1851:—]
Among my scientific friends the monition I get on all sides is that of
Dante's great ancestor to him—
A te sequi la tua stella.
If this were from personal friends only, I should disregard it; but it comes from men to whose approbation it would be foolish affectation to deny the highest value. I find myself treated on a footing of equality ("my proud self," as you may suppose, would not put up with any other) by men whose names and works have been long before the world. My opinions are treated with a respect altogether unaccountable to me, and what I have done is quoted as having full authority. Without canvassing a soul or making use of any influence, I have been elected into the Royal Society at a time when that election is more difficult than it has ever been in the history of the Society. Without my knowledge I was within an ace of getting the Royal Society medal this year, and if I go on I shall very probably get it next time.
[In 1852 he was not only to receive this coveted honour (See Chapter 7.), but also to be elected upon the Royal Society Council. In January 1852, when standing for Toronto, he describes how Colonel Sabine, then Secretary of the Royal Society, dissuaded him from the project, saying that a brilliant prospect lay before him if he would only wait.]
"Make up your mind to get something fairly within your reach, and you will have us all with you." Professor Owen again offers to do anything in his power for me; Professor Forbes will move heaven and earth for me if he can; Gray, Bell, and all the leading men are, I know, similarly inclined. Fate says wait, and you shall reach the goal which from a child you have set before yourself. On the other hand, a small voice like conscience speaks of one who is wasting youth and life away for your sake.
[Other friends, who, while recognising his general capacities, were not scientific, and had no direct appreciation of his superlative powers in science, thought he was following a course which would never allow him to marry, and urged him to give up his unequal battle with fate, and emigrate to Australia. Of this he writes on August 5, 1852, to Miss Heathorn:—]
I must make up my mind to it if nothing turns up. However, I look upon such a life as would await me in Australia with great misgiving. A life spent in a routine employment, with no excitement and no occupation for the higher powers of the intellect, with its great aspirations stifled and all the great problems of existence set hopelessly in the background, offers to me a prospect that would be utterly intolerable but for your love…Sometimes I am half mad with the notion of bringing all my powers in a surer struggle for a livelihood. Sometimes I am equally wild at thinking of the long weary while that has passed since we met. There are times when I cannot bear to think of leaving my present pursuits, when I feel I should be guilty of a piece of cowardly desertion from my duty in doing it, and there come intervals when I would give truth and science and all hopes to be folded in your arms…I know which course is right, but I never know which I may follow; help me…for there is only one course in which there is either hope or peace for me.
[These repeated disappointments deepened the fits of depression which constantly assailed him. He was torn by two opposing thoughts. Was it just, was it right, to demand so great a sacrifice from the woman who had entrusted her future to the uncertain chances of his fortunes? Could he ask her to go on offering up the best years of her life to aspirations of his which were possibly chimerical, or perhaps merely selfishness in disguise, which ought to yield to more imperative duties? Why not clip the wings of Pegasus, and descend to the sober, everyday jog-trot after plain bread and cheese like other plain people? Time after time he almost made up his mind to throw science to the winds; to emigrate and establish a practice in Sydney; to try even squatting or storekeeping. And yet he knew only too well that with his temperament no life would bring him the remotest approach to lasting happiness and satisfaction except one that gave scope to his intellectual passion. To yield to the immediate pressure of circumstances was perhaps ignoble, was even more probably a surer road to the loss of happiness for himself and for his wife than the repeated and painful sacrifices of the present. With all this, however, and the more when assured of her entire confidence in his judgment, he could not but feel a sense of remorse that she willingly accepted the sacrifice, and feared that she might have done so rather to gratify his wishes than because reason approved it as the right course to follow.
Here is another typical extract from his correspondence. Hearing that
Toronto is likely to go to a relative of a Canadian minister, he writes,
January 2, 1852:—]
I think of all my dreams and aspirations, and of the path which I know lies before me if I can only bide my time, and it seems a sin and a shameful thing to allow my resolve to be turned; and then comes the mocking suspicion, is this fine abstract duty of yours anything but a subtlety of your own selfishness? Have you not other more imperative duties?
You may fancy whether my life is a very happy one thus spent without even the satisfaction of the sense of right-doing. I must come to some resolution about it, and that shortly. I was talking seriously with Fanning the other night about the possibility of finding some employment of a profitable kind in Australia, storekeeping, squatting, or the like. As I told him, any change in my mode of life must be TOTAL. If I am to change at all, the change must be total and complete. I will not attempt my own profession. I should only be led astray to think and to work as of old, and sigh continually for my old dear and intoxicating pursuits. I wish I understood Brewing, and I would make a proposition to come and help your father. You may smile, but I am as serious as ever I was in my life.
[The distance between them made it doubly difficult to keep in touch with one another, when the post took from four and a half to five or even six months to reach England from Australia. The answer to a letter would come when the matter in question was long done with. The assurance that he was doing right at one moment seemed inadequate when circumstances had altered and hope sunk lower. It was all too easy to suspect that she did not understand his aims, his thirst for action, nor the fact that he was no longer free to do as he liked, whether to stay in the navy, to go into practice, or follow his own pursuits and pleasure. Yet it made him despair to be so hedged in by circumstances. With all his efforts, he seemed as though he had done nothing but earn the reputation of being a very promising young man. How much easier to continue the struggle if he could but have seen her face to face, and read her thoughts as to whether he were right or wrong in the course he was pursuing. He appeals to her faith that he is choosing the nobler path in pursuing knowledge, than in turning aside to the temptation of throwing it up for the sake of their speedier union. Still she was right in claiming a share in his work; but for her his life would have been wasted.
The clouds gathered very thickly about him when in April 1852 his mother died, while his father was hopelessly ill.] "Belief and happiness," [he writes,] "seem to be beyond the reach of thinking men in these days, but courage and silence are left." [Again the clouds lifted, for in October he received Miss Heathorn's] "noble and self-sacrificing letter, which has given me more comfort than anything for a long while," [the keynote of which was that a man should pursue those things for which he is most fitted, let them be what they will. He now felt free to tell the vicissitudes of thought and will he had passed through this twelvemonth, and how the idea of giving up all had affected him.] "The spectre of a wasted life has passed before me—a vision of that servant who hid his talent in a napkin and buried it."
[Early in 1853 he writes how much he was cheered by his sister's advice and encouragement to persist in the struggle; but the darkest moment was still to come. His hopes from his candidature crumbled away one after the other; his leave from the Admiralty was coming to an end, and there was small hope of renewing it; the grant from Government remained as unattainable as ever; the long struggle had taught him the full extent of his powers only, it seemed, to end by denying him all opportunity for their use.]
And so the card house I have been so laboriously building up these two years with all manner of hard struggling will be tumbled down again, and my small light will be ignominiously snuffed out like that of better men…I can submit if the fates are too strong. The world is no better than an arena of gladiators, and I, a stray savage, have been turned into it to fight my way with my rude club among the steel-clad fighters. Well, I have won my way into the front rank, and ought to be thankful and deem it only the natural order of things if I can get no further.
[And again in a letter of July 6, 1853:—]
I know that these three years have inconceivably altered me—that from being an idle man, only too happy to flow into the humours of the moment, I have become almost unable to exist without active intellectual excitement. I know that in this I find peace and rest such as I can attain in no other way. From being a mere untried fledgling, doubtful whether the wish to fly proceeded from mere presumption or from budding wings, I have now some confidence in well-tried pinions, which have given me rank among the strongest and foremost. I have always felt how difficult it was for you to realise all this—how strange it must be to you that though your image remained as bright as ever, new interests and purposes had ranged themselves around it, and though they could claim no pre-eminence, yet demanded their share of my thoughts. I make no apology for this—it is man's nature and the necessary influence of circumstances which will so have it; and depend, however painful our present separation may be, the spectacle of a man who had given up the cherished purpose of his life, the Esau who had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and with it his self-respect, would before long years were over our heads be infinitely more painful. Depend upon it, the trust which you placed in my hands when I left you—to choose for both of us—has not been abused. Hemmed in by all sorts of difficulties, my choice was a narrow one, and I was guided more by circumstances than my own free will. Nevertheless the path has shown itself to be a fair one, neither more difficult nor less so than most paths in life in which a man of energy may hope to do much if he believes in himself, and is at peace within.
My course in life is taken. I will NOT leave London—I WILL make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some kind of pursuit connected with science, which is the thing for which nature has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for anything. Bethink yourself whether you can cast aside all repining and all doubt, and devote yourself in patience and trust to helping me along my path as no one else could. I know what I ask, and the sacrifice I demand, and if this were the time to use false modesty, I should say how little I have to offer in return…
I am full of faults, but I am real and true, and the whole devotion of an earnest soul cannot be overprized.
…It is as if all that old life at Holmwood had merely been a preparation for the real life of our love—as if we were then children ignorant of life's real purpose—as if these last months had merely been my old doubts over again, whether I had rightly or wrongly interpreted the manner and the words that had given me hope…
We will begin the new love of woman and man, no longer that of boy and girl, conscious that we have aims and purposes as well as affections, and that if love is sweet life is dreadfully stern and earnest.
[As time went on and no permanency offered—although a good deal of writing fell in his way—the strain told heavily upon him. In the autumn he was quite out of sorts, body and mind, more at war with himself than he ever was in his life before. All this, he writes, had darkened his thoughts, had made him once more imagine a hopeless discrepancy between the two of them in their ways of thinking and objects in life. It was not till November 1853 that this depression was banished by the trust and confidence of her last letter.] "I wish to Heaven," [he writes,] "it had reached me six months ago. It would have saved me a world of pain and error." [But with this, the worst period of mental suffering was over, and every haunting doubt was finally exorcised. His career was made possible by the steady faith which neither separation nor any misgiving nor its own troubles could shake. And from this point all things began to brighten. His health had been restored by a trip to the Pyrenees with his brother George in September. He had got work that enabled him to regard the Admiralty and its menaces with complete equanimity; a "Manual of Comparative Anatomy," for Churchhill the publisher, regular work on the "Westminster," and another book in prospect,] "so that if I quit the Service to-morrow, these will give me more than my pay has been." [(This regular work was the article on Contemporary Science, which in October 1854 he got Tyndall to share with him. For, he writes,] "To give some account of the books in one's own department is no particular trouble, and comes with me under the head of being paid for what I MUST, in any case, do—but I neither will, nor can, go on writing about books in other departments, of which I am not competent to form a judgment even if I had the time to give to them.") [And on December 7 he writes how he has been restored and revived by reading over her last two letters, and confesses,] "I have been unjust to the depth and strength of your devotion, but will never do so again." [Then he tells all he had gone through before leaving England in September for his holiday—how he had resolved to abandon all his special pursuits and take up Chemistry, for practical purposes, when first one publisher and then another asked him to write for them, and hopes were held out to him of being appointed to deliver the Fullerian lectures at the Royal Institution for the next three years; while, most important of all, Edward Forbes was likely before long, to leave his post at the Museum of Practical Geology, and he had already been spoken to by the authorities about filling it. This was worth some 200 pounds sterling a year, while he calculated to make about 250 pounds sterling by his pen alone.] "Therefore it would be absurd to go hunting for chemical birds in the bush when I have such in the hand."
CHAPTER 1.7.
1851-1853.
[Several letters dating from 1851 to 1853 help to fill up the outlines of Huxley's life during those three years of struggle. There is a description of the British Association meeting at Ipswich in 1851] ("Forbes advises me to go down to the meeting of the British Association this year and make myself notorious somehow or other. Thank Heaven I have impudence enough to lecture the savans of Europe if necessary. Can you imagine me holding forth?" [June 6, 1851.]), with the traditional touch of gaiety to enliven the gravity of its proceedings, and the unconventional jollity of the Red Lion Club (a dining-club of members of the Association), whose palmy days were those under the inspiration of the genial and gifted Forbes. This was the meeting at which Huxley first began his alliance with Tyndall, with whom he travelled down from town, although he does not mention his name in this letter. With Hooker he had already made acquaintance; and from this time forwards the three were closely bound together by personal regard as well as by similarity of aims and interests.
Then follow his sketch of the English scientific world as he found it in 1851, given in his letter to W. Macleay; several letters to his sister; the description of his first lecture at the Royal Institution, which, though successful on the whole, was very different in manner and delivery from the clear and even flow of his later style, with the voice not loud but distinct, the utterance never hurried beyond the point of immediate comprehension, but carrying the attention of the audience with it, eager to the end. Two letters of warning and remonstrance against the habits of lecturing in a colloquial tone, suitable to a knot of students gathered round his table, but not to a large audience—of running his words, especially technical terms, together—of pouring out new and unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed, were addressed to him—one by a "working man" of his Monday evening audience at Jermyn Street in 1855, the other, undated, by Mr. Jodrell, a frequenter of the Royal Institution, and afterwards founder of the Jodrell Lectureships at University College, London, and other benefactions to science, and these he kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled "Good Advice." How much can be done by the frank acceptance of criticism and by careful practice is shown by the difference between the feelings of the later audiences who flocked to his lectures, and those of the members of an Institute in St. John's Wood, who, as he often used to tell, after hearing him in his early days, petitioned "not to have that young man again.">[
July 12, 1851.
The interval between my letters has been a little longer than usual, as I have been very busy attending the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich. The last time I attended one was at Southampton five years ago, when I went merely as a spectator, and looked at the people who read papers as if they were somebodies. (See Chapter 2, ad fin.) This time I have been behind the scenes myself and have played out my little part on the boards. I know all about the scenery and decorations, and no longer think the manager a wizard.
Any one who conceives that I went down from any especial interest in the progress of science makes a great mistake. My journey was altogether a matter of policy, partly for the purpose of doing a little necessary trumpeting, and partly to get the assistance of the Association in influencing the Government.
On the journey down, my opposite in the railway carriage turned out to be Sir James Ross, the Antarctic discoverer. We had some very pleasant talk together. I knew all about him, as Dayman (one of the lieutenants of the "Rattlesnake") had sailed under his command; oddly enough we afterwards went to lodge at the same house, but as we were attending our respective sections all day we did not see much of one another.
When we arrived at Ipswich there was a good deal of trouble about getting lodgings. My companions located themselves about a mile out of the town, but that was too far for my "indolent habits"; I sought and at last found a room in the town a little bigger than my cabin on board ship for which I had the satisfaction of paying 30 shillings a week.
You know what the British Association is. It is a meeting of the savans of England and the Continent, under the presidency of some big-wig or other,—this year of the Astronomer-Royal,—for the purpose of exchanging information. To this end they arrange themselves into different sections, each with its own president and committee, and indicated by letters. For instance, Section A is for Mathematics and Physics; Section B for Chemistry, etc.; my own section, that of Natural History, was D, under the presidency of Professor Henslow of Cambridge. I was on the committee, and therefore saw the working of the whole affair.
On the first day there was a dearth of matter in our section. People had not arrived with their papers. So by way of finding out whether I could speak in public or not, I got up and talked to them for about twenty minutes. I was considerably surprised to find that when once I had made the plunge, my tongue went glibly enough.
On the following day I read a long paper, which I had prepared and illustrated with a lot of big diagrams, to an audience of about twenty people! The rest were all away after Prince Albert, who had been unfortunately induced to visit the meeting, and fairly turned the heads of the good people of Ipswich. On Saturday a very pleasant excursion on scientific pretences, but in fact a most jolly and unscientific picnic, took place. Several hundred people went down the Orwell in a steamer. The majority returned, but I and two others, considering Sunday in Ipswich an impossibility, stopped at a little seaside village, Felixstowe, and idled away our time there very pleasantly. Babington the botanist and myself walked into Ipswich on Sunday night. It is about eleven miles, and we did it comfortably in two hours and three quarters, which was not bad walking.
On Monday at Section D again. Forbes brought forward the subject of my application to Government in committee, and it was unanimously agreed to forward a resolution on the subject to the Committee of Recommendations. I made a speechification of some length in the Section about a new animal.
On Thursday morning I attended a meeting of the Ray Society, and to my infinite astonishment, the secretary, Dr. Lankester, gave me the second motion to make. The Prince of Casino moved the first, so I was in good company. The great absurdity of it was that not being a member of the Society I had properly no right to speak at all. However, it was only a vote of thanks, and I got up and did the "neat and appropriate" in style.
After this a party of us went out dredging in the Orwell in a small boat. We were away all day, and it rained hard coming back, so that I got wet through, and had to pull five miles to keep off my enemy, the rheumatics.
Then came the President's dinner, to which I did not go, as I preferred making myself comfortable with a few friends elsewhere. And after that, the final evening meeting, when all the final determinations are announced.
Among them I had the satisfaction to hear that it was resolved—that the President and Council of the British Association should co-operate with the Royal Society in representing the value and importance, etc., of Mr. T.H. Huxley's zoological researches to Her Majesty's Government for the purpose of obtaining a grant towards their publication. Subsequently I was introduced to Colonel Sabine, the President of the Association in 1852, and a man of very high standing and considerable influence. He had previously been civil enough to sign my certificate at the Royal Society, unsolicited, and therefore knew me by reputation—I only mean that as a very small word. He was very civil and promised me every assistance in his power.
It is a curious thing that of the four applications to Government to be made by the Association, two were for Naval Assistant-Surgeons, namely one for Dr. Hooker, who had just returned from the Himalaya Mountains, and one for me. How I envied Hooker; he has long been engaged to a daughter of Professor Henslow's, and at this very meeting he sat by her side. He is going to be married in a day or two. His father is director of the Kew Gardens, and there is little doubt of his succeeding him.
Whether the Government accede to the demand that will be made upon them or not, I can now rest satisfied that no means of influencing them has been left unused by me. If they will not listen to the conjoint recommendations of the Royal Society and the British Association, they will listen to nothing…
July 16, 1851.
I went yesterday to dine with Colonel Sabine. We had a long discourse about the prospects and probable means of existence of young men trying to make their way to an existence in the scientific world. I took, as indeed what I have seen has forced me to take, rather the despairing side of the question, and said that as it seemed to me England did not afford even the means of existence to young men who were willing to devote themselves to science. However, he spoke cheeringly, and advised me by no means to be hasty, but to wait, and he doubted not that I should succeed. He cited his own case as an instance of waiting, eventually successful. Altogether I felt the better for what he said…
There has been a notice of me in the "Literary Gazette" for last week, much more laudatory than I deserve, from the pen of my friend Forbes. [An appreciation of his papers on the Physophoridae and Sagitta, speaking highly both of his observations and philosophic power, in the report of the proceedings in Section D.]
In the same number is a rich song from the same fertile and versatile pen, which was sung at one of our Red Lion meetings. That is why I want you to look at it, not that you will understand it, because it is full of allusions to occurrences known only in the scientific circles. At Ipswich we had a grand Red Lion meeting; about forty members were present, and among them some of the most distinguished members of the Association. Some foreigners were invited (the Prince of Casino, Buonaparte's nephew, among others), and were not a little astonished to see the grave professors, whose English solemnity and gravity they had doubtless commented on elsewhere, giving themselves up to all sorts of fun. Among the Red Lions we have a custom (instead of cheering) of waving and wagging one coat-tail (one Lion's tail) when we applaud. This seemed to strike the Prince's fancy amazingly, and when he got up to return thanks for his health being drunk, he told us that as he was rather out of practice in speaking English, he would return thanks in our fashion, and therewith he gave three mighty roars and wags, to the no small amusement of every one. He is singularly like the portraits of his uncle, and seems a very jolly, good-humoured old fellow. I believe, however, he is a bit of a rip. It was remarkable how proud the Quakers were of being noticed by him.
To W. Macleay, of Sydney.
41 North Bank, Regent's Park, November 9, 1851.
My dear Sir,
It is a year to-day since the old "Rattlesnake" was paid off, and that reminds me among other things that I have hardly kept my promise of giving you information now and then upon the state of matters scientific in England. My last letter is, I am afraid, nine or ten months old, but here in England the fighting and scratching to keep your place in the crowd exclude almost all other thoughts. When I last wrote I was but at the edge of the crush at the pit-door of this great fools' theatre—now I have worked my way into it and through it, and am, I hope, not far from the check-takers. I have learnt a good deal in my passage.
[Follows an account of his efforts to get his papers published—substantially a repetition of what has already been given.]
Rumours there are scattered abroad of a favourable cast, and I am told on all hands that something will certainly be done. I only asked for 300 pounds sterling, something less than the cost of a parliamentary blue-book which nobody ever hears of. They take care to obliterate any spark of gratitude that might perchance arise for what they do, by keeping one so long in suspense that the result becomes almost a matter of indifference. Had I known they would keep me so long, I would have published my work as a series of papers in the "Philosophical Transactions."
In the meanwhile I have not been idle, as I hope to show you by the various papers enclosed with this. You will recollect that on the Salpae. No one here knew anything about them, and I thought that all my results were absolutely new—until, me miserum! I found them in a little paper of Krohn's in the "Annales des Sciences" for 1846, without any figures to draw anybody's attention.
The memoir on the Medusae (which I sent to you) has, I hear, just escaped a high honour—to wit, the Royal Medal. The award has been made to Newport for his paper on "Impregnation." I had no idea that anything I had done was likely to have the slightest claim to such distinction, but I was informed yesterday by one of the Council that the balance hung pretty evenly, and was only decided by their thinking my memoir was too small and short.
I have been working in all things with a reference to wide views of zoological philosophy, and the report upon the Echinoderms is intended in common with the mem. on the Salpae to explain my views of Individuality among the lower animals—views which I mean to illustrate still further and enunciate still more clearly in my book that is to be. [He lectured on this subject at the Royal Institution in 1852.] They have met with approval from Carpenter, as you will see by the last edition of his "Principles of Physiology," and I think that Forbes and some others will be very likely eventually to come round to them, but everything that relates to abstract thought is at a low ebb among the mass of naturalists in this country.
In the paper upon "Thalassicolla," and in that which I read before the
British Association, as also in one upon the organisation of the
Rotifera, which I am going to have published in the Microscopical
Society's "Transactions," I have been driving in a series of wedges into
Cuvier's Radiata, and showing how selon moi they ought to be
distributed.
I am every day becoming more and more certain that you were on the right track thirty years ago in your views of the order and symmetry to be traced in the true natural system.
During the next session I mean to send in a paper to the Royal Society upon the "Homologies of the Mollusca," which shall astonish them. I want to get done for the Mollusca what Savigny did for the Articulata, namely to show how they all—Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pteropoda, Heteropoda, etc.—are organised in each. What with this and the book, I shall have enough to do for the next six months.
You will doubtless ask what is the practical outlook of all this? whether it leads anywhere in the direction of bread and cheese? To this also I can give a tolerably satisfactory answer.
As you WON'T have a Professor of Natural History at Sydney—to my great sorrow—I have gone in as a candidate for a Professorial chair at the other end of the world, Toronto in Canada. In England there is nothing to be done—it is the most hopeless prospect I know of; of course the Service offers nothing for me except irretrievable waste of time, and the scientific appointments are so few and so poor that they are not tempting…
Had the Sydney University been carried out as originally proposed, I should certainly have become a candidate for the Natural History Chair. I know no finer field for exertion for any naturalist than Sydney Harbour itself. Should such a Professorship be hereafter established, I trust you will jog the memory of my Australian friends in my behalf. I have finally decided that my vocation is science, and I have made up my mind to the comparative poverty which is its necessary adjunct, and to the no less certain seclusion from the ordinary pleasures and rewards of men. I say this without the slightest idea that there is anything to be enthusiastic about in either science or its professors. A year behind the scenes is quite enough to disabuse one of all rose-pink illusions.
But it is equally clear to me that for a man of my temperament, at any rate, the sole secret of getting through this life with anything like contentment is to have full scope for the development of one's faculties. Science alone seems to me to afford this scope—Law, Divinity, Physic, and Politics being in a state of chaotic vibration between utter humbug and utter scepticism.
There is a great stir in the scientific world at present about who is to occupy Konig's place at the British Museum, and whether the whole establishment had better not, quoad Zoology, be remodelled and placed under Owen's superintendence. The heart-burnings and jealousies about this matter are beyond all conception. Owen is both feared and hated, and it is predicted that if Gray and he come to be officers of the same institution, in a year or two the total result will be a caudal vertebra of each remaining after the manner of the Kilkenny cats.
However, I heard yesterday, upon what professed to be very good authority, that Owen would not leave the College under any circumstances.
It is astonishing with what an intense feeling of hatred Owen is regarded by the majority of his contemporaries, with Mantell as arch-hater. The truth is, he is the superior of most, and does not conceal that he knows it, and it must be confessed that he does some very ill-natured tricks now and then. A striking specimen of one is to be found in his article on Lyell in the last Quarterly, where he pillories poor Quekett—a most inoffensive man and his own immediate subordinate—in a manner not more remarkable for its severity than for its bad taste. That review has done him much harm in the estimation of thinking men—and curiously enough, since it was written, reptiles have been found in the old red sandstone, and insectivorous mammals in the Trias! Owen is an able man, but to my mind not so great as he thinks himself. He can only work in the concrete from bone to bone, in abstract reasoning he becomes lost—witness "Parthenogenesis" which he told me he considered one of the best things he had done!
He has, however, been very civil to me, and I am as grateful as it is possible to be towards a man with whom I feel it necessary to be always on my guard.
Quite another being is the other leader of Zoological Science in this country—I mean Edward Forbes, Paleontologist to the Geological Survey. More especially a Zoologist and a Geologist than a Comparative Anatomist, he has more claims to the title of a Philosophic Naturalist than any man I know of in England. A man of letters and an artist, he has not merged the MAN in the man of science—he has sympathies for all, and an earnest, truth-seeking, thoroughly genial disposition which win for him your affection as well as your respect. Forbes has more influence by his personal weight and example upon the rising generation of scientific naturalists than Owen will have if he write from now till Doomsday.
Personally I am greatly indebted to him (though the opinion I have just expressed is that of the world in general). During my absence he superintended the publication of my paper, and from the moment of my arrival until now he has given me all the help one man can give another. Why he should have done so I do not know, as when I left England I had only spoken to him once.
The rest of the naturalists stand far below these two in learning, originality, and grasp of mind. Goodsir of Edinburgh should I suppose come next, but he can't write intelligibly. Darwin might be anything if he had good health. Bell is a good man in all the senses of the word, but wants qualities 2 and 3. Newport is a laborious man, but wants 1 and 3. Grant and Rymer Jones—arcades ambo—have mistaken their vocation.
My old chief Richardson is a man of men, but troubles himself little with anything but detail zoology. What think you of his getting married for the third time just before his last expedition? I hardly know by which step he approved himself the bolder man.
I think I have now fulfilled my promise of supplying you with a little scientific scandal—and if this long epistle has repaid your trouble in getting through it, I am content.
Believe me, I have not forgotten, nor ever shall forget, your kindness to me at a time when a little appreciation and encouragement were more grateful to me and of more service than they will perhaps ever be again. I have done my best to justify you.
I send copies of all the papers I have published with one exception, of which I have none separate. Of the Royal Society papers I send a double set. Will you be kind enough to give one with my kind regards and remembrances to Dr. Nicholson? I feel I ought to have written to him before leaving Sydney, but I trust he will excuse my not having done so.
I shall be very glad if you can find time to write.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
W. Macleay, Esq.
P.S.—Muller has just made a most extraordinary discovery, no less than the generation of Molluscs from Holothuriae!!! You will find a translation of his paper by me in the "Annals" for January 1852.
December 13, 1851.
[To his sister.]
May 20, 1851.
…Owen has been amazingly civil to me, and it was through his writing to the First Lord that I got my present appointment. He is a queer fish, more odd in appearance than ever…and more bland in manner. He is so frightfully polite that I never feel thoroughly at home with him. He got me to furnish him with some notes for the second edition of the "Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry," and I find that in it Darwin and I (comparisons are odious) figure as joint authorities on some microscopic matters!!
Professor Forbes, however, is my great ally, a first-rate man, thoroughly in earnest and disinterested, and ready to give his time and influence—which is great—to help any man who is working for the cause. To him I am indebted for the supervision of papers that were published in my absence, for many introductions, and most valuable information and assistance, and all done in such a way as not to oppress one or give one any feeling of patronage, which you know (so much do I retain of my old self) would not suit me. My notions are diametrically opposed to his in some matters, and he helps me to oppose him. The other night, or rather nights, for it took three, I had a long paper read at the Royal Society which opposed some of his views, and he got up and spoke in the highest terms of it afterwards. This is all as it should be. I can reverence such a man and yet respect myself.
I have been aspiring to great honours since I wrote to you last, to wit the F.R.S., and found no little to my astonishment that I had a chance of it, and so went in. I must tell you that they have made the admission more difficult than it used to be. Candidates are not elected by the Society alone, but fifteen only a year are selected by a committee, and then elected as a matter of course by the Society. This year there were thirty-eight candidates. I did not expect to come in till next year, but I find I am one of the selected. I fancy I shall be the junior Fellow by some years. Singularly enough, among the non-selected candidates were Ward, the man who conducted the Botanical Honours Examination of Apothecaries' Hall nine years ago, and Bryson, the surgeon of the "Fisguard," i.e. nominally my immediate superior, and who, as he frequently acts as Sir William Burnett's deputy, WILL VERY LIKELY EXAMINE ME WHEN I PASS FOR SURGEON R.N.!! That is awkward and must be annoying to him, but it is not my fault. I did not ask for a single name that appeared upon my certificate. Owen's name and Carpenter's, which were to have been appended, were not added. Forbes, my recommender, told me beforehand not to expect to get in this year, and did not use his influence, and so I have no intriguing to reproach myself with or to be reproached with. The only drawback is that it will cost me 14 pounds sterling, which is more than I can very well afford.
By the way, I have not told you that after staying for about five months with George, I found that if I meant to work in earnest his home was not the place, so, much to my regret,—for they made me very happy there,—I summoned resolution and "The Boy's Own Book" and took a den of my own, whence I write at present. You had better, anyhow, direct to George, as I am going to move and don't know how long I may remain at my next habitation. At present I am living in the Park Road, but I find it too noisy and am going to St. Anne's Gardens, St. John's Wood, close to my mother's, against whose forays I shall have to fortify myself.
[It was a minor addition to his many troubles that after a time Huxley found a grudging and jealous spirit exhibited in some quarters towards his success, and influence used to prevent any further advance that might endanger the existing balance of power in the scientific world. But this could be battled with directly; indeed it was rather a relief to have an opportunity for action instead of sitting still to wait the results of uncertain elections. The qualities requisite for such a contest he possessed, in a high ideal of the dignity of science as an instrument of truth; a standard of veracity in scientific workers to which all should subordinate their personal ambitions; a disregard of authority as such unless its claims were verified by indisputable fact; and as a beginning, the will to subject himself to his own most rigid canons of accuracy, thoroughness, and honesty; then to maintain his principle and defend his position against all attempts at browbeating.]
March 5, 1852
I told you I was very busy, and I must tell you what I am about and you will believe me. I have just finished a Memoir for the Royal Society ["On the Morphology of the Cephalous Mollusca" "Scientific Memoirs" volume 1 page 152.], which has taken me a world of time, thought, and reading, and is, perhaps, the best thing I have done yet. It will not be read till May, and I do not know whether they will print it or not afterwards; that will require care and a little manoeuvring on my part. You have no notion of the intrigues that go on in this blessed world of science. Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be. Merit alone is very little good; it must be backed by tact and knowledge of the world to do very much.
For instance, I know that the paper I have just sent in is very original and of some importance, and I am equally sure that if it is referred to the judgment of my "particular friend" — that it will not be published. He won't be able to say a word against it, but he will pooh-pooh it to a dead certainty.
You will ask with some wonderment, Why? Because for the last twenty years — has been regarded as the great authority on these matters, and has had no one to tread on his heels, until at last, I think, he has come to look upon the Natural World as his special preserve, and "no poachers allowed." So I must manoeuvre a little to get my poor memoir kept out of his hands.
The necessity for these little stratagems utterly disgusts me. I would so willingly reverence and trust any man of high standing and ability. I am so utterly unable to comprehend this petty greediness. And yet withal you will smile at my perversity. I have a certain pleasure in overcoming these obstacles, and fighting these folks with their own weapons. I do so long to be able to trust men implicitly. I have such a horror of all this literary pettifogging. I could be so content myself, if the necessity of making a position would allow it, to work on anonymously, but — I see is determined not to let either me or any one else rise if he can help it. Let him beware. On my own subjects I am his master, and am quite ready to fight half a dozen dragons. And although he has a bitter pen, I flatter myself that on occasions I can match him in that department also.
But I was telling you how busy I am. I am getting a memoir ready for the Zoological Society, and working at my lecture for the Royal Institution, which I want to make striking and original, as it is a good opportunity, besides doing a translation now and then for one of the Journals. Besides this, I am working at the British Museum to make a catalogue of some creatures there. All these things take a world of time and labour; and yield next to no direct profit; but they bring me into contact with all sorts of men, in a very independent position, and I am told, and indeed hope, that something must arise from it. So fair a prospect opens out before me if I can only wait. I am beginning to know what WORK means, and see how much more may be done by steady, unceasing, and well-directed efforts. I thrive upon it too. I am as well as ever I was in my life, and the more I work the better my temper seems to be.
April 30, 1852, 11.30 P.M.
I have just returned from giving my lecture at the Royal Institution, of which I told you in my last letter. ["On Animal Individuality" "Scientific Memoirs" volume 1 page 146 cp. supra.]
I had got very nervous about it, and my poor mother's death had greatly upset my plans for working it out.
It was the first lecture I had ever given in my life, and to what is considered the best audience in London. As nothing ever works up my energies but a high flight, I had chosen a very difficult abstract point, in my view of which I stand almost alone. When I took a glimpse into the theatre and saw it full of faces, I did feel most amazingly uncomfortable. I can now quite understand what it is to be going to be hanged, and nothing but the necessity of the case prevented me from running away.
However, when the hour struck, in I marched, and began to deliver my discourse. For ten minutes I did not quite know where I was, but by degrees I got used to it, and gradually gained perfect command of myself and of my subject. I believe I contrived to interest my audience, and upon the whole I think I may say that this essay was successful.
Thank Heaven I can say so, for though it is no great matter succeeding, failing would have been a bitter annoyance to me. It has put me comfortably at my ease with regard to all future lecturings. After the Royal Institution there is no audience I shall ever fear.
May 9.
The foolish state of excitement into which I allowed myself to get the other day completely did for me, and I have hardly done anything since except sleep a great deal. It is a strange thing that with all my will I cannot control my physical organisation.
[To his sister.]
April 17, 1852.
…I fear nothing will have prepared you to hear that one so active in body and mind as our poor mother was has been taken from us. But so it is…
It was very strange that before leaving London my mother, possessed by a strange whim, as I thought, distributed to many of us little things belonging to her. I laughed at her for what I called her "testamentary disposition," little dreaming that the words were prophetic.
[The summons to those of the family in London reached them late, and their arrival was made still later by inconvenient trains and a midnight drive, so that all had long been over when they came to Barning in Kent, where the elder Huxleys had just settled near their son James.]
Our mother had died at half-past four, falling gradually into a more and more profound insensibility. She was thus happily spared the pain of fruitlessly wishing us round her, in her last moments; and as the hand of Death was upon her, I know not that it could have fallen more lightly.
I offer you no consolation, my dearest sister; for I know of none. There are things which each must bear as he best may with the strength that has been allotted to him. Would that I were near you to soften the blow by the sympathy which we should have in common…
May 3, 1852.
So much occupation has crowded upon me between the beginning of this letter and the present time that I have been unable to finish it. I had undertaken to give a lecture at the Royal Institution on the 30th April. It was on a difficult subject, requiring a good deal of thought; and as it was my first appearance before the best audience in London, you may imagine how anxious and nervous I was, and how completely I was obliged to abstract my thoughts from everything else.
However, I am happy to say it is well over. There was a very good audience—Faraday, Professor Forbes, Dr. Forbes, Wharton Jones, and [a] whole lot of "nobs," among my auditors. I had made up my mind all day to break down, and then go and hang myself privately. And so you may imagine that I entered the theatre with a very pale face, and a heart beating like a sledge-hammer nineteen to the dozen. For the first five minutes I did not know very clearly what I was about, but by degrees I got possession of myself and of my subject, and did not care for anybody. I have had "golden opinions from all sorts of men" about it, so I suppose I may tell you I have succeeded. I don't think, however, that I ever felt so thoroughly used up in my life as I did for two days afterwards. There is one comfort, I shall never be nervous again about any audience; but at one's first attempt, to stand in the place of Faraday and such big-wigs might excuse a little weakness.
The way is clear before me, if my external circumstances will only allow me to persevere; but I fully expect that I shall have to give up my dreams.
Science in England does everything—but PAY. You may earn praise but not pudding.
I have helping hands held out to me on all sides, but there is nothing to help me to. Last year I became a candidate for a Professorship at Toronto. I took an infinity of trouble over the thing, and got together a mass of testimonials and recommendations, much better than I had any right to expect. From that time to this I have heard nothing of the business—a result for which I care the less, as I believe the chair will be given to a brother of one of the members of the Canadian ministry, who is, I hear, a candidate. Such a qualification as that is, of course, better than all the testimonials in the world.
I think I told you when I last wrote that I was expecting a grant from Government to publish the chief part of my work, done while away. I am expecting it still. I got tired of waiting the other day and wrote to the Duke of Northumberland, who is at present First Lord of the Admiralty, upon the subject. His Grace has taken the matter up, and I hope now to get it done.
With all this, however, Time runs on. People look upon me, I suppose, as a "very promising young man," and perhaps envy my "success," and I all the while am cursing my stars that my Pegasus WILL fly aloft instead of pulling slowly along in some respectable gig, and getting his oats like any other praiseworthy cart-horse.
It's a charming piece of irony altogether. It is two years yesterday since I left Sydney harbour—and of course as long since I saw Nettie. I am getting thoroughly tired of our separation, and I think she is, though the dear little soul is ready to do anything for my sake, and yet I dare not face the stagnation—the sense of having failed in the whole purpose of my existence—which would, I know, sooner or later beset me, even with her, if I forsake my present object. Can you wonder with all this, my dearest Lizzie, that often as I long for your brave heart and clear head to support and advise me, I yet rarely feel inclined to write? Pray write to me more often than you have done; tell me all about yourself and the Doctor and your children. They must be growing up fast, and Florry must be getting beyond the "Bird of Paradise" I promised her. Love and kisses to all of them, and kindest remembrances to the Doctor.
Ever your affectionate brother,
T.H. Huxley.
[To Miss Heathorn]
November 13, 1852.
Going last week to the Royal Society's library for a book, and like the boy in church "thinkin' o' naughten," when I went in, Weld, the Assistant Secretary, said, "Well, I congratulate you." I confess I did not see at that moment what any mortal man had to congratulate me about. I had a deuced bad cold, with rheumatism in my head; it was a beastly November day and I was very grumpy, so I inquired in a state of mild surprise what might be the matter. Whereupon I learnt that the Medal had been conferred at the meeting of the Council on the day before. I was very pleased…and I thought you would be so too, and I thought moreover that it was a fine lever to help us on, and if I could have sent a letter to you immediately I should have sat down and have written one to you on the spot. As it is I have waited for official confirmation and a convenient season.
And now…shall I be very naughty and make a confession? The thing that a fortnight ago (before I got it) I thought so much of, I give you my word I do not care a pin for. I am sick of it and ashamed of having thought so much of it, and the congratulations I get give me a sort of internal sardonic grin. I think this has come about partly because I did not get the official confirmation of what I had heard for some days, and with my habit of facing the ill side of things I came to the conclusion that Weld had made a mistake, and I went in thought through the whole enormous mortification of having to explain to those to whom I had mentioned it that it was quite a mistake. I found that all this, when I came to look at it, was by no means so dreadful as it seemed—quite bearable in short—and then I laughed at myself and have cared nothing about the whole concern ever since. In truth…I do not think that I am in the proper sense of the word ambitious. I have an enormous longing after the highest and best in all shapes—a longing which haunts me and is the demon which ever impels me to work, and will let me have no rest unless I am doing his behests. The honours of men I value so far as they are evidences of power, but with the cynical mistrust of their judgment and my own worthiness, which always haunts me, I put very little faith in them. Their praise makes me sneer inwardly. God forgive me if I do them any great wrong.
…I feel and know that all the rewards and honours in the world will ever be worthless for me as soon as they are obtained. I know that always, as now, they will make me more sad than joyful. I know that nothing that could be done would give me the pure and heartfelt joy and peace of mind that your love has given me, and, please God, shall give for many a long year to come, and yet my demon says work! work! you shall not even love unless you work.
Not blinded by any vanity, then, I hope…but viewing this stroke of fortune as respects its public estimation only, I think I must look upon the award of this medal as the turning-point of my life, as the finger-post teaching me as clearly as anything can what is the true career that lies open before me. For whatever may be my own private estimation of it, there can be no doubt as to the general feeling about this thing, and in case of my candidature for any office it would have the very greatest weight. And as you will have seen by my last letter, it only strengthens and confirms the conclusion I had come to. Bid me God-speed then…it is all I want to labour cheerfully.
November 28.
…You will hear all the details of the Great Duke's state funeral from the papers much better than I can tell you them. I went to the Cathedral [St Paul's] and had the good fortune to get a capital seat—in front, close to the great door by which every one entered. It was bitter cold, a keen November wind blowing right in, and as I was there from eight till three, I expected nothing less than rheumatic fever the next day; however I didn't get it. It was pitiful to see the poor old Marquis of Anglesey—a year older than the Duke—standing with bare head in the keen wind close to me for more than three quarters of an hour. It was impressive enough—the great interior lighted by a single line of light running along the whole circuit of the cornice, and another encircling the dome, and casting a curious illumination over the masses of uniforms which filled the great space. The best of our people were there and passed close to me, but the only face that made any great impression upon my memory was that of Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Scinde. Fancy a very large, broad-winged, and fierce-looking hawk in uniform. Such an eye!
When the coffin and the mourners had passed I closed up with the soldiers and went up under the dome, where I heard the magnificent service in full perfection.
All of it, however, was but stage trickery compared with the noble simplicity of the old man's life. How the old stoic, used to his iron bed and hard hair pillow, would have smiled at all the pomp—submitting to that, however, and all other things necessary to the "carrying on of the Queen's Government."
I send Tennyson's ode by way of packing—it is not worth much more, the only decent passages to my mind being those I have marked.
The day after to-morrow I go to have my medal presented and to dine and make a speech.
[The Royal Medal was conferred on November 30, and the medallists were entertained at the anniversary dinner of the Society on that day. In the words with which the President, the Earl of Rosse, accompanied the presentation of the medal, "it is not difficult," writes Sir M. Foster, "reading between the lines, to recognise the appreciation of a new spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a timorous apprehension as to its complete validity." ("In these papers (on the Medusae) you have for the first time fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a rational theory for their classification." "In your second paper 'On the Anatomy of Salpa and Pyrosoma,' the phenomena, etc., have received the most ingenious and elaborate elucidation, and have given rise to a process of reasoning, the results of which can scarcely yet be anticipated, but must bear in a very important degree upon some of the most abstruse points of what may be called transcendental physiology." See "Royal Society" Obituary Notices volume 59 page 1.) For the difference between this and the labours of the greatest English comparative anatomist of the time, whose detailed work was of the highest value, but whose generalisations and speculations, based on the philosophy of Oken, proved barren and fruitless, lay in the fact that Huxley, led to it doubtless by his solitary readings in his Charing Cross days, had taken up the method of Von Baer and Johannes Muller, then almost unknown, or at least unused in England—"the method which led the anatomist to face his problems in the spirit in which the physicist faced his."
He had been warned by Forbes not to speak too strongly about the dilatoriness of the Government in the matter of the grant, so he writes:] "I will 'roar you like any sucking dove' at the dinner, though I felt tempted otherwise." [On December 1 he tells how he carried out this advice.]
My dear Forbes,
You will, I know, like to learn how I got on yesterday. The President's address to me had been drawn up by Bell. It was, of course, too flattering, but he had taken hold of the right points in my work—at least I thought so.
Bunsen spoke very well for Humboldt.
There was a capital congregation at the dinner—sixty or seventy Fellows there…
When it came to my turn to return thanks, I believe I made a very tolerable speechification, at least everybody says so. Lord Rosse had alluded to "science having to take care of itself in this country," and in winding up I gave them a small screed upon that text. That you may see I kept your caution in mind, I will tell you as nearly as may be what I said. I told them that I could not conceive that anything I had hitherto done merited the honour of that day (I looked so preciously meek over this), but that I was glad to be able to say that I had so much unpublished material as to make me hopeful of one day diminishing the debt. I then said, "The Government of this country, of this GREAT country, has been two years debating whether it should grant the three hundred pounds sterling necessary for the publication of these researches. I have been too long used to strict discipline to venture to criticise any act of my superiors, but I venture to hope that before long, in consequence of the exertions of Lord Rosse, of the President of the British Association, and the goodwill, which I gratefully acknowledge, of the present Lord of the Admiralty, I shall be able to lay before you something more worthy of to-day's award."
I had my doubts how the nobs would take it, but both Lord Rosse and Sabine warmly commended my speech and regretted I had not said even more upon the subject.
[Some light is thrown upon his habits at this time by the following, part of his letter to Forbes of November 19:—]
I have frequent visits from —. He is a good man, but direfully argumentative, and in that sense to me a bore. Besides that, the creature will come and call upon me at nine or ten o'clock in the morning before I am out of bed, or if out of bed, before I am in possession of my faculties, which never arrive before twelve or one.
[This morning incapacity was of a piece with his hatred of the breakfast-party of the period. To go abroad from home or to do any work before breakfasting ensured him a headache for the rest of the day, so that he never was one of those risers with the dawn who do half a day's work before the rest of the world is astir. And though necessity often compelled him to do with less, he always found eight hours his proper allowance of sleep.
But in the end of 1853 we hear of a reform in his ways, after a bad bout of ill-health, when he rises at eight, goes to bed at twelve, and eschews parties of every kind as far as possible, with excellent results as far as health went.
After his marriage, however, and indeed to the beginning of his last illness, he always rose early enough for an eight o'clock breakfast, after which the working day began, lasting regularly from a little after nine till midnight.
4 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, February 6, 1853.
Many thanks, my dearest sister, for your kind and thoughtful letter—it went to my heart no little that you, amidst all your trials and troubles, should find time to think so wisely and so affectionately of mine. Though greatly tempted otherwise, I have acted in the spirit of your advice, and my reward, in the shape of honours at any rate, has not failed me, as the Royal Society gave me one of the Royal medals last year. It's a bigger one than I got under your auspices so many years ago, being worth 50 pounds sterling, but I don't know that I cared so much about it.
It was assigned to me quite unexpectedly, and in the eyes of the world I, of course, am greatly the bigger—but I will confess to you privately that I am by no means dilated, and am the identical Boy Tom I was before I achieved the attainment of my golden porter's badge. Curiously it was given for the first Memoir I have in the Royal Society's "Transactions," sent home four years ago with no small fear and trembling, and, "after many days," returning with this queer crust of bread. In the speech I had to make at the Anniversary Dinner I grew quite eloquent on that point, and talked of the dove I had sent from my ark, returning, not with the olive branch, but with a sprig of the bay and a fruit from the garden of the Hesperides—a simile which I thought decidedly clever, but which the audience—distinguished audience I ought to have said—probably didn't, as they did not applaud that, while they did some things I said which were incomparably more stupid. This was in November, and I ought to have written to you about it before, my dear Lizzie, but for one thing I am very much occupied, and for the other (shall I confess it?) I was rather puzzled that I had not heard from you since I wrote. Now my useless conscience, which never makes me do anything right in time, is pitching in to me when it is too late.
The medal, however, must not be jested at, as it is most decidedly of practical use in giving me a status in the eyes of those charming people, "practical men," such as I had not before, and I am amused to find some of my friends, whose contempt for my "dreamy" notions was not small in time past, absolutely advising me to take a far more dreamy course than I dare venture upon. However, I take very much my own course now, even as I have done before—Huxley all over.
However, that is enough about myself just now. In the next letter I will tell you more at length about my plans and prospects, which are mostly, I am sorry to say, only provocative of setting my teeth hard and saying, "Never mind, I WILL." But what I write in a hurry about and want you to do at once, is to write to me and tell me exactly how money may be sent safely to you. It is inexpedient to send without definite directions, according to the character you give your neighbours. Don't expect anything vast, but there is corn in Egypt…
Two classes of people can I deal with and no third. They are the good people—people after my own heart, and the thorough men of the world. Either of these I can act and sympathise with, but the others, who are neither for God nor for the Devil, but for themselves, as grim old Dante has it, and whom he therefore very justly puts in a most uncomfortable place, I cannot do with…
So Florry is growing up into a great girl; the child will not remember me, but kiss her and my godson for me, and give my love to them all. The Lymph shall come in my next letter for the young Yankee. I hope the juices of the English cow will prevent him from ever acquiring the snuffle.
Tell the Doctor all about the medal, with my kindest regards, and believe me, my dearest Lizzie, your affectionate brother,
Tom.
4 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, April 22, 1853.
My dearest Lizzie,
First let me congratulate you on being safe over your troubles and in possession of another possible President. I think it may be worth coming over twenty years hence on the possibility of picking up something or other from one of my nephews at Washington.
[He sends some money.] Would it were more worth your having, but I have not as yet got on to Tom Tiddler's ground on this side of the water. You need not be alarmed about my having involved myself in any way—such portion of it as is of my sending has been conquered by mine own sword and spear, and the rest came from Mary. [Mrs. George Huxley]…
[After giving a summary of his struggle with the Admiralty, he proceeds]—If I were to tell you all the intriguing and humbug there has been about my unfortunate grant—which yet granted—it would occupy this letter, and though a very good illustration of the encouragement afforded to Science in this country, would not be very amusing. Once or twice it has fairly died out, only to be stirred up again by my own pertinacity. However, I have hopes of it at last, as I hear Lord Rosse is just about to make another application to the present Government on the subject. While this business has been dragging on of course I have not been idle. I have four memoirs (on various matters in Comparative Anatomy) in the "Philosophical Transactions," and they have given me their Fellowship and one of the Royal medals. I have written a whole lot of things for the journals—reviews for the "British and Foreign Quarterly Medical," etc. I am one of the editors of Taylor's "Scientific Memoirs" (German scientific translations). In conjunction with my friend Busk I am translating a great German book on the "Microscopical Anatomy of Man," and I have engaged to write a long article for Todd's "Cyclopaedia." Besides this, have read two long memoirs at the British Association, and have given two lectures at the Royal Institution—one of them only two days ago, when I was so ill with influenza I could hardly stand or speak.
Furthermore, I have been a candidate for a Professorship of Natural History at Toronto (which is not even yet decided); for one at Aberdeen, which has been given against me; and at present I am a candidate for the Professorship of Physiology at King's College, or, rather, for half of it—Todd having given up, and Bowman, who remains, being willing to take only half, and that he will soon give up. My friend Edward Forbes—a regular brick, who has backed me through thick and thin—is backing me for King's College, where he is one of the Professors. My chance is, I believe, very good, but nothing can be more uncertain than the result of the contest. If they don't take one of their own men I think they will have me. It would suit me very well, and the whole chair is worth 400 pounds sterling a year, and would enable me to live.
Something I must make up my mind to do, and that speedily. I can get honour in Science, but it doesn't pay, and "honour heals no wounds." In truth I am often very weary. The longer one lives the more the ideal and the purpose vanishes out of one's life, and I begin to doubt whether I have done wisely in giving vent to the cherished tendency towards Science which has haunted me ever since my childhood. Had I given myself to Mammon I might have been a respectable member of society with large watch-seals by this time. I think it is very likely that if this King's College business goes against me, I may give up the farce altogether—burn my books, burn my rod, and take to practice in Australia. It is no use to go on kicking against the pricks…
CHAPTER 1.8.
1854.
[The year 1854 marks the turning-point in Huxley's career. The desperate time of waiting came to an end. By the help of his lectures and his pen, he could at all events stand and wait independently of the Navy. He could not, of course, think of immediate marriage, nor of asking Miss Heathorn to join him in England; but it so happened that her father was already thinking of returning home, and finally this was determined upon just before Professor Forbes' translation to a chair at Edinburgh gave Huxley what turned out to be the long-hoped-for permanency in London.]
June 3, 1854.
I have often spoken to you of my friend Edward Forbes. He has quite recently been suddenly appointed to a Professorial Chair in Edinburgh, vacated by the death of old Jamieson. He was obliged to go down there at once and lecture, and as he had just commenced his course at the Government School of Mines in Jermyn Street, it was necessary to obtain a substitute. He had spoken to me of the possibility of his being called away long ago, and had asked if I would take his place, to which, of course, I assented, but the whole affair was so uncertain that I never in any way reckoned upon it. Even at last I did not know on the Monday whether I was to go on for him on the Friday or not. However, he did go after giving two lectures, and on Friday the 25th May I took his lecture, and I have been going on ever since, twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Called upon so very suddenly to give a course of some six and twenty lectures, I find it very hard work, but I like it and I never was in better health.
[On July 20, this temporary work, which he had undertaken as the friend of Forbes, was exchanged for one of the permanent lectureships formerly held by the latter. A hundred a year for twenty-six lectures was not affluence; it would have suited him better to have had twice the work and twice the pay. But it was his crossing of the Rubicon, and, strangely enough, no sooner had he gained this success than it was doubled.]
July 30, 1854.
I was appointed yesterday to a post of 200 pounds sterling a year. It has all come about in the strangest way. I told you how my friend Forbes had been suddenly called away to Edinburgh, and that I had suddenly taken his duties—sharp work it has been I can tell you these summer months, but it is over and done satisfactorily. Forbes got 500 pounds sterling a year, 200 pounds sterling for a double lectureship, 300 pounds sterling for another office. I took one of the lectureships, which would have given me 100 pounds sterling a year only, and another man was to have the second lectureship and the other office in question. It was so completely settled a week ago that I had written to the President of the Board of Trade who makes the appointment, accepting mine, and the other man had done the same. Happily for me, however, my new colleague was suddenly afflicted with a sort of moral colic, an absurd idea that he could not perform the duties of his office, and resigned it. The result is that a new man has been appointed to the office he left vacant, while the lectureship was offered to me. Of course I took it, and so in the course of the week I have seen my paid income doubled…So after a short interval I have become a Government officer again, but in rather a different position I flatter myself. I am chief of my own department, and my position is considered a very good one—as good as anything of its kind in London.
[Furthermore, on August 11 he was "entrusted with the Coast Survey investigations under the Geological Survey, and remunerated by fee until March 31, 1855, when he was ranked as Naturalist on the Survey with an additional salary of 200 pounds sterling, afterwards increased to 400 pounds sterling, rising to 600 pounds sterling per annum," as the official statement has it.
Then in quick succession he was offered in August a lectureship on
Comparative Anatomy at St. Thomas' Hospital for the following May and
June, and in September he was asked to lecture in November and March for
the Science and Art Department at Marlborough House.
Now therefore, with the Heathorns coming to England, his plans and theirs exactly fitted, and he proposed to get married as soon as they came over, early in the following summer.
A letter of this year deserves quoting as illustrating the directness of Huxley's dealings with his friends, and his hatred of doing anything unknown to them which might be misreported to them or misconstrued without explanation. As a member of the Royal Society Council, it was his duty to vote upon the persons to whom the yearly medals of the Society should be awarded. For the Royal Medal first Hooker was named, and received his hearty support; then Forbes, in opposition to Hooker, in his eyes equally deserving of recognition, and almost more closely bound to him by ties of friendship, so that whatever action he took, might be ascribed to motives which should have no part in such a selection. The course actually taken by him he explained at length in letters to both Forbes and Hooker.]
November 6, 1854.
My dear Hooker,
I have been so busy with lecturing here and there that I have not had time to write and congratulate you on the award of the medal. The queer position in which I was placed prevents me from being able to congratulate MYSELF on having any finger in the pie, but I am quite sure there was no member of the Council who felt more strongly than myself that what honour the bauble could confer was most fully won, and no more than your just deserts; or who rejoiced more when the thing was settled in your favour.
However, I do trust that I shall never be placed in such an awkward position again. I would have given a great deal to be able to back Forbes tooth and nail—not only on account of my personal friendship and affection for him, but because I think he well deserves such recognition. And had I thought right to do so, I felt sure that you would have fully appreciated my motives, and that it would have done no injury to our friendship.
But as I told the Council I did not think this a case where either of you had any right to be excluded by the other. I told them that had Forbes been first named, I should have thought it injudicious to bring you forward, and that, as you were named, I for my own part should not have brought forward Forbes as a candidate; that therefore while willing to speak up to any extent for Forbes' POSITIVE merits and deserts, I would carefully be understood to give no opinion as to your and his RELATIVE standing.
They did not take much by my speech therefore either way, more especially as I voted for BOTH of you.
I hate doing anything of the kind "unbeknownst" to people, so there is the exact history of my proceedings. If I had been able to come to the clear conclusion that the claims of either of you were strongly superior to those of the other, I think I should have had the honesty and moral courage to "act accordin'," but I really had not, and so there was no part to play but that of a sort of Vicar of Bray.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Forbes' reply was a letter which Huxley, after his friend's death, held] "among his most precious possessions." [It appeared without names in the obituary notice of Forbes in the "Literary Gazette" for November 25, 1854, as an example of his unselfish generosity:—
I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and had I been placed as you have been, would have done exactly the same…Your way of proceeding was as true an act of friendship as any that could be performed. As to myself, I dream so little about medals, that the notion of being on the list never entered my brain, even when asleep. If it ever comes I shall be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing to break my equanimity. Indeed, I would always like to see it given not as a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and this it is assuredly in Hooker's case. Government people are so ignorant that they require to have merits drummed into their heads by all possible means, and Hooker's getting the medal may be of real service to him before long. I am in a snug, though not an idle nest,—he has not got his resting-place yet. And so, my dear Huxley, I trust that you know me too well to think that I am either grieved or envious, and you, Hooker, and I are much of the same way of thinking.
It is interesting to record the same scrupulosity over the election to the Registrarship of the University of London in 1856, when, having begun to canvass for Dr. Latham before his friend Dr. W.B. Carpenter entered the field, he writes to Hooker:—]
I at once, of course told Carpenter precisely what I had done. Had I known of his candidature earlier, I should certainly have taken no active part on either side—not for Latham, because I would not oppose Carpenter, and not for Carpenter, because his getting the Registrarship would probably be an advantage for me, as I should have a good chance of obtaining the Examinership in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy which he would vacate. Indeed, I refused to act for Carpenter in a case in which he asked me to do so, partly for this reason and partly because I felt thoroughly committed to Latham. Under these circumstances I think you are quite absolved from any pledge to me. It's deuced hard to keep straight in this wicked world, but as you say the only chance is to out with it, and I thank you much for writing so frankly about the matter. I hope it will be as fine as to-day at Down. [(Charles Darwin's home in Kent.)
Unfortunately the method was not so successful with smaller minds. Once in 1852, when he had to report unfavourably on a paper for the "Annals of Natural History" on the structure of the Starfishes, sent in by an acquaintance, he felt it right not to conceal his action, as he might have done, behind the referee's usual screen of anonymity, but to write a frank account of the reasons which had led him so to report, that he might both clear himself of the suspicion of having dealt an unfair blow in the dark, and give his acquaintance the opportunity of correcting and enlarging his paper with a view of submitting it again for publication.
In this case the only result was an impassioned correspondence, the author even going so far as to suggest that Huxley had condemned the paper without having so much as dissected an Echinoderm in his life! and then all intercourse ceased, till years afterwards the gentleman in question realised the weaknesses of his paper and repented him of his wrath.
Before leaving London to begin his work at Tenby as Naturalist to the Survey, he delivered at St. Martin's Hall, on July 22, an address on the "Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences. (The subsequent reference is to the words, "I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms will bear his own share with more courage and submission; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be corrected by and by." ("Collected Essays" 3 page 62.) This essay contains the definition of science as "trained and organised common sense," and the reference to a new "Peter Bell" which suggested Miss May Kendall's spirited parody of Wordsworth:—
Primroses by the river's brim
Dicotyledons were to him,
And they were nothing more.)
This, when it came out later as a pamphlet, he sent to his Tenby friend Dr. Dyster (of whom hereafter), to whose criticism on one passage he replied on October 10:—]
…I am rejoiced you liked my speechment. It was written hastily and is, like its speaker, I fear, more forcible than eloquent, but it can lay claim to the merit of being sincere.
My intention on page 28 was by no means to express any satisfaction at the worms being as badly off as ourselves, but to show that pain being everywhere is inevitable, and therefore like all other inevitable things to be borne. The rest of it is the product of my scientific Calvinism, which fell like a shell at your feet when we were talking over the fire.
I doubt, or at least I have no confidence in, the doctrine of ultimate happiness, and I am more inclined to look the opposite possibility fully in the face, and if that also be inevitable, make up my mind to bear it also.
You will tell me there are better consolations than Stoicism; that may be, but I do not possess them, and I have found my "grin and bear it" philosophy stand me in such good stead in my course through oceans of disgust and chagrin, that I should be loth to give it up.
[The summer of 1854 was spent in company with the Busks at Tenby, amid plenty of open-air work and in great peace of mind, varied with a short visit to Liverpool in order to talk business with his friend Forbes, who was eager that Huxley should join him in Edinburgh.]
Tenby, South Wales, September 3, 1854.
I have been here since the middle of August, getting rid of my yellow face and putting on a brown one, banishing dyspepsias and hypochondrias and all such other town afflictions to the four winds, and rejoicing exceedingly that I am out of the way of that pest, the cholera, which is raging just at present in London.
After I had arranged to come here to do a lot of work of my own which can only be done by the seaside, our Director, Sir Henry de la Beche, gave me a special mission of his own whereby I have the comfort of having my expenses paid, but at the same time get it taken out of me in additional labour, so my recreation is anything but leisure.
October 14.
I left this place for a week's trip to Liverpool in the end of September. The meeting of the British Association was held there, but I went not so much to be present as to meet Forbes, with whom I wanted to talk over many matters concerning us both. Forbes had a proposition that I should go to Edinburgh to take part of the duties of the Professor of Physiology there, who is in bad health, with the ultimate aim of succeeding to the chair. It was a tempting offer made in a flattering manner, and presenting a prospect of considerably better emolument than my special post, but it had the disadvantage of being but an uncertain position. Had I accepted, I should have been at the mercy of the actual Professor—and that is a position I don't like standing in, even with the best of men, and had he died or resigned at any time the Scotch chairs are so disposed of that there would have been nothing like a certainty of my getting the post, so I definitely declined—I hope wisely.
After some talk, Forbes agreed with my view of the case, so he is off to Edinburgh, and I shall go off to London. I hope to remain there for my life long.
[He had long felt that London gave the best opportunities for a
scientific career, and it was on his advice that Tyndall had left
Queenwood College for the Royal Institution, where he was elected
Professor of Natural Philosophy in 1853:—]
6 Upper York Place, St. John's Wood, February 25, 1853.
My dear Tyndall,
Having rushed into more responsibility than I wotted of, I have been ruminating and taking counsel what advice to give you. When I wrote I hardly knew what kind of work you had in your present office, but Francis has since enlightened me. I thought you had more leisure. One thing is very clear—you must come out of that. Your Pegasus is quite out of place ploughing. You are using yourself up in work that comes to nothing, and so far as I can see cannot be worse off.
Now what are your prospects? Why, as I told you before, you have made a succes here and must profit by it. The other night your name was mentioned at the Philosophical Club (the most influential scientific body in London) with great praise. Gassiot, who has great influence, said in so many words, "you had made your fortune," and I frankly tell you I believe so too, if you can only get over the next three years. So you see that quoad position, like Quintus Curtius, there is a "fine opening" ready for you, only mind you don't spoil it by any of your horrid modesty.
So much for glory—now for economics. I have been trying to ferret out more nearly your chances of a post, and here are my results (which, I need not tell you, must be kept to yourself).
At the Museum in Jermyn Street, Playfair, Forbes, Percy and I think Sir Henry would do anything to get you, and eliminate —; but, so far as I can judge, the probability of his going is so small that it is not worth your while to reckon upon it. Nevertheless it may be comforting to you to know that in case of anything happening these men will help you tooth and nail. Cultivate Playfair when you have a chance—he is a good fellow, wishes you well, has great influence, and will have more. Entre nous, he has just got a new and important post under Government.
Next, the Royal Institution. This is where, as I told you, you ought to be looking to Faraday's place. Have no scruple about your chemical knowledge; you won't be required to train a college of students in abstruse analyses; and if you were, a year's work would be quite enough to put you at ease. What they want, and what you have, are CLEAR POWERS OF EXPOSITION—so clear that people may think they understand even if they don't. That is the secret of Faraday's success, for not a tithe of the people who go to hear him really understand him.
However, I am afraid that a delay must occur before you can get placed at the Royal Institution, as you cannot hold the Professorship until you have given a course of lectures there, and it would seem that there is no room for you this year. However, I must try and learn more about this.
Under these circumstances the London Institution looks tempting. I have been talking over the matter with Forbes, whose advice I look upon as first-rate in all these things, and he is decidedly of the opinion that you should take the London Institution if it is offered you. He says that lecturing there and lecturing at other Institutions, and writing, you could with certainty make more than you at present receive, and that you would have the command of a capital laboratory and plenty of time.
Then as to position—of which I was doubtful—it appears that Grove has made it a good one.
It is of great importance to look to this point in London—to be unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the highest places, and it was only my fear on this head that made me advise you to hesitate about the London Institution. More consideration leads me to say, take that, if it will bring you up to London at once, so that you may hammer your reputation while it is hot.
However, consider all these things well, and don't be hasty. I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly. Write to me if there is anything you want done, supposing always there is nobody who will do it better—which is improbable.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[But this year of victory was not to pass away without one last blow from fate. On November 18, Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had found a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and sincerity as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh. The strong but delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon intellectual affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong characters, where each subordinated interest to ideal, and treated others by the measure of his own self-respect. As early as March 1851 he had written:—]
I wish you knew my friend Professor Forbes. He is the best creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways. A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific men. Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend. He is one of the few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a particle of independence or self-respect.
[The following from a letter to Hooker, announcing Forbes'death, is a striking testimony to his worth:—]
I think I have never felt so crushed by anything before. It is one of those losses which cannot be replaced either to the private friend or to science. To me especially it is a bitter loss. Without the aid and sympathy he has always given me from first to last, I should never have had the courage to persevere in the course I have followed. And it was one of my greatest hopes that we should work in harmony for long years at the aims so dear to us both.
But it is otherwise, and we who remain have nothing left but to bear the inevitable as we best may.
[And again a few days later:—]
I have had no time to write to you again till now, but I write to say how perfectly you express my own feeling about our poor friend. One of the first things I thought of was that medal business, and I never rejoiced in anything more than that I had not been deterred by any moral cowardice from acting as I did.
As it is I reckon that letter (which I will show you some day) among my most precious possessions.
[Huxley's last tribute to his dead friend was the organising a memorial fund, part of which went to getting a bust of him made, part to establishing an Edward Forbes medal, to be competed for by the students of his old school in Jermyn Street.
As Huxley had been Forbes' successor at Jermyn Street, so now he seemed to many marked out to succeed him at Edinburgh. In November he writes to Hooker:—]
People have been at me about the Edinburgh chair. If I could contrive to stop here, between you and I, I would prefer it to half a dozen Edinburgh chairs, but there is a mortal difference between 200 and 1000 pounds sterling a year. I have written to say that if the Professors can make up their minds they wish me to stand, I will—if not, I will not. For my own part, I believe my chances would be very small, and I think there is every probability of their dividing the chair, in which case I certainly would not go. However, I hate thinking about the thing.
[And also to his sister:—]
November 26, 1854.
My dearest Lizzie,
I feel I have been silent very long—a great deal too long—but you would understand if you knew how much I have to do; why, with every disposition to do otherwise, I now write hardly any but business letters. Even Nettie comes off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as I have done, with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea of life in London, with the determination to MAKE the influence and the position and the money which he hasn't got, you may depend upon it that the fierce wants and interests of his present and immediate circle leave him little time to think of anything else, whatever old loves and old memories may be smouldering as warmly as ever below the surface. So, sister mine, you must not imagine because I do not write that therefore I do not think of you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten up with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the thing that the moment calls for.
The last year has been eventful for me. There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks one's self on. Thank God I think I may say I have weathered mine—not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side.
At the commencement of this year my affairs came to a crisis. The Government, notwithstanding all the representations which were made to them, would neither give nor refuse the grant for the publication of my work, and by way of cutting short all further discussion the Admiralty called upon me to serve. A correspondence ensued, in which, as commonly happens in these cases, they got the worst of it in logic and words, and I in reality and "tin." They answered my syllogism by the irrelevant and absurd threat of stopping my pay if I did not serve at once. Here was a pretty business! However, it was no use turning back when so much had been sacrificed for one's end, so I put their Lordships' letter up on my mantelpiece and betook myself to scribbling for my bread. They, on the other hand, removed my name from the List. So there was an interregnum when I was no longer in Her Majesty's service. I had already joined the "Westminster Review," and had inured myself to the labour of translation—and I could get any amount of scientific work I wanted—so there was a living, though a scanty one, and amazingly hard work for it. My pen is not a very facile one, and what I write costs me a good deal of trouble.
In the spring of this year, however, a door opened. My poor lost friend Professor Forbes—whose steady attachment and aid had always been of the utmost service to me—was called to fill the chair of Natural History in Edinburgh at a moment's notice. It is a very valuable appointment, and he was obliged to fill it at once. Of course he left a number of vacancies behind, among them one at the Government School of Mines in Jermyn Street, where he lectured on Natural History. I was called upon to take up his lectures where he left off, in the same sudden way, and the upshot of it all was that I became permanently attached—with 200 pounds sterling a year pay. In other ways I can make a couple of hundred a year more even now, and I hope by-and-by to do better. In fact, a married man, as I hope soon to be, cannot live at all in the position which I ought to occupy under less than six hundred a year. If I keep my health, however, I have every hope of being able to do this—but, as the jockeys say, the pace is severe. Nettie is coming over in the spring, and if I have any luck at all, I mean to have paid off my debts and to be married by this time next year. ([He writes on July 21, 1851:—]"I commenced life upon nothing at all, and I had to borrow in the ordinary way from an agent for the necessary expenses of my outfit. I sent home a great deal of money, but notwithstanding, from the beautiful way they have of accumulating interest and charges of one description and another, I found myself 100 pounds sterling in debt when I returned—besides something to my brother, about which, however, I do not suppose I need trouble myself just at present. As you may imagine, living in London, my pay now hardly keeps me, to say nothing of paying off my old scores. I could get no account of how things were going on with my agent while I was away,and therefore I never could tell exactly how I stood.")
In the meanwhile, strangely enough—and very painfully for me—new possibilities have sprung up. My poor friend Forbes died only a week ago, just as he was beginning his course and entering upon as brilliant a career as ever was opened to any scientific man in this country.
I cannot tell you how deeply this has shocked me. I owe him so much, I loved him so well, and I have so very very few friends in the true sense of the word, that it has been perhaps a greater loss to me than to any one—although there never was a man so widely lamented. One could trust him so thoroughly! However, he has gone, poor fellow, and there is nothing for it but to shut one's self up again—and I was only going to say that his death leaves his post vacant, and I have been strongly urged to become a candidate for it by several of the most influential Edinburgh Professors. I am greatly puzzled what to do. I do not want to leave London, nor do I think much of my own chances of success if I become a candidate—though others do. On the other hand, a stipend which varies between 800 and 1200 pounds sterling a year is not to be pooh-poohed.
We shall see. If I can carry out some arrangements which are pending with the Government to increase my pay to 400 pounds sterling a year, I shall be strongly tempted to stop in London. It is THE place, the centre of the world.
In the meanwhile, as things always do come in heaps, I obtained my long-fought-for Grant—though indirectly—from the Government, which is, I think, a great triumph and vindication of the family motto—tenax propositi. Like many long-sought-for blessings, however, it is rather a bore now that I have it, as I don't see how I am to find time to write the book. But things "do themselves" in a wonderful way. I'll tell you how many irons I have in the fire at this present moment:—(1) a manual of Comparative Anatomy for Churchill; (2) my "Grant" book; (3) a book for the British Museum people (half done); (4) an article for Todd's "Cyclopaedia" (half done); (5) sundry memoirs on Science; (6) a regular Quarterly article in the "Westminster"; (7) lectures at Jermyn Street in the School of Mines; (8) lectures at the School of Art, Marlborough House; (9) lectures at the London Institution, and odds and ends. Now, my dearest Lizzie, whenever you feel inclined to think it unkind I don't write, just look at that list, and remember that all these things require strenuous attention and concentration of the faculties, and leave one not very fit for anything else. You will say that it is bad to be so entirely absorbed in these things, and to that I heartily say Amen!—but you might as well argue with a man who has just mounted the favourite for the "Oaks" that it is a bad thing to ride fast. He admits that, and is off like a shot when the bell rings nevertheless. My bell has rung some time, and thank God the winning post is in sight.
Give my kindest regards to the doctor and special love to all the children. I send a trifle for my godson and some odds and ends in the book line, among other things a Shakespeare for yourself, dear Liz.
Believe me, ever your affectionate brother,
T.H. Huxley.
[In December the Edinburgh chair was practically offered to him undivided; but by that time the London authorities thought they had better make it worth his while to stay at Jermyn Street, and with negotiations begun for this end he refused to stand for Edinburgh. In the following spring, however, he was again approached from Edinburgh—not so much to withdraw his refusal and again become a candidate, as to let it be made known that he would accept the chair if it were offered him. But his position in London was now established; and he preferred to live in London on a bare sufficiency rather than to enjoy a larger income away from the centre of things.
Two letters to Tyndall, which refer to the division of labour in the science reviews for the "Westminster," indicate very clearly the high pressure at which Huxley had already begun to work:—]
Tenby, South Wales, October 22, 1854.
My dear Tyndall,
I was rejoiced to find you entertaining my proposition at all. No one believes how hard you work more than I, but I was not going to be such a bad diplomatist as to put that at the head of my letter, and if I had thought that what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto, I think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But really and truly, so long as it is confined to our own department it is no great affair. You make me laugh at the long face you pull about the duties, based on my phrase. The fact is, you notice what you like, and what you do not you leave undone, unless you get an editorial request to say something about a particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your own hands—at least it is in mine—as I went upon my principle of having a row at starting…
Now here is an equitable proposition. Look at my work. I have a couple of monographs, odds and ends of papers for journals, a manual and some three courses of lectures to provide for this winter. "My necessities are as great as thine," as Sir Philip Sidney didn't say, so be a brick, split the difference, and say you will be ready for the April number. I will write and announce the fact to Chapman.
What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this pace. I almost repent me of tempting you—after all—so I promise to hold on if you really think you will be overdoing it.
With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps. I have not, now, nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both, and if I work the latter, not even the fresh breezes of this place will keep the former in order. That is a discovery I have made here, and though highly instructive, it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results that have turned up.
Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my man. The poor fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article, which has appeared in the last "Westminster," as his forlorn vale! to the world. After all, that is the way to die, better a thousand times than drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old age.
Believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[On Tyndall consenting, he wrote again on the 29th:—]
I rejoice in having got you to put your head under my yoke, and feel ready to break into a hand gallop on the strength of it.
I have written to Chapman to tell him you only make an experiment on your cerebral substance—whose continuance depends on tenacity thereof.
I didn't suspect you of being seduced by the magnificence of the emolument, you Cincinnatus of the laboratory. I only suggested that as pay sweetens labour, a fortiori it will sweeten what to you will be no labour.
I'm not a miserable mortal now—quite the contrary. I never am when I have too much to do, and my sage reflection was not provoked by envy of the more idle. Only I do wish I could sometimes ascertain the exact juste milieu of work which will suit, not my head or will, THESE can't have too much; but my absurd stomach.
[The Edinburgh candidature, the adoption of his wider scheme for the carrying out of the coast survey, and his approaching marriage, are touched upon in the following letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster of Tenby, whose keen interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm friendship with the rising naturalist, some fifteen years his junior. (It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 to F.D. Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his best to help), and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of June 1855.] "What Kingsley do you refer to?" [he writes on May 6,] "ALTON LOCKE Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right glad to find good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for any man. But the work must be critically done.") [He was strongly urged by the younger man to complete and systematise his observations by taking in turn all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, and working them up into a series of little monographs] "which would be the best of all possible foundations for a History of the British Annelidae":—
To Dr. Dyster.
January 5, 1855
[He begins by confessing "a considerable liberty" he had been taking with Dyster's name, in calling a joint discovery of this, which he described in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal," Protula Dysteri.]
Are you very savage? If so, you must go and take a walk along the sands and see the slant rays of the sunset tipping the rollers as they break on the beach; that always made even ME at peace with all the world, and a fortiori it will you.
Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. Chimney pots are highly injurious to my morals, and my temper is usually in proportion to the extent of my horizon.
I have been swallowing oceans of disgust lately. All sorts of squabbles, some made by my own folly and others by the malice of other people, and no great sea and sky to go out under, and be alone and forget it all.
You may have seen my name advertised by Reeve as about to write a memoir of poor Forbes, to be prefixed to a collection of his essays. I found that to be a mere bookseller's dodge on Reeve's part, and when I made the discovery, of course we had a battle-royal, and I have now wholly withdrawn from it.
I find, however, that one's kind and generous friends imagine it was an electioneering manoeuvre on my part for Edinburgh. Imagine how satisfactory. I forget whether I told you that I had been asked to stand for Edinburgh and have done so. Whether I shall be appointed or not I do not know. So far as my own wishes go, I am in a curiously balanced state of mind about it. Many things make it a desirable post, but I dread leaving London and its freedom—its Bedouin sort of life—for Edinburgh and no whistling on Sundays. Besides, if I go there, I shall have to give up all my coast-survey plans, and all their pleasant concomitants.
Apropos of Edinburgh I feel much like the Irish hod-man who betted his fellow he could not carry him up to the top of a house in his hod. The man did it, but Pat turning round as he was set down on the roof, said, "Ye've done it, sure enough, but, bedad, I'd great hopes ye'd let me fall about three rounds from the top." Bedad, I'm nearly at the top of the Scotch ladder, but I've hopes.
It is finally settled that the chair will not be divided. I told them frankly I would not go if it were.
Has Highly sent your books yet?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, February 13, 1855.
My dear Dyster,
…I will do my best to help—to some alumni if the chance comes in my way, though, as you say, I don't like him. I can't help it. I respect piety, and hope I have some after my own fashion, but I have a profound prejudice against the efflorescent form of it. I never yet found in people thoroughly imbued with that pietism, the same notions of honour and straightforwardness that obtain among men of the world. It may be otherwise with —, but I can't help my pagan prejudice. So don't judge harshly of me there-anent.
About Edinburgh, I have been going to write to you for days past. I have decided on withdrawing from the candidature, and have done so. In fact the more I thought of it the less I liked it. They require nine months' lectures some four or five times a week, which would have thoroughly used me up, and completely put a stop to anything like original work; and then there was a horrid museum to be arranged, work I don't care about, and which would have involved an amount of intriguing and heart-burning, and would have required an amount of diplomacy to carry to a successful issue, for which my temper and disposition are wholly unfitted.
And then I felt above all things that it was for me an imposture. Here have I been fighting and struggling for years, sacrificing everything to be a man of science, a genuine worker, and if I had obtained the Edinburgh chair, I should have been in reality a mere pedagogue and a man of science only in name. Such were my notions, and if I hesitated at all and allowed myself to become a candidate, it was only because I have other interests to consult than my own. Intending to "range myself" one of these days and become a respectable member of society, I was bound to consider my material interests. And so I should have been still a candidate for Edinburgh had not the Government here professed themselves unwilling to lose my services, adding the "material guarantee" of an addition to my income, which, though by no means bringing it up to the point of Edinburgh, will still enable me (das heisst "us") to live comfortably here.
I must renounce the "pomps and vanities," but all those other "lusts of the flesh" which may beseem a gentleman may be reasonably gratified.
Don't you think I have been wise in my Hercules choice? After all I don't lay claim to any great merit, seeing it was anything but certain I should get Edinburgh.
The best of all is that I have every reason to believe that Government will carry out my scheme for a coast survey, so happily and pleasantly begun at Tenby last year.
The final arrangements are almost complete, and I believe you may make up your mind to have four months of me next year. Tenby shall be immortalised and Jenkyn converted into a philosopher. [Jenkyn was employed to collect shells, etc., at Tenby. He is often alluded to as "the Professor.">[ By the way, I think the best way would be to retain the shells till I come. My main purpose is to have in them a catalogue of what Tenby affords.
Pray give my kind remembrances to Mrs. Dyster, and believe me, ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
April 1, 1855.
My dear Dyster,
By all that's good, your last note, which lies before me, has date a month ago. I looked at it just now, and became an April fool on the instant.
All the winds of March, however, took their course through my thorax and eventuated in lectures. At least that is all the account I can give to myself of the time, and an unprofitable account it is, for everything but one's exchequer.
So far as knowledge goes it is mere prodigality spending one's capital and adding nothing, for I find the physical exertion of lecturing quite unfits me for much else. Fancy how last Friday was spent. I went to Jermyn Street in the morning with the intention of preparing for my afternoon's lecture. People came talking to me up to within a quarter of an hour of the time, so I had to make a dash without preparation. Then I had to go home to prepare for a second lecture in the evening, and after that I went to a soiree, and got home about one o'clock in the morning.
I go on telling myself this won't do, but to no purpose.
You will be glad to hear that my affairs here are finally settled, and I am regularly appointed an officer of the survey with the commission to work out the natural history of the coast.
Edinburgh has been tempting me again, and in fact I believe I was within an ace of going there, but the Government definitely offering me this position, I was too glad to stop where I am.
I can make six hundred a year here, and that being the case, I conceive I have a right to consult my own inclinations and the interest of my scientific reputation. The coast survey puts in my hands the finest opportunities that ever a man had, and it is a pity if I do not make myself something better than a Caledonian pedagogue.
The great first scheme I have in connection with my new post is to work out the Marine Natural History of Britain, and to have every species of sea beast properly figured and described in the reports which I mean from time to time to issue. I can get all the engravings and all the printing I want done, but of course I am not so absurd as to suppose I can work out all these things myself. Therefore my notion is to seek in all highways and byways for fellow labourers. Busk will, I hope, supply me with figures and descriptions of the British Polyzoa and Hydrozoa, and I have confidence in my friend, Mr. Dyster of Tenby (are you presumptuous enough to say you know him?) for the Annelids, if he won't object to that mode of publishing his work. The Mollusks, the Crustaceans, and the Fishes, the Echinoderms and the Worms, will give plenty of occupation to the other people, myself included, to say nothing of distribution and of the recent geological changes, all of which come within my programme.
Did I not tell you it was a fine field, and could the land o' cakes give me any scope like this?
April 9, 1855.
My dear Dyster,
I didn't by any means mean to be so sphinx-like in my letter, though you have turned out an Oedipus of the first water. True it is that I mean to "range myself," "live cleanly and leave off sack," within the next few months—that is to say, if nothing happens to the good ship which is at present bearing my fiancee homewards.
So far as a restless mortal—more or less aweary of most things—like myself can be made happy by any other human being, I believe your good wishes are safe of realisation; at any rate, it will be my fault if they are not, and I beg you never to imagine that I could confound the piety of friendship with the "efflorescent" variety.
I hope to marry in July, and make my way down to Tenby shortly afterwards, and I am ready to lay you a wager that your vaticinations touching the amount of work that WON'T be done don't come true.
So much for wives—now for WORMS—(I could not for the life of me help the alliteration). I, as right reverend father in worms and Bishop of Annelidae, do not think I ought to interfere with my most promising son, when a channel opens itself for the publication of his labours. So do what you will apropos of J—. If he does not do the worms any better than he did the zoophytes, he won't interfere with my plans.
I shall be glad to see Mrs. Buckland's Echinoderm. I think it must be a novelty by what you say. She is a very jolly person, but I have an unutterable fear of scientific women.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
May 6, 1855.
My ship is not come home but is coming, and I have been in a state of desperation at the continuous east winds. However, to-day there is a westerly gale, and if it lasts I shall have news soon. You may imagine that I am in an unsatisfactory state of mind between this and lecturing five times a week.
I beg to say that the "goods" I expect are home produce this transplanted (or sent a voyage as you do Madeira), and not foreign growth by any means. But it is five years since we met, I am another man altogether, and if my wife be as much altered, we shall need a new introduction. Correspondence, however active, is a poor substitute for personal communication and tells one but little of the inner life.
[Finally, on the eve of his marriage in July, Tyndall congratulates him on being appointed to deliver the next course of Fullerian Lectures at the Royal Institution:—
The fates once seemed to point to our connection in a distant land: we are now colleagues at home, and I can claim you as my scientific brother. May the gods continue to drop fatness upon you, and may your next great step be productive of all the felicity which your warmest friends or your own rebellious heart can desire.
CHAPTER 1.9.
1855.
Miss Heathorn and her parents reached England at the beginning of May 1855, and took up their abode at 8 Titchfield Terrace, not far from Huxley's own lodgings and his brothers' house. One thing, however, filled Huxley with dismay. Miss Heathorn's health had broken down utterly, and she looked at death's door. All through the preceding year she had been very ill; she had gone with friends, Mr. and Mrs. Wise, to the newly opened mining-camp at Bathurst, and she and Mrs. Wise were indeed the first women to visit it; returning to Sydney after rather a rough time, she caught a chill, and being wrongly treated by a doctor of the blood-letting, calomel-dosing school, she was reduced to a shadow, and only saved by another practitioner, who reversed the treatment just in time.
In his letters to her, Huxley had not at first realised the danger she had been in; and afterwards tried to keep her spirits up by a cheerful optimism that would only look forward to their joyful union and many years of unbroken happiness to atone for their long parting.
But the reality alarmed him. He took her to one of the most famous doctors of the day, as if merely a patient he was interested in. Then as one member of the profession to another, he asked him privately his opinion of the case. "I give her six months of life," said Aesculapius.] "Well, six months or not," [replied Huxley,] "she is going to be my wife." [The doctor was mightily put out. "You ought to have told me that before." Of course, the evasive answer in such a contingency was precisely what Huxley wished to avoid. Happily another leading doctor held a much more favourable opinion, and said that with care her strength would come back, slowly but surely.]
14 Waverley Place, Wednesday.
My dear Hooker,
My wife and I met again on Sunday last, and I have established herself, her father and mother, close by me here at 8 Titchfield Terrace, Regent's Park, and whenever you and Mrs. Hooker are in this part of the world, and can find time to call there, you will find her anything but surprised to see you.
God help me! I discover that I am as bad as any young fool who knows no better, and if the necessity for giving six lectures a week did not sternly interfere, I should be hanging about her ladyship's apron-strings all day. She is in very bad health, poor child, and I have some reason to be anxious, but I have every hope she will mend with care.
Oh this life! "atra cura," as old Thackeray has it, sits on all our backs and mingles with all our happiness. But if I go on talking in this way you will wonder what has come over my philosophership.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[Black Care was still in the background, but had relaxed her hold upon him. His spirits rose to the old point of gaiety. He writes how he gives a lively lecture to his students, and in the midst of it satan prompts him to crow or howl—a temptation happily resisted. He makes atrocious puns in bidding Hooker to the wedding, which took place on July 21.]
Jermyn Street, July 6, 1855.
My dear Hooker,
I ought long since to have thanked you in Thomson's name as well as my own for your "Flora Indica." Some day I promise myself much pleasure and profit from the digestion of the Introductory Essay, which is probably as much as my gizzard is competent to convert into nutrition.
I terminate my Baccalaureate and take my degree of M.A.-trimony (isn't that atrocious?) on Saturday, July 21. After the unhappy criminals have been turned off, there will be refreshments provided for the sheriffs, chaplain, and spectators. Will you come? Don't if it is a bore, but I should much like to have you there.
[It was not a large party that assembled at the George Huxleys for the wedding, but all were life-long friends, including, besides the Fanning clan and Mrs. Griffiths, an old Australian ally, Hooker, Tyndall, and Dr. and Mrs. Carpenter. There was none present but felt that abundant happiness was at least well earned after eight years of trial, and still more that its best guarantee was the firm loyalty and devotion that had passed through so many dangers of absence and isolation, so many temptations to renounce the ideal course under stress of circumstance, only to emerge strengthened and ennobled by the stern discipline of much sacrifice.
Great as was his new happiness, he hardly stood in need of Darwin's word of warning: "I hope your marriage will not make you idle; happiness, I fear, is not good for work." Huxley could not sit idle for long. If he had no occupation on hand, something worth investigation—and thorough investigation—was sure to catch his eye. So he writes to Hooker from Tenby:—]
15 St. Julian's Terrace, Tenby, August 16, 1855.
My dear Hooker,
I am so near the end of the honeymoon that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the remains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place called Amroth, near here.
So far as I can judge there can be no doubt that this really is a case of downward movement. The stools of the trees are in their normal position, and their roots are embedded and interwoven in a layer of stiff blue clay, which lies immediately beneath the superficial mud of the shore. Layers of leaves, too, are mixed up with the clay in other parts, and the bark of some of the trees is in perfect preservation. The condition of the wood is very curious. It is like very hard cheese, so that you can readily cut slices with a spade, and yet where more of the trunk has been preserved some parts are very hard. The trees are, I fancy, Beech and Oak. Could you identify slices if I were to send you some?
Now it seems to me that here is an opportunity one does not often have of getting some information about the action of sea water on wood, and on the mode in which these vegetable remains may become embedded, etc. etc., and I want to get you to tell me where I can find information on submerged forests in general, so as to see to what points one can best direct one's attention, and to suggest any inquiries that may strike yourself.
I do not see how the stumps can occur in this position without direct sinking of the land, and that such a sinking should have occurred tallies very well with some other facts which I have observed as to the nature of the bottom at considerable depths here.
We had the jolliest cruise in the world by Oxford, Warwick, Kenilworth, Stratford, Malvern, Ross, and the Wye though it WAS a little rainy, and though my wife's strength sadly failed at times.
Still she was on the whole much better and stronger than I had any right to expect, and although I get frightened every now and then, yet there can be no doubt that she is steadily though slowly improving. I have no fears for the ultimate result, but her amendment will be a work of time. We have really quite settled down into Darby and Joan, and I begin to regard matrimony as the normal state of man. It's wonderful how light the house looks when I come back weary with a day's boating to what it used to do.
I hope Mrs. Hooker is well and about again. Pray give her our very kind regards, and believe me, my dear Hooker, ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[At Tenby he stayed on through August and September, continuing his occupations of the previous summer, dredging up specimens for his microscope, and working partly for his own investigations, partly for the Geological Survey.
CHAPTER 1.10.
1855-1858.
Up to his appointment at the School of Mines, Huxley's work had been almost entirely morphological, dealing with the Invertebrates. His first investigations, moreover, had been directed not to species-hunting, but to working out the real affinities of little known orders, and thereby evolving a philosophical classification from the limbo of "Vermes" and "Radiata."
He had continued the same work by tracing homologies of development in other classes of animals, such as the Cephalous Mollusca, the Articulata, and the Brachiopods. On these subjects, also, he had a good deal of correspondence with other investigators of the same cast of mind, and even when he did not carry conviction, the impression made by his arguments may be judged from the words of Dr. Allman, no mean authority, in a letter of May 2, 1852:—]
I have thought over your arguments again and again, and while I am the more convinced of their ingenuity, originality, and STRENGTH, I yet feel ashamed to confess that I too must exclaim "tenax propositi." When was it otherwise in controversy?
[Other speculations arising out of these researches had been given to the public in the form of lectures, notably that on Animal Individuality at the Royal Institution in 1852.
But after 1854, Paleontology and administrative work began to claim much of the time he would willingly have bestowed upon distinctly zoological research. His lectures on Natural History of course demanded a good deal of first-hand investigation, and not only occasional notes in his fragmentary journals, but a vast mass of drawings now preserved at South Kensington attest the amount of work he still managed to give to these subjects. But with the exception of the Hunterian Lectures of 1868, he only published one paper on Invertebrates as late as 1860; and only half a dozen, not counting the belated "Oceanic Hydrozoa," bear 1856 and 1859. The essay on the Crayfish did not appear until after he had left Jermyn Street and Paleontology for South Kensington.
The "Method of Paleontology," published in 1856, was the first of a long series of papers dealing with fossil creatures, the description of which fell to him as Naturalist to the Geological Survey. By 1860 he had published twelve such papers, and by 1871 twenty-six more, or thirty-eight in sixteen years.
It was a curious irony of fate that led him into this position. He writes in his Autobiography that, when Sir Henry de la Beche, the Director-General of the Geological Survey, offered him the post Forbes vacated of Paleontologist and Lecturer on Natural History,]
I refused the former point blank, and accepted the latter only provisionally, telling Sir Henry that I did not care for fossils, and that I should give up Natural History as soon as I could get a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty-one years, and a large part of my work has been paleontological.
[Yet the diversion was not without great use. A wide knowledge of paleontology offered a key to many problems that were hotly debated in the years of battle following the publication of the "Origin of Species" in 1859, as well as providing fresh subject-matter for the lectures in which he continued to give the lay world the results of his thought.
On the administrative and official side he laid before himself the organisation of the resources of the Museum of Practical Geology as an educational instrument. This involved several years' work in the arrangement of the specimens, so as to illustrate the paleontological lectures, and the writing of "introductions" to each section of the catalogue, which should be a guide to the students. The "Method of Paleontology" mentioned above served as the prefatory essay to the whole catalogue, and was reprinted in 1869 by the Smithsonian Institute of Washington under the title of "Principles and Methods of Paleontology."
This work led to his taking a lively interest in the organisation of museums in general, whether private, such as Sir Philip Egerton's, which he visited in 1856; local, such as Warwick or Chester; or central, such as the British Museum or that at Manchester.
With regard to the British Museum, the question had arisen of removing the Natural History collections from the confined space and dusty surroundings of Great Russell Street. A first memorial on the subject had been signed, not only by many non-scientific persons, but also by a number of botanists, who wished to see the British Museum Herbarium, etc., combined with the more accessible and more complete collections at Kew. Owing apparently to official opposition, the Natural History sub-committee of the British Museum Trustees advised a treatment of the Botanical Department which commended itself to none of the leading botanists. Consequently a number of botanists and zoologists took counsel together and drew up a fresh memorial from the strictly scientific point of view. Huxley and Hooker took an active part in the agitation.] "It is no use," [writes the former to his friend,] "putting any faith in the old buffers, hardened as they are in trespasses and sin." [And again:—]
I see nothing for it but for you and I to constitute ourselves into a permanent "Committee of Public Safety," to watch over what is being done and take measures with the advice of others when necessary…As for — and id genus omne, I have never expected anything but opposition from them. But I don't think it is necessary to trouble one's head about such opposition. It may be annoying and troublesome, but if we are beaten by it we deserve to be. With shall have to wade through oceans of trouble and abuse, but so long as we gain our end, I care not a whistle whether the sweet voices of the scientific mob are with me or against me.
[According to Huxley's views a complete system demanded a triple museum for each subject, Zoology and Botany, since Geology was sufficiently provided for in Jermyn Street—one typical or popular, "in which all prominent forms or types of animals or plants, recent or fossil, should be so displayed as to give the public an idea of the vast extent and variety of natural objects, to diffuse a general knowledge of the results obtained by science in their investigation and classification, and to serve as a general introduction to the student in Natural Science"; the second scientific, "in which collections of all available animals and plants and their parts, whether recent or fossil, and in a sufficient number of specimens, should be disposed conveniently for study, and to which should be exclusively attached an appropriate library, or collection of books and illustrations relating to science, quite independent of any general library"; the third economic, "in which economic products, whether zoological or botanical, with illustrations of the processes by which they are obtained and applied to use, should be so disposed as best to assist the progress of Commerce and the Arts." It demanded further a Zoological and a Botanical Garden, where the living specimens could be studied.
Some of these institutions existed, but were not under state control. Others were already begun—e.g. that of Economic Zoology at South Kensington; but the value of the botanical collections was minimised by want of concentration, while as to zoology "the British Museum contains a magnificent collection of recent and fossil animals, the property of the state, but there is no room for its proper display and no accommodation for its proper study. Its official head reports directly neither to the Government nor to the governing body of the institution…It is true that the people stroll through the enormous collections of the British Museum, but the sole result is that they are dazzled and confused by the multiplicity of unexplained objects, and the man of science is deprived thrice a week of the means of advancing knowledge."
The agitation of 1859-60 bore fruit in due season, and within twenty years the ideal here sketched was to a great extent realised, as any visitor to the Natural History Museum at South Kensington can see for himself.
The same principles are reiterated in his letter of January 25, 1868, to the Commissioners of the Manchester Natural History Society, who had asked his advice as to the erection of a museum. But to the principles he adds a number of most practical suggestions as to the actual structure of the building, which are briefly appended in abstract. The complement to this is a letter of 1872, giving advice as to a local museum at Chester, and one of 1859 describing the ideal catalogue for a geological museum.]
January 25, 1868.
The Commissioners of the Manchester Natural History Society.
SCHEME FOR A MUSEUM.
OBJECTS.
1. The public exhibition of a collection of specimens large enough to illustrate all the most important truths of Natural History, but not so extensive as to weary and confuse ordinary visitors.
2. The accessibility of this collection to the public.
3. The conservation of all specimens not necessary for the purpose defined in Paragraph 1 in a place apart.
4. The accessibility of all objects contained in the museum to the curator and to scientific students, without interference with the public or by the public.
5. Thorough exclusion of dust and dirt from the specimens.
6. A provision of space for workrooms, and, if need be, lecture-rooms.
PRINCIPLE.
A big hall (350 x 40 x 30) with narrower halls on either side, lighted from the top. The central hall for the public, the others for the curators, etc. The walls, of arches upon piers about 15 feet high, bearing on girders a gallery 5 feet wide in the public room, and 3 feet 6 inches in the curators'.
The cases should be larger below, 5 feet deep, and smaller above, 2 feet deep, with glass fronts to the public, and doors on the curators' side.
For very large specimens—e.g. a whale—the case could expand into the curators' part without encroaching on the public part, so as to keep the line of windows regular.
Specimens of the Vertebrata, illustrations of Physical Geography and
Stratigraphical Geology, should be placed below.
The Invertebrata, Botanical and Mineralogical specimens in the galleries.
The partition to be continued above the galleries to the roof, thus excluding all the dust raised by the public.
Space for students should be provided in the curators' rooms.
Storage should be AMPLE.
A museum of this size gives twice as much area for exhibition purposes as that offered by ALL the cases in the present museum.
Athenaeum Club, December 8, 1872.
Dear Sir,
I regret that your letter has but just come into my hands, so that my reply cannot be in time for your meeting, which, I understand you to say, was to be held yesterday.
I have no hesitation whatever in expressing the opinion that, except in the case of large and wealthy towns (and even in their case primarily), a Local Museum should be exactly what its name implies, namely "Local"—illustrating local Geology, local Botany, local Zoology, and local Archaeology.
Such a museum, if residents who are interested in these sciences take proper pains, may be brought to a great degree of perfection and be unique of its kind. It will tell both natives and strangers exactly what they want to know, and possess great scientific interest and importance. Whereas the ordinary lumber-room of clubs from New Zealand, Hindoo idols, sharks' teeth, mangy monkeys, scorpions, and conch shells—who shall describe the weary inutility of it? It is really worse than nothing, because it leads the unwary to look for the objects of science elsewhere than under their noses. What they want to know is that their "America is here," as Wilhelm Meister has it.
Yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Alfred Walker, Esq., Nant-y-Glyn, Colwyn Bay.
TO THE REVEREND P. BRODIE OF WARWICK.
Jermyn Street, October 14, 1859.
My dear Mr. Brodie,
I am sorry to say that I can as yet send you no catalogue of ours. The remodelling of our museum is only just completed, and only the introductory part of my catalogue is written. When it is printed you shall have an early copy.
If I may make a suggestion I should say that a catalogue of your museum for popular use should commence with a sketch of the topography and stratigraphy of the county, put into the most intelligible language, and illustrated by reference to mineral specimens in the cases, and to the localities where sections showing the superposition of such and such beds is to be seen. After that I think should come a list of the most remarkable and interesting fossils, with reference to the cases where they are to be seen; and under the head of each a brief popular account of the kind of animal or plant which the thing was when alive, its probable habits, and its meaning and importance as a member of the great series of successive forms of life.
Yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The reorganisation of the course of studies at Jermyn Street, fully sketched out in the 1857 notebook, involved two very serious additions to his work over and above what was required of him by his appointment as Professor. He found his students to a great extent lacking in the knowledge of general principles necessary to the comprehension of the special work before them. To enable them to make the best use of his regular lectures, he offered them in addition a preliminary evening course of nine lectures each January, which he entitled "An Introduction to the Study of the Collection of Fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology." These lectures summed up what he afterwards named Physiography, together with a general sketch of fossils and their nature, the classification of animals and plants, their distribution at various epochs, and the principles on which they are constructed, illustrated by the examination of some animal, such as a lobster.
The regular lectures, fifty-seven in number, ran from February to April and from April to June, with fortnightly examinations during the latter period, six in number. I take the scheme from his notebook:—] "After prolegomena, the physiology and morphology of lobster and dove; then through Invertebrates, Anodon, Actinia, and Vorticella Protozoa, to Molluscan types. Insects, then Vertebrates. Supplemented Paleontologically by the demonstrations of the selected types in the cases; twelve Paleozoic, twelve Mesozoic and Cainozoic," [by his assistants.] "To make the course complete there should be added
1. A series of lectures on Species, practical discrimination and description, modification by conditions and distribution;
2. Lectures on the elements of Botany and Fossil Plants."
[This reorganisation of his course went hand in hand with his utilisation of the Jermyn Street Museum for paleontological teaching, and all through 1857 he was busily working at the Explanatory Catalogue.
Moreover, in 1855 he had begun at Jermyn Street his regular courses of lectures to working men—lectures which impressed those qualified to judge as surpassing even his class lectures. Year after year he gave the artisans of his best, on the principle enunciated thus early in a letter of February 27, 1855, to Dyster:—]
I enclose a prospectus of some People's Lectures (POPULAR Lectures I hold to be an abomination unto the Lord) I am about to give here. I want the working classes to understand that Science and her ways are great facts for them—that physical virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be clean and temperate and all the rest—not because fellows in black with white ties tell them so, but because these are plain and patent laws of nature which they must obey "under penalties."
I am sick of the dilettante middle class, and mean to try what I can do with these hard-handed fellows who live among facts. You will be with me, I know.
[And again on May 6, 1855:—]
I am glad your lectures went off so well. They were better attended than mine [the Preliminary Course], although in point of earnestness and attention my audience was all I could wish. I am now giving a course of the same kind to working men exclusively—one of what we call our series of "working men's lectures," consisting of six given in turn by each Professor. The theatre holds 600, and is crammed full.
I believe in the fustian, and can talk better to it than to any amount of gauze and Saxony; and to a fustian audience (but to that only) I would willingly give some when I come to Tenby.
[The corresponding movement set going by F.D. Maurice also claimed his
interest, and in 1857 he gave his first address at the Working Men's
College to an audience, as he notes, of some fifty persons, including
Maurice himself.
Other work of importance was connected with the Royal Institution. He had been elected to deliver the triennial course as Fullerian Professor, and for his subject in 1856-57 chose Physiology and Comparative Anatomy; in 1858, the Principles of Biology.
He was extremely glad of the additional "grist to the mill" brought in by these lectures. As he wrote in 1890:—]
I have good reason to know what difference a hundred a year makes when your income is not more than four or five times that. I remember when I was candidate for the Fullerian professorship some twenty-three years ago, a friend of mine asked a wealthy manager to support me. He promised, but asked the value of the appointment, and when told, said, "Well, but what's the use of a hundred a year to him?" I suppose he paid his butler that.
[A further attempt to organise scientific work throughout the country and make its results generally known, dates from this time. Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall had discussed, early in 1858, the possibility of starting a "Scientific Review," which should do for science what the "Quarterly" or the "Westminster" did for literature. The scheme was found not to be feasible at the time, though it was revived in another form in 1860; so in the meanwhile it was arranged that science should be laid before the public every fortnight, through the medium of a scientific column in the "Saturday Review." The following letter bears on this proposal:—]
April 20, 1858.
My dear Hooker,
Before the dawn of the proposal for the ever-memorable though not-to-be "Scientific Review," there had been some talk of one or two of us working the public up for science through the "Saturday Review." Maskelyne (you know him, I suppose) was the suggester of the scheme, and undertook to talk to the "Saturday" people about it.
I think the whole affair had dropped through, but yesterday Maskelyne came to me and to Ramsay with definite propositions from the "Saturday" editor.
He undertakes to put in a scientific article in the intermediate part between Leaders and Reviews once a fortnight if we will supply him. He is not to mutilate or to alter, but to take what he gets and be thankful.
The writers to select their own subjects. Now the question is, Will seven or eight of us, representing different sciences, join together and undertake to supply at least one article in three months? Once a fortnight would want a minimum of six articles in three months, so that if there were six, each man must supply one.
Sylvester is talked of for Mathematics. I am going to write to Tyndall about doing Physics. Maskelyne and perhaps Frankland will take Chemistry and Mineralogy. You and I might do Biology; Ramsay, Geology; Smyth, Technology.
This looks to me like a very feasible plan, not asking too much of anyone, and yet giving all an opportunity of saying what he has to say.
Besides this the "Saturday" would be glad to get Reviews from us.
If all those mentioned agree to join, we will meet somewhere and discuss plans.
Let me have a line to say what you think, and believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In 1858 he read three papers at the Geological and two at the Linnean; he lectured (February 15) on Fish and Fisheries at South Kensington, and on May 21 gave a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on "The Phenomena of Gemmation." He wrote an article for "Todd's Cyclopaedia," on the "Tegumentary Organs," an elaborate paper, as Sir M. Foster says, on a histological theme, to which, as to others of the same class on the Teeth and the Corpuscular Tactus ("Q. J. Micr. Science" 1853-4), he had been "led probably by the desire, which only gradually and through lack of fulfilment left him, to become a physiologist rather than a naturalist."
No less important was his more general work for science. Physiological study in England at this time was dominated by transcendental notions. To put first principles on a sound experimental basis was the aim of the new leaders of scientific thought. To this end Huxley made two contributions in 1858—one on the general subject of the cell theory, the other on the particular question of the development of the skull. "In a striking 'Review of the Cell Theory,'" says Sir M. Foster, "which appeared in the "British and Foreign Medical Review" in 1858, a paper which more than one young physiologist at the time read with delight, and which even to-day may be studied with no little profit, he, in this subject as in others, drove the sword of rational inquiry through the heart of conceptions, metaphysical and transcendental, but dominant."
Of this article Professor E. Ray Lankester also writes:—
…Indeed it is a fundamental study in morphology. The extreme interest and importance of the views put forward in that article may be judged of by the fact that although it is forty years since it was published, and although our knowledge of cell structure has made immense progress during those forty years, yet the main contention of that article, namely that cells are not the cause but the result of organisation—in fact, are, as he says, to the tide of life what the line of shells and weeds on the seashore is to the tide of the living sea—is even now being re-asserted, and in a slightly modified form is by very many cytologists admitted as having more truth in it than the opposed view and its later outcomes, to the effect that the cell is the unit of life in which and through which alone living matter manifests its activities.
The second was his Croonian Lecture of 1858, "On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull," in which he demonstrated from the embryological researches of Rathke and others, that after the first step the whole course of development in the segments of the skull proceeded on different lines from that of the vertebral column; and that Oken's imaginative theory of the skull as modified vertebrae, logically complete down to a strict parallel between the subsidiary head-bones and the limbs attached to the spine, outran the facts of a definite structure common to all vertebrates which he had observed. ("Following up Rathke, he strove to substitute for the then dominant fantastic doctrines of the homologies of the cranial elements advocated by Owen, sounder views based on embryological evidence. He exposed the futility of attempting to regard the skull as a series of segments, in each of which might be recognised all the several parts of a vertebra, and pointed out the errors of trusting to superficial resemblances of shape and position. He showed, by the history of the development of each, that, though both skull and vertebral column are segmented, the one and the other, after an early stage, are fashioned on lines so different as to exclude all possibility of regarding the detailed features of each as mere modifications of a type repeated along the axis of the body. 'The spinal column and the skull start from the same primitive condition, whence they immediately begin to diverge.' 'It may be true to say that there is a primitive identity of structure between the spinal or vertebral column and the skull; but it is no more true that the adult skull is a modified vertebral column than it would be to affirm that the vertebral column is modified skull.' This lecture marked an epoch in England in vertebrate morphology, and the views enunciated in it carried forward, if somewhat modified, as they have been, not only by Huxley's subsequent researches and by those of his disciples, but especially by the splendid work of Gegenbauer, are still, in the main, the views of the anatomists of to-day."—Sir M. Foster, Royal Society Obituary Notice of T.H. Huxley.)
With the demolition of Oken's theory fell the superstructure raised by its chief supporter, Owen, "archetype" and all.
It was undoubtedly a bold step to challenge thus openly the man who was acknowledged as the autocrat of science in Britain. Moreover, though he had long felt that on his own subjects he was Owen's master, to begin a controversy was contrary to his deliberate practice. But now he had the choice of submitting to arbitrary dictation or securing himself from further aggressions by dealing a blow which would weaken the authority of the aggressor. For the growing antagonism between him and Owen had come to a head early in the preceding year, when the latter, taking advantage of the permission to use the lecture-theatre at Jermyn Street for the delivery of a paleontological course, unwarrantably assumed the title of Professor of Paleontology at the School of Mines, to the obvious detriment of Huxley's position there. His explanations not satisfying the council of the School of Mines, Huxley broke off all personal intercourse with him.
CHAPTER 1.11.
1857-1858.
Throughout this period his health was greatly tried by the strain of his work and life in town. Headache! headache! is his repeated note in the early part of 1857, and in 1858 we find such entries as:—]
"February 11.—Used up. Hypochondrical and bedevilled."
"Ditto 12."
"13.—Not good for much."
"21.—Toothache, incapable all day."
[And again:—]
"March 30. Voiceless."
"31.—Missed lecture."
[And]
"April 1.—Unable to go out."
[He would come in thoroughly used up after lecturing twice on the same day, as frequently happened, and lie wearily on one sofa; while his wife, whose health was wretched, matched him on the other. Yet he would go down to a lecture feeling utterly unable to deliver it, and, once started, would carry it through successfully—at what cost of nervous energy was known only to those two at home.
But there was another branch of work, that for the Geological Survey, which occasionally took him out of London, and the open-air occupation and tramping from place to place did him no little good. Thus, through the greater part of September and October 1856 he ranged the coasts of the Bristol Channel from Weston to Clovelly, and from Tenby to Swansea, preparing a "Report on the Recent Changes of Level in the Bristol Channel.">[ "You can't think," [he writes from Braunton on October 3,] "how well I am, so long as I walk eight or ten miles a day and don't work too much, but I find fifteen or sixteen miles my limit for comfort."
[For many years after this his favourite mode of recruiting from the results of a spell of overwork was to take a short walking tour with a friend. In April 1857 he is off for a week to Cromer; in 1860 he goes with Busk and Hooker for Christmas week to Snowdon; another time he is manoeuvred off by his wife and friends to Switzerland with Tyndall.
In Switzerland he spent his summer holidays both in 1856 and 1857, in the latter year examining the glaciers with Tyndall scientifically, as well as seeking pleasure by the ascent of Mont Blanc. As fruits of this excursion were published late in the same year, his "Letter to Mr. Tyndall on the Structure of Glacier Ice" ("Phil. Mag." 14 1857), and the paper in the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society," which appeared—much against his will—in the joint names of himself and Tyndall. Of these he wrote in 1893 in answer to an inquiry on the subject:—]
By the Observations on Glaciers I imagine you refer to a short paper published in "Phil. Mag." that embodied results of a little bit of work of my own. The Glacier paper in the "Phil. Trans." is essentially and in all respects Professor Tyndall's. He took up glacier work in consequence of a conversation at my table, and we went out to Switzerland together, and of course talked over the matter a good deal. However, except for my friend's insistence, I should not have allowed my name to appear as joint author, and I doubt whether I ought to have yielded. But he is a masterful man and over-generous.
[And in a letter to Hooker he writes:—]
By the way, you really must not associate me with Tyndall and talk about OUR theory. My sole merit in the matter (and for that I do take some credit) is to have set him at work at it, for the only suggestion I made, namely that the veined structure was analogous to his artificial cleavage phenomena, has turned out to be quite wrong.
Tyndall fairly MADE me put my name to that paper, and would have had it first if I would have let him, but if people go on ascribing to me any share in his admirable work I shall have to make a public protest. All I am content to share is the row, if there is to be one.
[The following letters to Hooker and Tyndall touch upon his Swiss trips of 1856 and 1857:—]
Berne, September 3, 1856.
I send you a line hence, having forgotten to write from Interlaken, whence we departed this morning.
The Weissthor expedition was the most successful thing you can imagine. We reached the Riffelberg in 11 1/2 hours, the first six being the hardest work I ever had in my life in the climbing way, and the last five carrying us through the most glorious sight I ever witnessed. During the latter part of the day there was not a cloud on the whole Monte Rosa range, so you may imagine what the Matterhorn and the rest of them looked like from the wide plain of neve just below the Weissthor. It was quite a new sensation, and I would not have missed it for any amount; and besides this I had an opportunity of examining the neve at a very great height. A regularly stratified section, several hundred feet high, was exposed on the Cima di Jazi, and I was convinced that the Weissthor would be a capital spot for making observations on the neve and on other correlative matters. There are no difficulties in the way of getting up to it from the Zermatt side, tough job as it is from Macugnaga, and we might readily rig a tent under shelter of the ridge. That would lick old Saussure into fits. All the Zermatt guides put the S. Theodul pass far beneath the Weissthor in point of difficulty; and you may tell Mrs. Hooker that they think the S. Theodul easier than the Monte Moro. The best of the joke was that I lost my way in coming down the Riffelberg to Zermatt the same evening, so that altogether I had a long day of it. The next day I walked from Zermatt to Visp (recovering Baedeker by the way), but my shoes were so knocked to pieces that I got a blister on my heel. Next day Voiture to Susten, and then over Gemmi to Kandersteg, and on Thursday my foot was so queer I was glad to get a retour to Interlaken. I found most interesting and complete evidences of old moraine deposits all the way down the Leuk valley into the Rhine valley, and I believe those little hills beyond Susten are old terminal moraines too. On the other side I followed moraines down to Frutigen, and great masses of glacial gravel with boulders, nearly to the Lake of Thum.
My wife is better, but anything but strong.
Chamounix, August 16, 1857.
My wife sends me intelligence of the good news you were so kind as to communicate to her. I need not tell you how rejoiced I am that everything has gone on well, and that your wife is safe and well. Offer her my warmest congratulations and good wishes. I have made one matrimonial engagement for Noel already, otherwise I would bespeak the hand of the young lady for him.
It has been raining cats and dogs these two days, so that we have been unable to return to our headquarters at the Montanvert which we left on Wednesday for the purpose of going up Mont Blanc. Tyndall (who has become one of the most active and daring mountaineers you ever saw—so that we have christened him "cat"; and our guide said the other day "Il va plus fort qu'un mouton. Il faut lui mettre une sonnette") had set his heart on the performance of this feat (of course with purely scientific objects), and had equally made up his mind not to pay five and twenty pounds sterling for the gratification. So we had one guide and took two porters in addition as far as the Grande Mulets. He is writing to you, and will tell you himself what happened to those who reached the top—to wit, himself, Hirst, and the guide. I found that three days in Switzerland had not given me my Swiss legs, and consequently I remained at the Grands Mulets, all alone in my glory, and for some eight hours in a great state of anxiety, for the three did not return for about that period after they were due.
I was there on a pinnacle like St. Simon Stylites, and nearly as dirty as that worthy saint must have been, but without any of his other claims to angelic assistance, so that I really did not see, if they had fallen into a crevasse, how I was to help either them or myself. They came back at last, just as it was growing dusk, to my inexpressible relief, and the next day we came down here—such a set of dirty, sun-burnt, snow-blind wretches as you never saw.
We heartily wished you were with us. What we shall do next I neither know nor care, as I have placed myself entirely under Commodore Tyndall's orders; but I suppose we shall be three or four days more at the Montanvert, and then make the tour of Mont Blanc. I have tied up six pounds sterling in one end of my purse, and when I have no more than that I shall come back. Altogether I don't feel in the least like the father of a family; no more would you if you were here. The habit of carrying a pack, I suppose, makes the "quiver full of arrows" feel light.
115 Esplanade, Deal, September 3, 1857.
My dear Tyndall,
I don't consider myself returned until next Wednesday, when the establishment of No. 14 will reopen on its accustomed scale of magnificence, but I don't mind letting you know I am in the flesh and safe back.
The tour round Mont Blanc was a decided success; in fact, I had only to regret you were not with me. The grand glacier of the Allee Blanche and the view of Mont Blanc from the valley of Aosta were alone worth all the trouble. I had only one wet day, and that I spent on the Brenon Glacier; for, in spite of all good resolutions to the contrary, I cannot resist poking into the glaciers whenever I have a chance. You will be interested in my results, which we shall soon, I hope, talk on together at length.
As I suspected, Forbes has made a most egregious blunder. What he speaks of and figures as the "structure" of the Brenon is nothing but a peculiar arrangement of ENTIRELY SUPERFICIAL DIRT BANDS, DEPENDENT ON THE STRUCTURE, BUT NOT IT. The true structure is singularly beautiful and well marked in the Brenon, the blue veins being very close set, and of course wholly invisible from a distance of a hundred yards, which is less than that of the spot whence Forbes' view of the (supposed) structure is taken.
I saw another wonderful thing in La Brenon. About the middle of its length there is a step like this of about 20 or 30 feet in height. In the lower part (B) the structural planes are vertical; in the upper (A) they dip at a considerable angle. I thought I had found a case of unconformability, indicating a slip of one portion of the glacier over another, but when I came to examine the intermediate region (X) carefully, I found the structural planes at every intermediate angle, and consequently a perfect transition from the one to the other.
I returned by Aosta, the great St. Bernard, and the Col de Balme. Old Simond was quite affectionate in his discourse about you, and seemed quite unhappy because you would not borrow his money. He had received your remittance, and asked me to tell you so. He was distressed at having forgotten to get a certificate from you, so I said in mine I was quite sure you were well satisfied with him.
On our journey he displayed his characteristic qualities, Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical inquiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction that distances were very great and that the weather would be bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to part with him.
I came home by way of Neuchatel, paying a visit to the Pierre a Bot, which I have long wished to see. My financial calculations were perfect in theory, but nearly broke down in practice, inasmuch as I was twice obliged to travel first-class when I calculated on second. The result was that my personal expenses between Paris and London amounted to 1.50!! and I arrived at my own house hungry and with a remainder of a few centimes. I should think that your fate must have been similar.
Many thanks for writing to my wife. She sends her kindest remembrances to you.
Ever yours,
T.H.H.
[The year 1857 was the last in which Huxley apparently had time to go so far in journal-writing as to draw up a balance-sheet at the year's end of work done and work undone. Though he finds] "as usual a lamentable difference between agenda and acta; many things proposed to be done not done, and many things not thought of finished," [still there is enough noted to satisfy most energetic people. Mention has already been made of his lectures—sixty-six at Jermyn Street, twelve Fullerian, and as many more to prepare for the next year's course; seven to working men, and one at the Royal Institution, together with the rearrangement of specimens at the Jermyn Street Museum, and the preparation of the Explanatory Catalogue, which this year was published to the extent of the Introduction and the Tertiary collections. To these may be added examinations at the London University, where he had succeeded Dr. Carpenter as examiner in Physiology and Comparative Anatomy in 1856, reviews, translations, a report on Deep Sea Soundings, and ten scientific memoirs.
The most important of the unfinished work consists of the long-delayed "Oceanic Hydrozoa," the "Manual of Comparative Anatomy," and a report on Fisheries. The rest of the unfinished programme shows the usual commixture of technical studies in anatomy and paleontology, with essays on the philosophical and educational bearings of his work. On the one hand are memoirs of Daphnia, Nautilus, and the Herring, the affinities of the Paleozoic Crustacea, the Ascidian Catalogue and Positive Histology; on the other, the Literature of the Drift, a review of the present state of philosophical anatomy, and a scheme for arranging the Explanatory Catalogue to serve as an introductory textbook to the Jermyn Street lectures and the paleontological demonstrations. Here, too, would fall a proposed "Letter on the Study of Comparative Anatomy," to do for those subjects what Henslow had done in his "Letter" for Botany.
In addition to the fact of his being forced to take up Paleontology, it was perhaps the philosophic breadth of view with which he regarded his subject at any time, and the desire of getting to the bottom of each subsidiary problem arising from it, that made him for many years seem constantly to spring aside from his own subject, to fly off at a tangent from the line in which he was assured of unrivalled success did he but devote to it his undivided powers. But he was prepared to endure the charge of desultoriness with equanimity. In part, he was still studying the whole field of biological science before he would claim to be a master in one department; in part, he could not yet tell to what post he might succeed when he left—as he fully expected to leave—the Professorship at Jermyn Street.
One characteristic of his early papers should not pass unnoticed. This was his familiarity with the best that had been written on his subjects abroad as well as in England. Thoroughness in this respect was rendered easier by the fact that he read French and German with almost as much facility as his mother tongue. "It is true, of course, that scientific men read French and German before the time of Huxley; but the deliberate consultation of all the authorities available has been maintained in historical succession since Huxley's earliest papers, and was absent in the papers of his early contemporaries." (P. Chalmers Mitchell in "Natural Science" August 1895.)
About this time his activity in several branches of science began to find recognition from scientific societies at home and abroad. In 1857 he was elected honorary member of the Microscopical Society of Giessen; and in the same year, of a more important body, the Academy of Breslau (Imperialis Academia Caesariana Naturae Curiosum). He writes to Hooker:—]
14 Waverley Place, April 3, 1857.
Having subsided from standing upon my head—which was the immediate causation of your correspondence about the co-extension Imperialis Academia Caesariana Naturae Curiosum (don't I know their thundering long title well!)—I have to say that I was born on the 4th of May of the year 1825, whereby I have now more or less mis-spent thirty-one years and a bittock, nigh on thirty-two.
Furthermore, my locus natalis is Ealing, in the county of Middlesex. Upon my word, it is very obliging of the "curious naturals," and I must say wholly surprising and unexpected.
I shall hold up my head immensely to-morrow when (blessed be the Lord) I give my last Fullerian.
Among other things, I am going to take Cuvier's crack case of the
'Possum of Montmartre as an illustration of MY views.
I wondered what had become of you, but the people have come talking about me this last lecture or two, so I supposed you had erupted to Kew.
My glacier article is out; tell me what you think of it some day.
I wrote a civil note to Forbes yesterday, charging myself with my crime, and I hope that is the end of the business. [Principal James Forbes, with whose theory of glaciers Huxley and Tyndall disagreed.]
My wife is mending slowly, and if she were here would desire to be remembered to you.
[In December 1858 he became a Fellow of the Linnean, and the following month not only Fellow but Secretary of the Geological Society.
In 1858 also he was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, which provides that the committee shall yearly elect a limited number of persons distinguished in art, science, or letters. His proposer was Sir R. Murchison, who wrote:—
Athenaeum, January 26.
My dear Huxley,
I had a success as to you that I never had or heard of before. Nineteen persons voted, and of these eighteen voted for you and no one against you. You, of course, came in at the head of the poll; no other having, i.e. Cobden, more than eleven.
Yours well satisfied,
Rod. I. Murchison.
[From this time forth he corresponded with many foreign men of science; in these years particularly with Victor Carus, Lacaze Duthiers, Kolliker, and de Quatrefages, in reference to their common interest in the study of the invertebrates.
At home, the year 1857 opened very brightly for Huxley with the birth of his first child, a son, on the eve of the New Year. A Christmas child, the boy was named Noel, and lived four happy years to be the very sunshine of home, the object of passionate devotion, whose sudden loss struck deeper and more ineffaceably than any other blow that befell Huxley during all his life.
As he sat alone that December night, in the little room that was his study in the house in Waverley Place, waiting for the event that was to bring him so much happiness and so much sorrow, he made a last entry in his journal, full of hope and resolution. In the blank space below follows a note of four years later, when "the ground seemed cut from under his feet," yet written with restraint and without bitterness.]
December 31, 1856.
…1856-7-8 must still be "Lehrjahre" to complete training in principles of Histology, Morphology, Physiology, Zoology, and Geology by Monographic Work in each department. 1860 will then see me well grounded and ready for any special pursuits in either of these branches.
It is impossible to map out beforehand how this must be done. I must seize opportunities as they come, at the risk of the reputation of desultoriness.
In 1860 I may fairly look forward to fifteen or twenty years "Meisterjahre," and with the comprehensive views my training will have given me, I think it will be possible in that time to give a new and healthier direction to all Biological Science.
To smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies, and of toleration for everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognised as mine or not, so long as it is done:—are these my aims? 1860 will show.
Willst du dir ein hubsch Leben zimmern,
Musst dich ans Vergangene nicht bekummern;
Und ware dir auch was Verloren,
Musst immer thun wie neugeboren.
Was jeder Tag will, sollst du fragen;
Was jeder Tag will, wird er sagen.
Musst dich an eigenem Thun ergotzen;
Was andere thun, das wirst du schatzen.
Besonders keinen Menschen hassen
Und das Ubrige Gott uberlassen.
[Wilt shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances to the past.
And what if something still be lost?
Act as new-born in all thou dost.
What each day wills, that shalt thou ask;
Each day will tell its proper task;
What others do, that shalt thou prize,
In thine own work thy guerdon lies.
This above all: hate none.
The rest—Leave it to God.
He knoweth best.]
Half-past ten at night.
Waiting for my child. I seem to fancy it the pledge that all these things shall be.
Born five minutes before twelve. Thank God. New Year's Day, 1857.
September 20, 1860.
And the same child, our Noel, our first-born, after being for nearly four years our delight and our joy, was carried off by scarlet fever in forty-eight hours. This day week he and I had a great romp together. On Friday his restless head, with its bright blue eyes and tangled golden hair, tossed all day upon his pillow. On Saturday night the fifteenth, I carried him here into my study, and laid his cold still body here where I write. Here too on Sunday night came his mother and I to that holy leave-taking.
My boy is gone, but in a higher and better sense than was in my mind when I wrote four years ago what stands above—I feel that my fancy has been fulfilled. I say heartily and without bitterness—Amen, so let it be.
CHAPTER 1.12.
1859-1860.
[The programme laid down in 1857 was steadily carried out through a
great part of 1859. Huxley published nine monographs, chiefly on fossil
Reptilia, in the proceedings of the Geological Society and of the
Geological Survey, one on the armour of crocodiles at the Linnean, and
"Observations on the Development of some Parts of the Skeleton of
Fishes," in the "Journal of Microscopical Science."
Among the former was a paper on Stagonolepis, a creature from the Elgin beds, which had previously been ranked among the fishes. From some new remains, which he worked out of the stone with his own hands, Huxley made out that this was a reptile closely allied to the Crocodiles; and from this and the affinities of another fossil, Hyperodapedon, from neighbouring beds, determined the geological age to which the Elgin beds belonged. A good deal turned upon the nature of the scales from the back and belly of this animal, and a careful comparison with the scales of modern crocodiles—a subject till then little investigated—led to the paper at the Linnean already mentioned.
The paper on fish development was mainly based upon dissections of the young of the stickleback. Fishes had been divided into two classes according as their tails are developed evenly on either side of the line of the spine, which was supposed to continue straight through the centre of the tail, or lopsided, with one tail fin larger than the other. This investigation showed that the apparently even development was only an extreme case of lopsidedness, the continuation of the "chorda," which gives rise to the spine, being at the top of the upper fin, and both fins being developed on the same side of it. Lopsidedness as such, therefore, was not to be regarded as an embryological character in ancient fishes; what might be regarded as such was the absence of a bony sheath to the end of the "chorda" found in the more developed fishes. Further traces of this bony structure were shown to exist, among other piscine resemblances, in the Amphibia. Finally the embryological facts now observed in the development of the bones of the skull were of great importance,] "as they enable us to understand, on the one hand, the different modifications of the palato-suspensorial apparatus in fishes, and on the other hand the relations of the components of this apparatus to the corresponding parts in other Vertebrata," [fishes, reptiles, and mammals presenting a well-marked series of gradations in respect to this point.
This part of the paper had grown out of the investigations begun for the essay on the Vertebrate Skull, just as that on Jacare and Caiman from inquiry into the scales of Stagonolepis.
Thus he was still able to devote most of his time to original research. But though in his letter of March 27, 1855, below, he says,] "I never write for the Reviews now, as original work is much more to my taste," [it appears from jottings in his 1859 notebook, such as "Whewell's 'History of Scientific Ideas,' as a Peg on which to hang Cuvier article," [that he again found it necessary to supplement his income by writing. He was still examiner at London University, and delivered six lectures on Animal Motion at the London Institution and another at Warwick. This lecture he had offered to give at the Warwick Museum as some recognition of the willing help he had received from the assistants when he came down to examine certain fossils there. On the way he visited Rolleston at Oxford. The knowledge of Oxford life gained from this and a later visit led him to write:—]
The more I see of the place the more glad I am that I elected to stay in London. I see much to admire and like; but I am more and more convinced that it would not suit me as a residence.
[Two more important points remain to be mentioned among the occupations of the year. In January Huxley was elected Secretary of the Geological Society, and with this office began a form of administrative work in the scientific world which ceased only with his resignation of the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1885.
Part of the summer Huxley spent in the North. On August 3 he went to Lamlash Bay in Arran. Here Dr. Carpenter had, in 1855, discovered a convenient cottage on Holy Island—the only one, indeed, on the island—well suited for naturalists; the bay was calm and suitable both for the dredge and for keeping up a vivarium. He proposed that either the Survey should rent the whole island at a cost of some 50 pounds sterling, or, failing this, that he would take the cottage himself, if Huxley would join him for two or three seasons and share the expense. Huxley laid the plan before Sir R. Murchison, the head of the Survey, who consented to try the plan for a course of years, during three months in each year. "But," [he added,] "keep it experimental; for there are no USEFUL fisheries such as delight Lord Stanley." [Here, then, with an ascent of Goatfell for variety on the 21st, a month was passed in trawling, and experiments on the spawning of the herring appear to have been continued for him during the winter in Bute.
On the 29th Huxley left Lamlash for a trip through central and southern Scotland, continuing his geological work for the Survey; and wound up by attending the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, leaving his wife and the three children at Aberdour, on the Fifeshire coast.
From Aberdeen, where Prince Albert was President of the Association,
Huxley writes on September 15:—]
Owen's brief address on giving up the presidential chair was exceedingly good…I shall be worked like a horse here. There are all sorts of new materials from Elgin, besides other things, and I daresay I shall have to speak frequently. In point of attendance and money this is the best meeting the Association ever had. In point of science, we shall see…Tyndall has accepted the Physical chair with us, at which I am greatly delighted.
[In this connection the following letter to Tyndall is interesting:—]
Aberdour, Fife, N. B., September 5, 1859.
My dear Tyndall,
I met Faraday on Loch Lomond yesterday, and learned from him that you had returned, whereby you are a great sinner for not having written to me. Faraday told me you were all sound, wind and limb, and had carried out your object, which was good to hear.
Have you had any letter from Sir Roderick? If not, pray call in Jermyn Street and see Reeks as soon as possible. [Mr. Trenham Reeks, who died in 1879, was Registrar of the School of Mines, and Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology.]
The thing I have been hoping for for years past has come about,—Stokes having resigned the Physical Chair in our place, in consequence of his appointment to the Cambridge University Commission. This unfortunately occurred only after our last meeting for the session, and after I had left town, but Reeks wrote to me about it at once. I replied as soon as I received his letter, and told him that I would take upon myself the responsibility of saying that you would accept the chair if it were offered you. I thought I was justified in this by various conversations we have had; and, at any rate, I felt sure that it was better that I should get into a mess than that you should lose the chance.
I know that Sir Roderick has written to you, but I imagine the letter has gone to Chamounix, so pray put yourself into communication with Reeks at once.
You know very well that the having you with us at Jermyn Street is a project that has long been dear to my heart, partly on your own account, but largely for the interest of the school. I earnestly hope that there is no impediment in the way of your coming to us. How I am minded towards you, you ought to know by this time; but I can assure you that all the rest of us will receive you with open arms. Of that I am quite sure.
Let me have a line to know your determination. I am on tenterhooks till the thing is settled.
Can't you come up this way as you go to Aberdeen?
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
P.S.—I thought I might mention the Jermyn Street matter to Faraday privately, and did so. He seemed pleased that the offer had been made.
[The acceptance of the lectureship at the School of Mines brought Tyndall into the closest contact with Huxley for the next nine years, until he resigned his lectureship in 1868 on succeeding Faraday as superintendent of the Royal Institution.