Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work

by Sir P. Chalmers Mitchell

Huxley's life followed the quiet and even tenor of that of a professional man of science and letters. The great adventure in it was his youthful voyage on the Rattlesnake. That over, and his choice made in favour of science as against medicine, he settled down in London. He married happily and shared in the common joys and sorrows of domestic life. Advancement came to him steadily, and, although he was never rich, after the first few years of life in London, his income was always adequate to his moderate needs. For the greater part of his working life, he lived actually in London, in the ordinary style and with the ordinary social enjoyments of a professional man. His duties in connection with the Royal College of Science and with the Geological Survey were not arduous but constant; his time was fully occupied with these, with his scientific and literary work, with the business of scientific societies, with the occasional obligations of royal commissions, public boards, and lecturing engagements. The quiet routine of his life was diversified by many visits to provincial towns to deliver lectures or addresses, by meetings of the British Association, by holidays in Switzerland, during which, with Tyndall, he made special studies of the phenomena of glaciation, and in the usual Continental resorts, and by several trips to America.

CARICATURE OF HUXLEY DRAWN BY HIMSELF
Reproduced by permission from Natural Science, vol. vii., No. 46

In a rough-and-ready fashion, Huxley's active life may be broken into a set of decennial periods, each with tolerably distinctive characters. The first period, roughly from 1850 to 1860, was almost purely scientific. It was occupied by his voyage, by his transition to science as a career, his researches into the invertebrate forms of life, the beginning of his palæontological investigations, and a comparatively small amount of lecturing and literary work. The second decennium still found him employed chiefly in research, vertebrate and extinct forms absorbing most of his attention. He was occupied actively with teaching, but the dominant feature of the decennium was his assumption of the Darwinian doctrines. In connection with these latter, his literary and lecturing work increased greatly, and the side issues of what was, in itself, purely a scientific controversy began to lead him into metaphysical and religious studies. The third period, from 1870 to 1880, was considerably different in character. He had become the most prominent man in biological science in England, at a time when biological science was attracting a quite unusual amount of scientific and public attention. Public honours and public duties, some of them scientific, others general, began to crowd upon him, and the time at his disposal for the quiet labours of investigation became rapidly more limited within this period. He was secretary of the Royal Society, a member of the London School Board, president of the British Association, Lord Rector at several universities, member of many royal commissions, government inspector of fisheries, president of the Geological Society. In this multitude of duties it was natural that the bulk of strictly scientific output was limited, but, on the other hand, his literary output was much larger. Between 1880 and 1890 he had reached the full maturity of a splendid reputation, and honours and duties pressed thick upon him. For part of the time he was president of the Royal Society, the most distinguished position to which a scientific man in England can attain, and he was held by the general public at least in as high esteem as by his scientific contemporaries. A small amount of original scientific work still appeared from his pen, but he was occupied chiefly with more general contributions to thought.

Throughout his life, Huxley had never been robust. From his youth upwards he had been troubled by dyspepsia with its usual accompaniment of occasional fits of severe mental and physical depression. In 1872 he was compelled to take a long holiday in Egypt, and, although he returned to resume full labour, it is doubtful if from that time onwards he recovered even the strength normal to him. In 1885, his ill-health became grave; in the following years he had two attacks of pleurisy, and symptoms of cardiac mischief became pressing. He gradually withdrew from his official posts, and, in 1890, retired to Eastbourne, where he had built himself a house on the Downs. The more healthy conditions and the comparative leisure he permitted himself had a good effect, and he was able to write some of his most brilliant essays and to make a few public appearances: at Oxford in 1893, when he delivered the Romanes lecture; at the meeting of the British Association in 1894, when he spoke on the vote of thanks to the President, the Marquis of Salisbury; at the Royal Society in the same year when he received the recently established "Darwin Medal." Early in the spring of 1895, he had a prostrating attack of influenza, and from that time until his death on June 29, 1895, he was an invalid. He was buried in the Marylebone cemetery at Finchley, to the north of London.

Huxley was of middle stature and rather slender build. His face, as Professor Ray Lankester described it, was "grave, black-browed, and fiercely earnest." His hair, plentiful and worn rather long, was black until in old age it became silvery white. He wore short side whiskers, but shaved the rest of his face, leaving fully exposed an obstinate chin, and mobile lips, grim and resolute in repose, but capable of relaxation into a smile of almost feminine charm.

He was a very hard worker and took little exercise. Professor Howes describes a typical day as occupied by lecture and laboratory work at the College of Science until his hurried luncheon; then a cab-drive to the Home Office for his work as Inspector of Fisheries; then a cab home for an hour's work before dinner, and the evening after dinner spent in literary work or scientific reading. While at work, his whole attention was engrossed, and he disliked being disturbed. This abstraction of his attention is illustrated humorously by a story told by one of his demonstrators. Huxley was engaged in the investigations required for his book on the Crayfish, and his demonstrator came in to ask a question about a codfish. "Codfish?" said Huxley; "that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask me in a fortnight and I'll consider it." While at work he smoked almost continuously, and from time to time he took a little relaxation, for the strains of a fiddle were occasionally heard from his room. Indeed he was devoted to music, regarding it as one of the highest of the æsthetic pleasures. He tells us himself:

"When I was a boy, I was very fond of music, and I am so now; and it so happened that I had the opportunity of hearing much good music. Among other things, I had abundant opportunities of hearing that great old master, Sebastian Bach. I remember perfectly well—although I knew nothing about music then, and, I may add, know nothing whatever about it now—the intense satisfaction and delight which I had in listening, by the hour together, to Bach's fugues. It is a pleasure which remains with me, I am glad to think; but, of late years, I have tried to find out the why and wherefore, and it has often occurred to me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions of this kind is essentially of the same nature as that which is derived from pursuits which are commonly regarded as purely intellectual. I mean, that the source of pleasure is exactly the same as in most of my problems in morphology—that you have the theme in one of the old masters' works followed out in all its endless variations, always appearing and always reminding you of unity in variety."

He had a hot temper, and did not readily brook opposition, especially when that seemed to him to be the result of stupidity or of prejudice rather than of reason, and his own reason was of a very clear, decided, and exact order. He had little sympathy with vacillation of any kind, whether it arose from mere infirmity of purpose or from the temperament which delights in balancing opposing considerations. He said on one occasion: