CHAPTER 1.21.
1867.
[It has already been noted that Huxley's ethnological work continued this year with a second series of lectures at the Royal Institution, while he enlarged his paper on "Two widely contrasted forms of Human Crania," and published it in the "Journal of Anatomy." One paleontological memoir of his appeared this year on Acanthopholis, a fossil from the chalk marl, an additional piece of work for which he excuses himself to Sir Charles Lyell (January 4, 1867):—]
The new reptile advertised in "Geol. Mag." has turned up in the way of business, and I could not help giving a notice of it, or I should not have undertaken anything fresh just now.
The Spitzbergen things are very different, and I have taken sundry looks at them and put them by again to let my thoughts ripen.
They are Ichthyosaurian, and I am not sure they do not belong to two species. But it is an awful business to compare all the Ichthyosaurians. I THINK that one form is new. Please to tell Nordenskiold this much.
[However, his chief interest was in the anatomy of birds, at which he had been working for some time, and especially the development of certain of the cranial bones as a basis of classification. On April 11, expanding one of his Hunterian Lectures, he read a paper on this subject at the Zoological Society, afterwards published in their "Proceedings" for 1867.
As he had found the works of Professor Cornay of help in the preparation of this paper, he was careful to send him a copy with an acknowledgment of his indebtedness, eliciting the reply, "c'est si beau de trouver chez l'homme la science unie a la justice."
He followed this up with another paper on "The Classification and Distribution of the Alectoromorphae and Heteromorphae" in 1868, and to the work upon this the following letter to his ally, W.K. Parker, refers:—]
Royal Geological Survey of Great Britain, Jermyn Street, July 17, 1867.
My dear Parker,
Nothing short of the direct temptation of the evil one could lead you to entertain so monstrous a doctrine, as that you propound about Cariamidae.
I recommend fasting for three days and the application of a scourge thrice in the twenty-four hours! Do this, and about the fourth day you will perceive that the cranial differences alone are as great as those between Cathartes and Serpentarius.
If you want to hear something new and true it is this:—
1. That Memora is more unlike all the other Passerines (i.e. Coracomorphae) than they are unlike one another, and that it will have to stand in a group by itself.
It is as much like a wren as you are—less so, in fact, if you go on maintaining that preposterous fiction about Serpentarius.
2. Wood-peckers are more like crows than they are like cuckoos.
Aegithognathae.
Coracomorphae.
Desmognathae.
*Cypselomorphae.—Coccygomorphae.—*Gecinomorphae.
[*Shown on a horizontal line between Coracomorphae and Desmognathae.]
3. Sundevell is the sharpest fellow who has written on the classification of birds.
4. Nitzsch and W.K. Parker [Except in the case of Serpentarius.] are the sharpest fellows who have written on their osteology.
5. Though I do not see how it follows naturally on the above, still, where can I see a good skeleton of Glareola?
None in college, B.M.S. badly prepared.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[An incident which diversified one of the Gilchrist lectures to working men is thus recorded by the "Times" of January 23, 1867:—]
A GOOD EXAMPLE.
Last night, at the termination of a lecture on ethnology, delivered by Professor Huxley to an audience which filled the theatre of the London Mechanics' Institute in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, the lecturer said that he had received a letter as he entered the building which he would not take the responsibility of declining to read, although it had no reference to the subject under consideration. He then read the letter, which was simply signed "A Regular Attendant at Your Lectures," and which in a few words drew attention to the appalling distress existing among the population out of work at the East End, and suggested that all those present at the lecture that night should be allowed the opportunity of contributing one or two pennies each towards a fund for their relief, and that the professor should become the treasurer for the evening. This suggestion was received by the audience with marks of approval. The professor said he would not put pressure on anyone; he would simply place his own subscription in one of the skulls on the table. This he did, and all the audience coming on the platform, threw in money in copper and silver until the novel cash box was filled with coin which amounted to a large sum. A gentleman present expressed a hope that the example set by that audience might be followed with good results wherever large bodies assembled either for educational or recreative purposes.
[At the end of April this year my father spent a week in Brittany with
Dr. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock, rambling about the neighbourhood of
Rennes and Vannes, and combining the examination of prehistoric remains
with the refreshment of holiday making.
Few letters of this period exist. The x Club was doing its work. Most of those to whom he would naturally have written he met constantly. Two letters to Professor Haeckel give pieces of his experience. One suggests the limits of aggressive polemics, as to which I remember his once saying that he himself had only twice been the aggressor in controversy, without waiting to be personally attacked; once where he found his opponent was engaged in a flanking movement; the other when a man of great public reputation had come forward to champion an untenable position of the older orthodoxy, and a blow dealt to his pretensions to historical and scientific accuracy would not only bring the question home to many who neglected it in an impersonal form, but would also react upon the value of the historical arguments with which he sought to stir public opinion in other spheres. The other letter touches on the influence, at once calming and invigorating, as he had known it to the full for the last twelve years, which a wife can bring in the midst of outward struggles to the inner life of the home.]
Jermyn Street, London, May 20, 1867.
My dear Haeckel,
Your letter, though dated the 12th, has but just reached me. I mention this lest you should think me remiss, my sin in not writing to you already being sufficiently great. But your book did not reach me until November, and I have been hard at work lecturing, with scarcely an intermission ever since.
Now I need hardly say that the "Morphologie" is not exactly a novel to be taken up and read in the intervals of business. On the contrary, though profoundly interesting, it is an uncommonly hard book, and one wants to read every sentence of it over.
I went through it within a fortnight of its coming into my hands, so as to get at your general drift and purpose, but up to this time I have not been able to read it as I feel I ought to read it before venturing upon criticism. You cannot imagine how my time is frittered away in these accursed lectures and examinations.
There can be but one opinion, however, as to the knowledge and intellectual grasp displayed in the book; and, to me, the attempt to systematise biology as a whole is especially interesting and valuable.
I shall go over this part of your work with great care by and by, but I am afraid you must expect that the number of biologists who will do so, will remain exceedingly small. Our comrades are not strong in logic and philosophy.
With respect to the polemic excursus, of course, I chuckle over them most sympathetically, and then say how naughty they are! I have done too much of the same sort of thing not to sympathise entirely with you; and I am much inclined to think that it is a good thing for a man, once at any rate in his life, to perform a public war-dance against all sorts of humbug and imposture.
But having satisfied one's love of freedom in this way, perhaps the sooner the war-paint is off the better. It has no virtue except as a sign of one's own frame of mind and determination, and when that is once known, is little better than a distraction.
I think there are a few patches of this kind, my dear friend, which may as well come out in the next edition, e.g. that wonderful note about the relation of God to gas, the gravity of which greatly tickled my fancy.
I pictured to myself the effect which a translation of this would have upon the minds of my respectable countrymen!
Apropos of translation. Darwin wrote to me on that subject, and with his usual generosity, would have made a considerable contribution towards the expense if we could have seen our way to the publication of a translation. But I do not think it would be well to translate the book in fragments, and, as a whole, it would be a very costly undertaking, with very little chance of finding readers.
I do not believe that in the British Islands there are fifty people who are competent to read the book, and of the fifty, five and twenty have read it or will read it in German.
What I desire to do is to write a review of it, which will bring it into some notice on this side of the water, and this I hope to do before long. If I do not it will be, you well know, from no want of inclination, but simply from lack of time.
In any case, as soon as I have been able to study the book carefully, you shall have my honest opinion about all points.
I am glad your journey has yielded so good a scientific harvest, and especially that you found my "Oceanic Hydrozoa" of some use. But I am shocked to find that you had no copy of the book of your own, and I shall take care that one is sent to you. It is my first-born work, done when I was very raw and inexperienced, and had neither friends nor help. Perhaps I am all the fonder of the child on that ground.
A lively memory of you remains in my house, and wife and children will be very glad to hear that I have news of you when I go home to dinner.
Keep us in kindly recollection, and believe me,
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
July 16, 1867.
My dear Haeckel,
My wife and I send you our most hearty congratulations and good wishes. Give your betrothed a good account of us, and for we hope in the future to entertain as warm a friendship for her as for you. I was very glad to have the news, for it seemed to me very sad that a man of your warm affections should be surrounded only by hopeless regrets. Such surroundings inflict a sort of partial paralysis upon one's whole nature, a result which is, to me, far more serious and regrettable than the mere suffering one undergoes.
The one thing for men, who like you and I stand pretty much alone, and have a good deal of fighting to do in the external world, is to have light and warmth and confidence within the four walls of home. May all these good things await you!
Many thanks for your kind invitation to Jena. I am sure my wife would be as much pleased as I to accept it, but it is very difficult for her to leave her children.
We will keep it before us as a pleasant possibility, but I suspect you and Madame will be able to come to England before we shall reach Germany.
I wish I had rooms to offer you, but you have seen that troop of children and they leave no corner unoccupied.
Many thanks for the Bericht and the genealogical tables. You seem, as usual, to have got through an immense amount of work.
I have been exceedingly occupied with a paper on the "Classification of
Birds," a sort of expansion of one of my Hunterian Lectures this year.
It has now gone to press, and I hope soon to be able to send you a copy
of it.
Occupation of this and other kinds must be my excuse for having allowed so much longer a time to slip by than I imagined had done before writing to you. It is not for want of sympathy, be sure, for my wife and I have often talked of the new life opening out to you.
This is written in my best hand. I am proud of it, as I can read every word quite easily myself, which is more than I can always say for my own MS.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The same experience is attested and enforced in the correspondence with Dr. Anton Dohrn, which begins this year. Genial, enthusiastic, as pungent as he was eager in conversation, the future founder of the Marine Biological Station at Naples, on his first visit to England, made my father's acquaintance by accepting his invitation to stay with him] "for as long as you can make it convenient to stay" [at Swanage,] "a little country town with no sort of amusement except what is to be got by walking about a rather pretty country. But having warned you of this, I repeat that it will give me much pleasure to see you if you think it worthwhile to come so far."
[Dr. Dohrn came, and came into the midst of the family—seven children, ranging from ten years to babyhood, with whom he made himself as popular by his farmyard repertory, as he did with the elders by other qualities. The impression left upon him appears from a letter written soon after:—
"Ich habe heute mehrere Capitel in Mill's 'Utilitarianism' gelesen and das Wort happiness mehr als einmal gefunden: hatte ich eine Definition dieses vielumworbenen Wortes irgend Jemand zu geben, ich wurde sagen (I have been reading several chapters of Mill's 'Utilitarianism' to-day, and met with the word 'happiness' more than once; if I had to give anybody a definition of this much debated word, in other say): go and see the Huxley family at Swanage; and if you would enjoy the same I enjoyed, you would feel what is happiness, and never more ask for a definition of this sentiment.">[
Swanage, September 22, 1867.
My dear Dohrn,
Thanks to my acquaintance with the "Microskopische Anatomie," and to the fact that you employ our manuscript characters, and not the hieroglyphics of what I venture to call the "cursed" and not "cursiv" Schrift, your letter was as easy as it was pleasant to read. We are all glad to have news of you, though it was really very unnecessary to thank us for trying to make your brief visit a pleasant one. Your conscience must be more "pungent" than your talk, if it pricks you with so little cause. My wife rejoices saucily to find that phrase of hers has stuck so strongly in your mind, but you must remember her fondness for "Tusch."
You must certainly marry. In my bachelor days, it was unsafe for anyone to approach me before mid-day, and for all intellectual purposes I was barren till the evening. Breakfast at six would have upset me for the day. You and the lobster noted the difference the other day.
Whether it is matrimony or whether it is middle age I don't know, but as time goes on you can combine both.
I cannot but accept your kind offer to send me Fanny Lewald's works, though it is a shame to rob you of them. In return my wife insists on your studying a copy of Tennyson, which we shall send you as soon as we return to civilisation, which will be next Friday. If you are in London after that date we shall hope to see you once more before you return to the bosom of the "Fatherland."
I did my best to give the children your message, but I fear I failed ignominiously in giving the proper bovine vocalisation to "Mroo."
That small curly-headed boy Harry, struck, I suppose by the kindness you both show to children, has effected a synthesis between you and Tyndall, and gravely observed the other day, "Doctor Dohrn-Tyndall do say Mroo."
My wife…Sends her kind regards. The "seven" are not here or they would vote love by acclamation.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[He did not this year attend the British Association, which was held in Dundee. This was the first occasion on which an evening was devoted to a working men's lecture, a step important as tending towards his own ideal of what science should be:—not the province of a few, but the possession of the many.
This first lecture was delivered by Professor Tyndall, who wrote him an account of the meeting, and in particular of his reconciliation with Professors Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Tait, with whom he had had a somewhat embittered controversy.
In his reply, Huxley writes:—]
To J. Tyndall.
Thanks also for a copy of the "Dundee Advertiser" containing your lecture. It seemed to me that the report must be a very good one, and the lecture reads exceedingly well. You have inaugurated the working men's lectures of the Association in a way that cannot be improved. And it was worth the trouble, for I suspect they will become a great and noble feature in the meetings.
Everything seems to have gone well at the meeting, the educational business carried [i.e. a recommendation that natural science be made a part of the curriculum in the public schools], and the anthropologers making fools of themselves in a most effectual way. So that I do not feel that I have anything to reproach myself with for being absent.
I am very pleased to hear of the reconciliation with Thomson and Tait. The mode of it speaks well for them, and the fact will remove a certain source of friction from amongst the cogs of your mental machinery.
[The following gives the reason for his resigning the Fullerian lectureship:—]
Athenaeum Club, May, 1867.
My dear Tyndall,
A conversation I had with Bence Jones yesterday reminded me that I ought to have communicated with you. But we do not meet so often as we used to do, being, I suppose, both very busy, and I forget to write.
You recollect that the last time we talked together, you mentioned a notion of Bence Jones's to make the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology a practically permanent appointment, and that I was quite inclined to stick by that (if such arrangement could be carried out), and give up other things.
But since I have been engaged in the present course of lectures I have found reason to change my views. It is very hard work, and takes up every atom of my time to make the lectures what they should be; and I find that at this time of year, being more or less used up, I suppose, with the winter work, I stand the worry and excitement of the actual lectures very badly. Add to this that it is six weeks clean gone out of the only time I have disposable for real scientific progress, and you will understand how it is that I have made up my mind to resign.
I put all this clearly before Bence Jones yesterday, with the proviso that I could and would do nothing that should embarrass the Institution or himself.
If there is the least difficulty in supplying my place, or if the managers think I shall deal shadily with them by resigning before the expiration of my term, of course I go on. And I hope you all understand that I would do anything rather than put even the appearance of a slight upon those who were kind enough to elect me.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[He found a substitute for 1868, the last year of the triennial course, in Dr. (now Sir) Michael Foster. Of his final lectures in 1867 he used to tell a story against himself.]
In my early period as a lecturer, I had very little confidence in my general powers, but one thing I prided myself upon was clearness. I was once talking of the brain before a large mixed audience, and soon began to feel that no one in the room understood me. Finally I saw the thoroughly interested face of a woman auditor, and took consolation in delivering the remainder of the lecture directly to her. At the close, my feeling as to her interest was confirmed when she came up and asked if she might put one question upon a single point which she had not quite understood. "Certainly," I replied. "Now, Professor," she said, "is the cerebellum inside or outside the skull?" ("Reminiscences of T.H. Huxley" by Professor H. Fairfield Osborn).
[Dr. Foster used to add maliciously, that disgust at the small impression he seemed to have made was the true reason for the transference of the lectures.]