Chapter 2.17.

1885.

We got here this afternoon after a rather shady passage from Boulogne, with a strong north wind in our teeth all the way, and rain galore. For all that, it is the pleasantest journey I have made for a long time--so pleasant to see one's own dear native mud again. There is no foreign mud to come near it.

As for myself I have nothing very satisfactory to say. By the oddest chance we met Andrew Clark in the boat, and he says I am a very bad colour--which I take it is the outward and visible sign of the inward and carnal state. I may sum that up by saying that there is nothing the matter but weakness and indisposition to do anything, together with a perfect genius for making mountains out of molehills.

After two or three fine days at Venice, we have had nothing but wet or cold--or hot and cold at the same time, as in that prodigious imposture the Riviera. Of course it was the same story everywhere, "perfectly unexampled season."

Moral.--If you are perfectly well and strong, brave Italy--but in search of health stop at home.

It has been raining cats and dogs, and Folkestone is what some people would call dreary. I could go and roll in the mud with satisfaction that it is English mud.

It will be jolly to see you again. Wife unites in love.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

It is very jolly to be home, and I feel better already. Clark has just been here overhauling me, and feels very confident that he shall screw me up.

I have renounced dining out and smoking (!!!) by way of preliminaries. God only knows whether I shall be permitted more than the smell of a mutton chop for dinner. But I have great faith in Andrew, who set me straight before when other "physicians' aid was vain."

He writes on May 27:--]

I am convinced that what with my perennial weariness and my deafness I ought to go, whatever my kind friends may say.

I am sorry to say that the perkiness of last week was only a spurt [I.e. at the unveiling of the Darwin statue at South Kensington.], and I have been in a disgusting state of blue devils lately. Can't mark out what it is, for I really have nothing the matter, except a strong tendency to put the most evil construction upon everything.

I am fairly dreading to-morrow [i.e. receiving the D.C.L. degree at Oxford] but why I don't know--probably an attack of modesty come on late in life and consequently severe.

Very likely it will do me good and make me "fit" for Thursday [(i.e. Council and ordinary meetings of Royal Society).

And a month later:--]

I have been idling in the country for two or three days--but like the woman with the issue, "I am not better but rather worse"--blue devils and funk--funk and blue devils. Liver, I expect. [(An ailment of which he says to Professor Marsh,] "I rather wish I had some respectable disease--it would be livelier.")

And again:--]

Everybody tells me I look so much better, that I am really ashamed to go growling about, and confess that I am continually in a blue funk and hate the thought of any work--especially of scientific or anything requiring prolonged attention.

4 Marlborough Place, July 27, 1885.

My dear Flower,

I am particularly glad to hear that things went right on Saturday, as my conscience rather pricked me for my desertion of the meeting. [British Museum Trustees, July 25.] But it was the only chance we had of seeing our young married couple before the vacation--and you will rapidly arrive at a comprehension of the cogency of THAT argument now.

I will think well of your kind words about the Presidency. If I could only get rid of my eternal hypochondria the work of the Royal Society would seem little enough. At present, I am afraid of everything that involves responsibility to a degree that is simply ridiculous. I only wish I could shirk the inquiries I am going off to hold in Devonshire!

P.R.S. in a continual blue funk is not likely to be either dignified or useful; and unless I am in a better frame of mind in October I am afraid I shall have to go.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I am decidedly picking up. The air here is wonderful, and as we can set good cookery against hard lying (I don't mean in the Munchausen line) the consequent appetite becomes a mild source of gratification. Also, I have not met with more than two people who knew me, and that in my present state is a negative gratification of the highest order.

The only thing I am inclined to do is to write a book on Miracles. I think it might do good and unload my biliary system.

I am anything but clear as to the course I had best take myself. While undoubtedly much better in general health, I am in a curious state of discouragement, and I should like nothing better than to remain buried here (Bournemouth) or anywhere else, out of the way of trouble and responsibility. It distresses me to think that I shall have to say something definite about the Presidency at the meeting of the Council in October.

I think the lowest point of my curve of ups and downs is gradually rising--but I have by no means reached the point when I can cheerfully face anything. I got over the Board of Visitors (two hours and a half) better than I expected, but my deafness was a horrid nuisance.

I believe the strings of the old fiddle will tighten up a good deal, if I abstain from attempting to play upon the instrument at present--but that a few jigs now will probably ruin that chance.

But I will say my final word at our meeting next week. I would rather step down from the chair than dribble out of it. Even the devil is in the habit of departing with a "melodious twang," and I like the precedent.

I am happy to say [he continued] that I have good reason to believe that, with prolonged rest--by which I do not mean idleness, but release from distraction and complete freedom from those lethal agencies which are commonly known as the pleasures of society--I may yet regain so much strength as is compatible with advancing years. But in order to do so, I must, for a long time yet, be content to lead a more or less anchorite life. Now it is not fitting that your President should be a hermit, and it becomes me, who have received so much kindness and consideration from the Society, to be particularly careful that no sense of personal gratification should delude me into holding the office of its representative one moment after reason and conscience have pointed out my incapacity to discharge the serious duties which devolve upon the President, with some approach to efficiency.

I beg leave, therefore, with much gratitude for the crowning honour of my life which you have conferred upon me, to be permitted to vacate the chair of the Society as soon as the business of this meeting is at an end.

On June 20, he writes to Mr. Mundella, Vice-President of the Council:--]

My dear Mundella,

Accept my warmest thanks for your good wishes, and for all the trouble you have taken on my behalf. I am quite ashamed to have been the occasion of so much negotiation.

Until I see the Treasury letter, I am unable to judge what the 1200 pounds may really mean [I.e. Whether he was to draw his salary of 200 pounds as Dean or not.], but whatever the result, I shall never forget the kindness with which my chiefs have fought my battle.

I am, yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The blessed Treasury can't make up their minds whether I am to be asked to stay on as Dean or not, and till they do, I can't shake off any of my fetters.

Nevertheless [he added], it will be a sad day for me when I find myself no longer entitled to take part in the work of the schools in which you and I have so long been interested.

"I retain," [he writes,] "general superintendence as part of the great unpaid."

It is a comfort [he writes to his son] to have got the thing settled. My great desire at present is to be idle, and I am now idle with a good conscience.

4 Marlborough Place, November 24, 1885.

My dear Lord Iddesleigh,

Your letters of the 20th November reached me only last night, and I hasten to thank you for both of them. I am particularly obliged for your kind reception of what I ventured to say about the deserts of my old friend Sir Joseph Hooker.

With respect to your lordship's offer to submit my name to Her Majesty for a Civil List Pension, I can but accept a proposal which is in itself an honour, and which is rendered extremely gratifying to me by the great kindness of the expressions in which you have been pleased to embody it.

I am happy to say that I am getting steadily better at last, and under the regime of "peace with honour" that now seems to have fallen to my lot, I may fairly hope yet to do a good stroke of work or two.

I remain, my dear Lord Iddesleigh, faithfully yours,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, November 24, 1885.

My dear Donnelly,

I believe you have been at work again!

Lord Iddesleigh has written to me to ask if I will be recommended for a Civil List Pension of 300 pounds a year, a very pretty letter, not at all like the Treasury masterpiece you admired so much.

Didn't see why I should not accept, and have accepted accordingly. When the announcement comes out the Liberals will say the Tory Government have paid me for attacking the G.O.M.! to a dead certainty.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

...Lord Iddesleigh's letter offering to submit my name for an honorary pension was a complete surprise.

My chiefs in the late Government wished to retire me on full pay, but the Treasury did not see their way to it, and cut off 300 pounds a year. Naturally I am not sorry to have the loss made good, but the way the thing was done is perhaps the pleasantest part of it.

Reverend Sir,

So the "day of strangulation" has arrived at last, and with it the humble petition of your friends that you may be induced to defer the "happy despatch" for, say at least ten years, when the subject may again come up for consideration. For your petitioners are respectfully inclined to think that if your sixtyship may be induced so far to become an apostle as to give up the fishery business, and be led to leave the Black Board at South Kensington to others, the t'other side sixty years, may after all be the best years of your life. In any case they would desire to bring under your notice the fact that THEY FEEL THEY WANT YOU AS MUCH AS EVER THEY DID.

Ever thine,

M.F.

Reference has been made to the fact that the honorary degree of D.C.L. was conferred this May upon Huxley by the University of Oxford. The Universities of the sister kingdoms had been the first thus to recognise his work; and after Aberdeen and Dublin, Cambridge, where natural science had earlier established a firm foothold, showed the way to Oxford. Indeed, it was not until his regular scientific career was at an end, that the University of Oxford opened its portals to him. So, as he wrote to Professor Bartholomew Price on May 20, in answer to the invitation,] "It will be a sort of apotheosis coincident with my official death, which is imminent. In fact, I am dead already, only the Treasury Charon has not yet settled the conditions upon which I am to be ferried over to the other side."

South Kensington, April 25, 1885.

My dear Hooker,

I don't see very well how I could have been more cautious than I have been. I knew nothing of Clark's candidature until I saw his name in the list; and if he or his proposer had consulted me, I should have advised delay, because I knew very well there would be a great push made for -- this year.

Being there, however, it seemed to me only just to say that which is certainly true, namely, that Clark has just the same claim as half a dozen doctors who have been admitted without question, e.g. Gull, Jenner, Risdon Bennett, on the sole ground of standing in the profession. And I think that so long as that claim is admitted, it will be unjust not to admit Clark.

So I said what you heard; but I was so careful not to press unduly upon the Council, that I warned them of the possible prejudice arising from my own personal obligations to Clark's skill, and I went so far as not to put his name in the FIRST list myself, a step which I now regret.

If this is not caution enough, I should like to know what is? As Clive said when he came back from India, "By God, sir, I am astonished at my own moderation!"

If it is not right to make a man a fellow because he holds a first-class place as a practitioner of medicine as the Royal Society has done since I have known it, let us abolish the practice. But then let us also in justice refuse to recognise the half-and-half claims, those of the people who are third-rate as practitioners, and hang on to the skirts of science without doing anything in it.

Several of your and my younger scientific friends are bent on bringing in their chum --, and Clark's candidature is very inconvenient to them. Hence I suspect some of the "outspoken aversion" and criticism of Clark's claims you have heard.

I am quite willing to sacrifice my friend for a principle, but not for somebody else's friend, and I mean to vote for Clark; though I am not going to try to force my notion down any one else's throat.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Obedience be hanged. It would not lie in my mouth, as the lawyers say, to object to anybody's getting his own way if he can.

If Clark had not been a personal friend of mine I should not have hesitated a moment about deciding in his favour. Under the circumstances it was quite clear what I should do if I were forced to decide, and I thought it would have been kindly and courteous to the President if he had been let off the necessity of making a decision which was obviously disagreeable to him.

If, on the other hand, it was wished to fix the responsibility of what happened on him, I am glad that he had the opportunity of accepting it. I never was more clear as to what was the right thing to do.

Bournemouth, September 17, 1885.

I am not at all sure that I can give my blessing to the "Tabagie." When I heard of it I had great doubts as to its being a wise move. It is not the question of "smoke" so much, as the principle of having meetings in the Society's rooms, which are not practically (whatever they may be theoretically), open to all the fellows, and which will certainly be regarded as the quasi-private parties of one of the officers. You will have all sorts of jealousies roused, and talk of a clique, etc.

When I was Secretary the one thing I was most careful to avoid was the appearance of desiring to exert any special influence. But there was a jealousy of the x Club, and only the other day, to my great amusement, I was talking to an influential member of the Royal Society Club about the possibility of fusing it with the Phil. Club, and he said, forgetting I was a member of the latter: "Oh! we don't want any of those wire-pullers!" Poor dear innocent dull-as-ditchwater Phil. Club!

We do not make this request [i.e. to accept the statue] for the mere sake of perpetuating a memory; for so long as men occupy themselves with the pursuit of truth, the name of Darwin runs no more risk of oblivion than does that of Copernicus, or that of Harvey.

Nor, most assuredly, do we ask you to preserve the statue in its cynosural position in this entrance hall of our National Museum of Natural History as evidence that Mr. Darwin's views have received your official sanction; for science does not recognise such sanctions, and commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

No, we beg you to cherish this memorial as a symbol by which, as generation after generation of students enter yonder door, they shall be reminded of the ideal according to which they must shape their lives, if they would turn to the best account of the opportunities offered by the great institution under your charge.

November 12, 1885.

My dear Mr. Mivart,

I return your proof with many thanks for your courtesy in sending it. I fully appreciate the good feeling shown in what you have written, but as you ask my opinion, I had better say frankly that my experience of Darwin is widely different from yours as expressed in the passages marked with pencil. I have often remarked that I never knew any one of his intellectual rank who showed himself so tolerant to opponents, great and small, as Darwin did. Sensitive he was in the sense of being too ready to be depressed by adverse comment, but I never knew any one less easily hurt by fair criticism, or who less needed to be soothed by those who opposed him with good reason.

I am sure I tried his patience often enough, without ever eliciting more than a "Well there's a good deal in what you say; but--" and then followed something which nine times out of ten showed he had gone deeper into the business than I had.

I cannot agree with you, again, that the acceptance of Darwin's views was in any way influenced by the strong affection entertained for him by many of his friends. What that affection really did was to lead those of his friends who had seen good reason for his views to take much more trouble in his defence and support, and to strike out much harder at his adversary than they would otherwise have done. This is pardonable if not justifiable--that which you suggest would to my mind be neither.

I am so ignorant of what has been going on during the last twelvemonth, that I know nothing of your controversy with Romanes. If he is going to show the evolution of intellect from sense, he is the man for whom I have been waiting, as Kant says.

In your paper about scientific freedom, which I read some time ago with much interest, you alluded to a book or article by Father Roberts on the Galileo business. Will you kindly send me a postcard to say where and when it was published?

I looked into the matter when I was in Italy, and I arrived at the conclusion that the Pope and the College of Cardinals had rather the best of it. It would complete the paradox if Father Roberts should help me to see the error of my ways.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The mean line of health was gradually rising; it was a great relief to be free at length from administrative distractions, while the retiring pensions removed the necessity of daily toil. By nature he was like the friend whom he described as] "the man to become hipped to death without incessant activity of some sort or other. I am sure that the habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as bad in its way as dram-drinking. In time you cannot be comfortable without the stimulus." [But the variety of interests which filled his mind prevented him from feeling the void of inaction after a busy life. And just as he was at the turning-point in health, he received a fillip which started him again into vigorous activity--the mental tonic bracing up his body and clearing away the depression and languor which had so long beset him.

The lively fillip came in the shape of an article in the November "Nineteenth Century," by Mr. Gladstone, in which he attacked the position taken up by Dr. Reville in his "Prolegomena to the History of Religions," and in particular, attempted to show that the order of creation given in Genesis 1, is supported by the evidence of science. This article, Huxley used humorously to say, so stirred his bile as to set his liver right at once; and though he denied the soft impeachment that the ensuing fight was what had set him up, the marvellous curative effects of a Gladstonian dose, a remedy unknown to the pharmacopoeia, became a household word among family and friends.

His own reply, "The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature," appeared in the December number of the "Nineteenth Century" ("Collected Essays" 4 page 139). In January 1886 Mr. Gladstone responded with his "Proem to Genesis," which was met in February by "Mr. Gladstone and Genesis" ("Collected Essays" 4 page 164). Not only did he show that science offers no support to the "fourfold" or the "fivefold" or any other order obtained from Genesis by Mr. Gladstone, but in a note appended to his second article he gives what he takes to be the proper sense of the "Mosaic" narrative of the Creation (4 page 195), not allowing the succession of phenomena to represent an evolutionary notion, as suggested, of a progress from lower to higher in the scale of being, a notion assuredly not in the mind of the writer, but deducing this order from such ideas as, putting aside our present knowledge of nature, we may reasonably believe him to have held.

A vast subsidiary controversy sprang up in the "Times" on Biblical exegetics; where these touched him at all, as, for instance, when it was put to him whether the difference between the "Rehmes" of Genesis and "Sheh-retz" of Leviticus, both translated "creeping things," did not invalidate his argument as to the identity of such "creeping things," he had examined the point already, and surprised his interrogator, who appeared to have raised a very pretty dilemma, by promptly referring him to a well-known Hebrew commentator.

Several letters refer to this passage of arms. On December 4, he writes to Mr. Herbert Spencer:--]

Do read my polishing off of the G.O.M. I am proud of it as a work of art, and as evidence that the volcano is not yet exhausted.

To Lord Farrer.

4 Marlborough Place, December 6, 1885.

My dear Farrer,

From a scientific point of view Gladstone's article was undoubtedly not worth powder and shot. But, on personal grounds, the perusal of it sent me blaspheming about the house with the first healthy expression of wrath known for a couple of years--to my wife's great alarm--and I should have "busted up" if I had not given vent to my indignation; and secondly, all orthodoxy was gloating over the slap in the face which the G.O.M. had administered to science in the person of Reville.

The ignorance of the so-called educated classes in this country is stupendous, and in the hands of people like Gladstone it is a political force. Since I became an official of the Royal Society, good taste seemed to me to dictate silence about matters on which there is "great division among us." But now I have recovered my freedom, and I am greatly minded to begin stirring the fire afresh.

Within the last month I have picked up wonderfully. If dear old Darwin were alive he would say it is because I have had a fight, but in truth the fight is consequence and not cause. I am infinitely relieved by getting rid of the eternal strain of the past thirty years, and hope to get some good work done yet before I die, so make ready for the part of the judicious bottle-holder which I have always found you.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 13, 1886.

My dear Farrer,

My contribution to the next round was finished and sent to Knowles a week ago. I confess it to have been a work of supererogation; but the extreme shiftiness of my antagonist provoked me, and I was tempted to pin him and dissect him as an anatomico-psychological exercise. May it be accounted unto me for righteousness, though I laughed so much over the operation that I deserve no credit.

I think your notion is a very good one, and I am not sure that I shall not try to carry it out some day. In the meanwhile, however, I am bent upon an enterprise which I think still more important.

After I have done with the reconcilers, I will see whether theology cannot be told her place rather more plainly than she has yet been dealt with.

However, this between ourselves, I am seriously anxious to use what little stuff remains to me well, and I am not sure that I can do better service anywhere than in this line, though I don't mean to have any more controversy if I can help it.

(Don't laugh and repeat Darwin's wickedness.)

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 15, 1886.

My dear Knowles,

I will be with you at 1.30. I spent three mortal hours this morning taming my wild cat. He is now castrated; his teeth are filed, his claws are cut, he is taught to swear like a "mieu"; and to spit like a cough; and when he is turned out of the bag you won't know him from a tame rabbit.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 20, 1886.

My dear Knowles,

Here is the debonnaire animal finally titivated, and I quite agree, much improved, though I mourn the loss of some of the spice. But it is an awful smash as it stands--worse than the first, I think.

I shall send you the manuscript of the "Evolution of Theology" to-day or to-morrow. It will not do to divide it, as I want the reader to have an apercu of the whole process from Samuel of Israel to Sammy of Oxford.

I am afraid it will make thirty or thirty-five pages, but it is really very interesting, though I say it as shouldn't.

Please have it set up in slip, though, as it is written after the manner of a judge's charge, the corrections will not be so extensive, nor the strength of language so well calculated to make a judicious editor's hair stand on end, as was the case with the enclosed (in its unregenerate state).

Ever yours very truly,

T.H. Huxley.

I am glad to see that you are as active-minded as ever. I have no doubt there is a great deal in what you say about the origin of the myths in Genesis. But my sole point is to get the people who persist in regarding them as statements of fact to understand that they are fools.

The process is laborious, and not yet very fruitful of the desired conviction.

To Sir Joseph Prestwich.

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., January 16, 1886.

My dear Prestwich,

Accept my best thanks for the volume of your Geology, which has just reached me.

I envy the vigour which has led you to tackle such a task, and I have no doubt that when I turn to your book for information I shall find reason for more envy in the thoroughness with which the task is done.

I see Mr. Gladstone has been trying to wrest your scripture to his own purposes, but it is no good. Neither the fourfold nor the fivefold nor the sixfold order will wash.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

To Professor Poulton [Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford.].

4 Marlborough Place, February 19, 1886.

Dear Mr. Poulton,

I return herewith the number of the "Expositor" with many thanks. Canon Driver's article contains as clear and candid a statement as I could wish of the position of the Pentateuchal cosmogony from his point of view. If he more thoroughly understood the actual nature of paleontological succession--I mean the species by species replacement of old forms by new,--and if he more fully appreciated the great gulf fixed between the ideas of "creation" and of "evolution," I think he would see (1) that the Pentateuch and science are more hopelessly at variance than even he imagines, and (2) that the Pentateuchal cosmogony does not come so near the facts of the case as some other ancient cosmogonies, notably those of the old Greek philosophers.

Practically, Canon Driver, as a theologian and Hebrew scholar, gives up the physical truth of the Pentateuchal cosmogony altogether. All the more wonderful to me, therefore, is the way in which he holds on to it as embodying theological truth. So far as this question is concerned, on all points which can be tested, the Pentateuchal writer states that which is not true. What, therefore, is his authority on the matter--creation by a Deity--which cannot be tested? What sort of "inspiration" is that which leads to the promulgation of a fable as divine truth, which forces those who believe in that inspiration to hold on, like grim death, to the literal truth of the fable, which demoralises them in seeking for all sorts of sophistical shifts to bolster up the fable, and which finally is discredited and repudiated when the fable is finally proved to be a fable? If Satan had wished to devise the best means of discrediting "Revelation" he could not have done better.

Have you not forgotten to mention the leg of Archaeopteryx as a characteristically bird-like structure? It is so, and it is to be recollected that at present we know nothing of the greater part of the skeletons of the older Mesozoic mammals--only teeth and jaws. What the shoulder-girdle of Stereognathus might be like is uncertain.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

To the Master of Balliol.

4 Marlborough Place, December 21, 1885.

My dear Master [This is from the first draft of the letter. Huxley's letters to Jowett were destroyed by Jowett's orders, together with the rest of his correspondence.],

I have been talking to some of my friends about stimulating the Royal Society to address the Universities on the subject of giving greater weight to scientific acquirements, and I find that there is a better prospect than I had hoped for of getting President and Council to move. But I am not quite sure about the course which it will be wisest for us to adopt, and I beg a little counsel on that matter.

I presume that we had better state our wishes in the form of a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, and that we may prudently ask for the substitution of modern languages (especially German) and elementary science for some of the subjects at present required in the literary part of the examinations of the scientific and medical faculties. If we could gain this much it would be a great step, not only in itself, but in its reaction on the schools.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, December 26, 1885.

My dear Foster,

Please read the enclosed letter from Jowett (confidentially). I had suggested the possibility of diminishing the Greek and Latin for the science and medical people, but that, you see, he won't have. But he is prepared to load the classical people with science by way of making things fair.

It may be worth our while to go in for this, and trust to time for the other. What say you?

Merry Christmas to you. The G.O.M. is going to reply, so I am likely to have a happy New Year! I expect some fun, and I mean to make it an occasion for some good earnest.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

The "gaps" are terrible accompaniments of advancing life. It is only with age that one realises the full truth of Goethe's quatrain:--

Eine Bruche ist ein jeder Tag, etc.

The x Club is going to smithereens, as if a charge of dynamite had been exploded in the midst of it. Busk is slowly fading away. Tyndall is, I fear, in a bad way, and I am very anxious about Hooker:--

A Happy New Year! and many of them, and may you more and more demonstrate the folly of strangling men at sixty.